Christopher Turek, director of online and student services for SEI, said, “Comparing student enrollments in Q4 of 2012 and Q1 of 2013 to years past, we are witnessing a renewed increase of interested students registering for workshops and courses as well as a spike in inquiries about our technical training program.

“We have also experienced a large increase of people coming from related technical trade professions like electricians and building construction professionals that are signing up for our program.”

In order to meet the demands of the industry and interested students wanting to enter its training program, SEI said it had to increase the amount of training options available to students. Expanding its online training program through the SEI Online Campus has helped to meet the demand.

SEI’s full training program — the SEI Solar Professionals Certificate Program — requires at least 160 hours of training to graduate. The hands-on labs are the capstone of the training experience and they require students to go through at least 50 hours of classroom-based training first before students qualify to register for the week-long hands-on lab training. Taking courses through SEI’s Online Campus has become a popular way for students to satisfy the classroom prerequisite requirement.

For 2013, SEI has scheduled more than two dozen online course sessions in response to the increase in student enrollment.

For more information, visit www.solarenergy.org.

Publication date: 3/4/2013