{"id":25418,"date":"2024-10-07T16:22:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T22:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pcc-to-host-open-house-about-forestry-workforce\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:17:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:17:21","slug":"pcc-to-host-open-house-about-forestry-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pcc-to-host-open-house-about-forestry-workforce\/","title":{"rendered":"PCC to host open house about forestry workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pueblo
Pueblo Community College\u2019s coordinator of natural resources, Laurel Smerch, watches as student Alonso Rascon uses the harvesting simulator. (Steve Bigley\/Pueblo Community College)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Pueblo Community College Southwest will host an open house Wednesday to share what PCC is doing to help train and educate students for the forestry workforce.<\/p>\n

Forestry professionals can learn PCC\u2019s new forestry and wildland fire program and try out the school\u2019s new harvesting simulator.<\/p>\n

Tim Reader and other workers from the Colorado State Forest Service in Durango plan to attend. PCC has invited other forest and watershed health organizations to attend the open house, which is open.<\/p>\n

The open house is 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of this program is to invite these professionals in and give an overview of where we\u2019re at in terms of developing the program,\u201d said Laurel Smerch, PCC Southwest\u2019s coordinator for natural resources. She added that PCC invites input.<\/p>\n

According to Smerch, Colorado Senate Bill 23-205<\/a> was proposed to help create scholarship programs for high-priority, postsecondary pathways like forestry and to provide funding for PCC and other schools to develop programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a pretty high demand for people to do forestry work and wildland firefighting,\u201d Smerch said.<\/p>\n

PCC is developing introductory forestry courses and other offerings for the spring semester.<\/p>\n

Kevin Aten, interim campus administrator, described how the simulator can help students learn.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mix of video games and real world operation,\u201d he said. \u201cMore and more forestry and construction companies are having to go out and buy these things at a quarter of a million dollars because it\u2019s hard to put a person on a piece of equipment where they may do thousands of dollars worth of damage if they don\u2019t know how to run it. \u2026 We can use it in our construction program, in our forestry program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smerch said they hope to publicize the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith any new program, it\u2019s getting the word out publicly and working with our industry partners,\u201d Smerch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just a job, Aten said. \u201cThis is a lifelong career. And in a place where our natural resources are so important \u2026 we\u2019re really excited to offer this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forestry and similar professions invited to learn more <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,2487,28,83,60,29,572,691],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-forestry-and-timber","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-pueblo-community-college","tag-pueblo-community-college-southwest-campus"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78927,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418\/revisions\/78927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25418"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}