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Five College Consortium Helps Its Member Campuses Accomplish More

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workshop at UMass Amherst
Education Special Coverage

Turning Ideas into Reality

workshop at UMass Amherst

Faculty members from all five campuses meet together in a workshop at UMass Amherst as part of a program called Building Academic Leaders in the Humanities Program.
(Photo by Dan Little)

Ina Clark recalls her experience working for the Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, which was not a job performed in a vacuum.

“You’re not only working on your own museum, but also collaborating with the development offices of all the Smithsonian museums — and not only juggling all that, but finding positive ways for those relationships to work,” she told BusinessWest. “I love working with people to grow things, producing results they wouldn’t achieve otherwise.”

She brings the same mindset to her new role as director of Development and Sponsored Programs at the Five Colleges Consortium in Amherst, an organization that, for decades, has convened the resources of Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and UMass Amherst to increase the capacity of those institutions to create educational opportunities both on and off campus.

“Not everyone has the same strengths in everything, and there are certain things they wouldn’t have the budget or structure to take on,” Clark said of the five campuses, adding that this dynamic is exciting to her, in that it necessitates the collaborative work Five Colleges specializes in. “It allows some students to get experiences and opportunities they wouldn’t have on their own campus, but can have because this exists.”

Executive Director Sarah Pfatteicher agreed. “I feel like the work we do is particularly valuable and powerful at a moment that feels very divisive,” she said. “Particularly after the pandemic, we’ve all been so focused inwardly. This is all about getting people in a room to think in a bigger-picture way than they do alone, or accomplish collectively what they couldn’t do themselves — just get outside their individual interests and think of the collective good.”

And it’s a good that impacts the broader community outside the campuses, she added. “We have deep connections to our communities. The campuses can’t be healthy without healthy communities. It’s a symbiotic, mutually supportive relationship, and it’s a lovely thing.”

Clark’s nonprofit background is extensive; besides the Smithsonian Design Museum, she has worked in development at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Cooper Hewitt, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and Sesame Workshop. She also recently served as interim director of SPCA International, an animal-protection organization.

“This is all about getting people in a room to think in a bigger-picture way than they do alone, or accomplish collectively what they couldn’t do themselves — just get outside their individual interests and think of the collective good.”

At Five Colleges, “one of the many things I have found terrific in this opportunity is that you have these very brilliant people who are quite different from each other, and these campuses that are close by but have different perspectives on things, different points of view, and we have a way to pull it all together and brainstorm an idea into a stronger idea, to consider what’s possible,” Clark said.

“That’s a truly amazing idea, and hard to find in a world where people have been isolated. We have this opportunity to throw out an idea and see what happens with it because we have this network that exists around us.”

 

Gradual Growth

Historically, Pfatteicher said, the campuses have been collaborating since at least 1914, but Five Colleges officially became a 501(c)(3) in 1965. “For many years after that, it was a very small organization. So it’s been 110 years of growth to get to where we are now, with our staff, budget, and all the things we have in place.

“Our whole reason for existing is to help facilitate collaborative efforts between the campuses,” she went on. “Everything the campuses want to do together, however we can help them collaborate, our job is to figure out how to do that.”

External funding, mainly in the form of grants, makes up about 15% of the budget, paying for a series of sponsored programs, said Kevin Kennedy, director of Strategic Engagement at Five Colleges.

K-12 teachers from the Center for East Asian Studies

K-12 teachers from the Center for East Asian Studies visit the Mo’ili’ili Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Honolulu.
(Photo by Anne Prescott)

“The vast majority of our work on the campuses is with things other than the sponsored programs — cross-registration, extensive academic program support, student research … a wide variety of areas.”

That includes a lot of academic programming, sharing curricula and faculty, some back-office and administrative operations, risk management, insurance, and shared fiber-optic network contracts, Pfatteicher noted.

“The majority of our annual budget comes directly from the campuses in the form of assessments which basically say, ‘here’s a list of the things you told me what you want to do next year, and this is what it will cost each of you.’ We have a very detailed formula about who pays for which amount, but the budget comes from the campuses.”

