By Kristi Phillips
Staff Writer
Since 1999, there have been $18 million awarded from the government to colleges all over California.
The recent $10 million grant that has been awarded to AVC is the “best submitted” that the college has been awarded according to Christos Valiotis, a physics professor and acting director of all AVC grants.
AVC officials want the grant to be flexible in how it is used and want to aim it towards increasing the amount of “low income” students pursuing engineering careers.
The Antelope Valley has the largest concentration of aerospace careers, according to Valiotis. The Valley is exceedingly minority based; at the moment 25 percent of students that attend AVC are Hispanics and the numbers are sky rocketing to 35 – 40 percent.
The main goal of the grant is to develop a local engineering program. AVC officials are reaching out to local high schools to train them how to teach students more “content based” than “generic based” curriculum about attending college.
Valiotis wants to get more students to come to AVC at a collegiate level; if students come to AVC with a collegiate level, they can avoid classes that would make them stay at the college longer.
Moving forward, AVC wants to help educate local schools ranging from kindergarten to high school about attending college. The college wants to prepare students to come to college at the collegiate level and ultimately have students focus not on how to get in, but what they get out of the college experience.
