Business View Magazine - October 2018

76 77 AIRSTREAMS RENEWABLES, INC. That same year, ARI received Veterans Adminis- tration benefits approval and national accredita- tion from the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training (ACCET), through the U.S. Department of Education. In 2013, ARI was approached by industry part- ners in the telecommunications tower service sector to incorporate a tower climbing curriculum into its existing program for the training of wind turbine technicians. “The profile of the student graduate is very similar,” explains Company Pres- ident and CFO, Jeff Duff. “They like to work at heights; they work in small teams; they work a lot of hours – so we adjusted our curriculum that folds in some of the key components that the telecom industry was looking for.” Another major growth spurt for the company occurred in 2014, when it was approached by the command of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma,Washington, and asked to participate in a new career skills program (CSP) that the De- partment of Defense (DoD) had launched called the “Skill Bridge.”“In early 2015, we launched that program, where we were part of a handful of career skills programs that trained active duty service members in the last 180 days of their ser- vice in a certificate program. Ours focused on the telecommunications tower climber and the wind industry,” says Duff. “We are part of a new way of the military doing things,” says Schulgen. “It used to be, our service members went in, they’d do several tours; some of them serve for four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty years, and then they would just get out and that was it. Now, there’s a transition process that turns them back into civilians. It’s really what the CSP is about. So, not only are we training vets to get jobs, it’s really a whole new way of chang- ing how the military transitions our people in our all-volunteer military, out of the military. The AT A GLANCE AIRSTREAMS RENEWABLES, INC. WHAT: A vocational training solutions provider for the wind and telecom industries WHERE: Tehachapi, California WEBSITE: www.air-streams.com