SANTA MARIA - Its grown into one of the more popular courses at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria.
The "Women in Public Safety Careers" is a grueling program, both physically and psychologically.
Its designed to help prepare students to enter a law enforcement, firefighting or emergency medical services academy.
In the past two years, more than 100 students have taken the course which meets twice a week in the evening and includes lectures and intense physical training.
"We try to help them understand some of the things they are going to be going through in the academy and why we do this, why there is such a strong military discipline in the academy", says instructor Deb Annibali, "we try to teach them how to handle things like their emotions related to fear, intimidation, stress and all those kinds of things to help them be stronger for when actually do go out into the field into a public safety career."
The course has become so popular that half of the current class are male students most of whom plan on attending the prestigious Law Enforcement Academy at Allan Hancock College.
