![Esteban Montero Chacon is happy that his work reduces energy costs for low-income people.](local/data/caches/images/scaled/img_00029367_300x300.jpg)
Esteban Montero Chacon, 40, was hired as a residential energy analyst in October 2020 while he was finishing his associate in applied science (AAS) degree in energy management from Lane Community College. By December his boss was so impressed by the way Montero Chacon revamped the agency’s Heat System Crisis program that he told him to apply for the director’s job from which he would soon be retiring.
Montero Chacon did, and in February 2021 he became the director of the Energy Services Division of Homes for Good, a public housing agency in Lane County, Oregon.
“I don’t believe I could do the job [without the program], because number one, that’s how I got here by being an energy technician myself. And number two, is just the fact that I learned a lot not only in the technical field of energy, but there was a lot to be learned about energy policy and politics and all the different things – all the guidance, the regulations, ventilation needs and such – that come into play and represent a big role in what my job is,” he said.
Montero Chacon is particularly grateful to Roger Ebbage, the faculty lead of the Northwest Water & Energy Education Institute at Lane Community College. It was Ebbage who told Montero Chacon of the energy analyst job at Homes for Good in 2020, and it was Ebbage who encouraged him to enroll in the energy management program at Lane Community College in 2017.
Ebbage has been the principal investigator of several Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grants from the National Science Foundation including Award 1601375 that supported the conversion of Lane’s in-person energy management degree program for online delivery. He is currently co-principal investigator of the Center for Renewable Energy Advanced Technological Education, which is hosted by Madison Area Technical College in Wisconsin.