“People will be able to research thousands, even tens of thousands of museum objects that aren’t nearly as accessible to them with the current system.”

Clark, on the other hand, will focus mainly on the consortium’s broad portfolio of sponsored programs, which most recently includes grants from the Mellon Foundation for expanding the Native American and Indigenous Studies curricula of its member campuses and for creation of a faculty leadership-development program, as well as a host of other programs:

• Paradigm Shift is a scholarship partnership program supported by a coalition of more than 30 school districts, universities, and community organizations, aimed at helping Black and Latinx para-educators become licensed teachers.

“The focus is on creating a more diverse teaching workforce,” Pfatteicher said. “It takes people who are already in the classroom and progresses them in their career. It isn’t something that one campus can do by itself, and even Five Colleges couldn’t do it alone, but our job is to get the right people in the room — superintendents, identified para-educators, teacher training programs, someone to manage grant funding … it takes a village, if you will.”

“That’s a perfect example of the work being done here in a collaborative way,” Clark added. “It goes beyond the five campuses and has a tremendous regional benefit.”

• The Center for East Asian Studies in Northampton supports K-12 teachers in learning, and then teaching about, East Asia. It draws on the resources of the Five College member campuses to conduct seminars, institutes, conferences, and workshops.

• Learning in Retirement is a group of retirees, mainly from the field of education, who provide peer education to one another. “It started with faculty members moving into retirement who wanted to stay involved and wanted to help each other, but the membership has gone beyond that,” Clark said.

• Five Colleges also received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support an upgrade of six museum collections and cataloging systems — five from the member colleges and also Historic Deerfield.

“This effort will help the museums to better their collections, and allow them to share their collections with the world,” Kennedy said. “People will be able to research thousands, even tens of thousands of museum objects that aren’t nearly as accessible to them with the current system.”

Those are just a few of the ongoing initiatives. While some of these programs exist for the long run, others — like the museum project — will eventually meet a goal and then end. Meanwhile, ideas for new collaborations continue to be generated by the colleges themselves.

Participants in the Paradigm Shift program

Participants in the Paradigm Shift program, which helps para-educators of color in local K-12 schools earn their teacher’s licenses.
(Photo by Ben Barnhart)

“For the most part, the campuses come here with a project they’d like to undertake: ‘can you help us find funding for this one?’” Pfatteicher explained. “Or one campus might come forward and say, ‘we’ve been talking to a funder about a program, and it occurred to us it might be more powerful to do it collectively.’ So they hand over that conversation with the funder to Five Colleges, and we seek funding.”

And new concepts — and discussions — are always emerging, Clark said. “Ideas can come from one campus, and we help bring it to the full group.”

 

Strength in Numbers

Pfatteicher emphasized that many valuable programs, especially of the collaborative nature, couldn’t be accomplished without a central convener like the Five College Consortium.

“Campuses in theory can run these things on their own, but the more complicated, detailed collaborations are harder,” she noted, adding that even helping students on one campus find what courses are offered on another, and helping them access those resources, is a much-improved process when Five Colleges is involved.

“Something as simple as cross-registration has a whole set of things you need to accomplish,” she added. “We happen to specialize in being the glue in the middle that helps pull it all together.”

Kennedy agreed. “The three campuses, individually, are overextended; they simply don’t have the funding to do all these programs. Five Colleges gives them an opportunity to access things they may not be able to access otherwise as a group.”

What’s Behind Labor’s Surge in Momentum?

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Education Special Coverage Workforce Development

Striking Results

Jasmine Kerrissey acknowledged that, when it comes to labor and business management, it’s difficult, but not impossible, to chart who’s winning and losing the various types of skirmishes between the two sides and post standings, as they do in sports.

But if they did … labor would be enjoying a sizable lead in the standings as this year comes to a close.

Indeed, there have been some recent — and significant — wins for the labor movement in this country, said Kerrissey, associate professor of Sociology and director of the UMass Labor Center, and co-author of the recently released book Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement. She cited recent strikes involving United Auto Workers (UAW), who won 25% wage gains from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis; employees at UPS; and TV and film actors and writers, among others, as well as union campaigns at large employers such as Amazon, Starbucks, REI, and Trader Joe’s.

