Most community colleges offer a number of certifications as well as two-year degrees in booming fields, and work with industry leaders to develop curricula.
To help scientists make the transition, a number of alternative certification programs expose scientists to the rudiments of pedagogy and guide them to becoming certified to teach in their state.
A number of green certifications exist for "healthier" consumer products, but for the past three years, a small firm in Virginia known as MBDC has been awarding a "Cradle to Cradle" certification, or "C2C," to certain items that satisfy a rigorous philosophy espoused by its founders, the green architect William McDonough and the environmental chemist Michael Braungart.
Many of these unfilled jobs require specific skills, including a number of technical certifications.
Almost anyone can hang out a shingle and dispense advice; planners may have any number of certifications or titles attached to their names, but none are required.
To address this issue, a number of science-based, certification standards have embraced a system known as "book and claim".
InfoComm (http://www.infocomm.org/cps/rde/xchg/infocomm/hs.xsl/education.htm), a national organization for AV professionals, offers a number of educational and certification programs online and also offers onsite "boot camps" at its conventions.
There are a number of different levels of certification you can seek.
LEED is the most well known of a number of green building certifications, such as the Energy Star programme administered by the Environmental Protection Agency EPAA).
Panelists at the F.T.C.'s session on Tuesday raised a number of questions about certifications behind the claims, wondering if the offset companies might be double-counting carbon reductions that would have happened even without their efforts.
