Federal funding, both present and future, is becoming less of a given for higher education institutions. And college administrators across the country are facing extra challenges in continuing research and maintaining student programs and aid. In Yuma, Arizona Western College is no exception.
At the time of publication, two grants awarded to the college have been frozen. The first is from the U.S. Department of Energy, which provided $2 million to increase clean energy workforce training. The second is from the U.S. Department of Education. Its Perkins Innovation and Modernization grant program approved nearly $354K for the current 2024-2025 fiscal year.
In the college district governing board’s regular meeting for April, AWC President Dr. Daniel Corr mentioned these freezes and explained that AWC’s Entrepreneurial College team is in active discussions with federal offices to pursue continuation.
Reetika Dhawan, CEO for AWC’s Entrepreneurial College and vice president of AWC’s workforce and healthcare programs, sat down with KAWC recently to elaborate on the status of these grants and the benefits they offered to the communities of Yuma and La Paz.
“One of them is a clean energy audit grant to support our manufacturing companies with their energy audits,” Dhawan said. “... We have multiple small manufacturing companies, not just in Yuma County, but throughout Arizona. Our students can go to anywhere and then do those energy audits and gain hands-on experience, earn electrical certification.”
She noted that Yuma and La Paz students were being hired to work alongside professors and electrical engineering graduate students to provide the audits free of cost. Together, they’re one of 17 new Industrial Assessment Centers nationwide. Having written the grant application, Dhawan continues to argue for the importance of this program to rural communities.
“We have multiple students who finished their electrical program,” she said. “We hired them to work with APS and Liggett Electric or Luxury Electric, and then they get paid for working with them while they’re earning certification. When they finish, if the employer likes them, they can hire them. This is a great opportunity for our community.”
The grant also benefited companies receiving the audits since Dhawan stated energy audits can cost somewhere from $20-30K depending on the site’s square footage.
The reason for the grant’s freeze? Dhawan’s not sure.
“They didn’t give us any explanation,” she said. “The only thing we got from the Department of Energy was, ‘These fundings are on hold for right now till further discussion.’ So we can’t even tell if it is political or not political. Is it that they don’t have manpower or they’re moving the funding somewhere else or are there budget cuts? The one email we got is ‘Your funding is right now on hold.’”
The other grant, from the ED’s Perkins Innovation and Modernization program, was being used to create a pathway for certificates in electric vehicle technology. Its funding was reduced by 75%.
“Only three community colleges in the country got that grant,” Dhawan said. “We were one of the community colleges who got it. For that, we did a lot of EV work. We’re bringing a Tesla simulator, so Elon Musk must be proud of us!
"But for the grant, the explanation we got is the funding is not there to sustain it so what that means right now? They’re not explaining to us either, so we’re just in limbo to hear what they’re gonna tell us.”
Despite this, the simulator’s on its way because the college has remaining grant funds from the previous year. It’s a Tesla EV training system, and it’ll be used to teach students how to work on electric vehicles.
Currently, the certificate’s active with courses starting this summer. Students earn the credential after passing the following classes:
- EVT 100 - Fundamentals of EV Technology
- EVT 101 - Intro to Electric Vehicles
- EVT 102 - EV Charging Stations and Power Electronics
- EVT 150 - EV Motors, Maintenance and Repairs
With the previous year’s grant funds, AWC also has electric go-karts, a bigger EV and chargers. According to PIM Grant Coordinator Jesus Castillo Flores, the Tesla system likely won’t arrive until October since it’s built to order.
Grant freeze or not, the equipment for the certificate isn’t going anywhere. But if the PIM grant funds for Fiscal Year 2025 remain frozen, AWC will have to forego the certificate, incorporate the technology strictly into the automotive program and, per Reetika Dhawan, “let certain positions go.”
This change would be more significant than is likely apparent. Adding EV tech will benefit the automotive students earning Automotive Service Excellence certification, but they’d only be learning about EV safety.
“They only have a safety certificate,” Castillo Flores said. “Our certificate is more technician based – so to fix them, to put them together, diagnose them, see what goes wrong with them … If it joins the auto, then it’s just gonna be like a little add-on. Like, they’re gonna be there.
"I don’t know if they’re gonna build them; maybe it’ll just be built already and the students can look at them and kind of work on them a little bit. But in our class, they’re gonna build it, the entire (go-kart). It’s a little bit more engineering, a little more electric than auto.”
Jesus Castillo Flores, PIM grant coordinator for AWC, shows off one of the student-built electric go-karts for a group of visiting middle schoolers.
Looking Forward
Since the freeze, Dhawan’s focused on communicating with the federal departments to unfreeze the funds.
“We had another USDA grant that was frozen, and then they just said, ‘Go ahead and start using it,’” she said. “So we are hoping that soon they will do the same thing here.”
As for AWC’s current remaining grants, those should be safe as the money’s already been given. One grant is for veterans. If a veteran or someone from their family wants to take a healthcare program at AWC, their costs are covered 100%. Other grants come from Senator Mark Kelly’s office, and they’re benefiting the electrical program in the Wellton campus.
While the future of some grants for Fiscal Year 2026 remain to be revealed, AWC President Corr stated that the college is keeping students first.
“We're very sound financially,” he said. “We have the ability to pivot and continue when grants are paused or, you know, worst case scenario, even eliminated. So that's been our approach: not to overreact and, most importantly, not negatively impact the students, right? We’ll continue the good work that we're doing, and we'll see where things shake out.”