In a word, labor is enjoying a large dose of momentum and one of the most pronounced ‘booms’ in recent times, she said.

“The number of strikes, and the number of new types of elections and new union organizing, is much higher than it’s been in the last several decades,” Kerrissey noted. “And many of those elections and strikes are being won by workers.

“Momentum is really important,” she went on. “And we should never underestimate momentum; when other workers see other workers winning, it’s really powerful, and it inspires others to think that they might be able to do the same.”

“Momentum is really important. And we should never underestimate momentum; when other workers see other workers winning, it’s really powerful, and it inspires others to think that they might be able to do the same.”

This momentum was perhaps best exemplified in early September when President Biden joined the UAW picket line at a General Motors plant in Michigan — the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president had done so. (Presidents have traditionally worked to broker deals, not take sides in labor disputes.)

Wearing a UAW cap and toting a bullhorn, Biden said of automakers’ profits after receiving federal assistance, “now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what — you should be doing incredibly well, too.”

Such sentiments, the notion that workers should be doing as well as the CEOs running these large corporations, are at the heart of labor’s recent surge, said Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle, a labor attorney at the Springfield-based Royal Law Firm, who represents businesses in such matters.

Jasmine Kerrissey says labor is enjoying some real momentum in 2023

Jasmine Kerrissey says labor is enjoying some real momentum in 2023, especially though victories in several recent, high-profile strikes.

Elaborating, she said that, while the 25% wage hikes won by the auto workers during their month-long strike are certainly an aberration, such a figure emboldens workers in other industries and instills what she called “overexaggerated fear” among employers, including those in the 413.

“Those numbers are extraordinary,” she said. “Usually, when you see these union pay increases, we’re talking 3% to 8%, with 8% being the max. These 25% increases … I honestly don’t think we have that to fear locally, but … there is that public sentiment.”

Indeed, workers are further emboldened by seemingly endless headlines concerning the salaries of CEOs — and by the ongoing workforce crunch that is impacting virtually every sector of the economy, putting a premium on retention of talent.

“With the tight labor market, people can’t find workers — people don’t want to do the traditional jobs anymore,” Cannon-Eckerle said. “Employers need employees, so they do have that leverage, that bargaining power. And with this crunch being in the public, workers know it, and they feel it.”

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently announced new union election rules and issued six significant union- and employee-favorable decisions that, among other things, make it easier for unions to gain the right to represent employees, redefine the standard for what constitutes concerted activity subject to protection under the NLRB, and substantially heighten employers’ collective-bargaining obligations.

“The NLRB has also shortened the period from election time to when to when it actually happens, so it can come hard, and it can come fast. You have one upset employee that you’re tiptoeing around, and before you know it, you have someone who’s asked for there to be a union election, and within 14 days, it’s happening. That’s scary for employers, and it should be.”

“The NLRB has also shortened the period from election time to when to when it actually happens, so it can come hard, and it can come fast,” Cannon-Eckerle added. “You have one upset employee that you’re tiptoeing around, and before you know it, you have someone who’s asked for there to be a union election, and within 14 days, it’s happening. That’s scary for employers, and it should be.”

For this issue and its focus on workforce and education, BusinessWest looks at the momentum that labor is enjoying at present, what it means, and what might come next.

 

Labor Gains

What labor is enjoying now would certainly qualify as a boom, said Kerrissey, who told BusinessWest there have been a number of upsurges and periods of retraction since 1900, the period studied for her book, co-written with Judith Stephan-Norris, professor emerita in the Department of Sociology at the University of California Irvine.

That book was essentially finished before the pandemic, she said, adding that the scene has changed dramatically since it was sent it to the printer.

“When we were writing this book, it was hard to imagine that we would be in a boom period like this, but here we are,” she said. “It has been great timing for this book, and it’s been really exciting to apply some of the historical lessons to the present day.”

Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle

Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle says that, in the current labor climate, the best quality employers can display is transparency.

Kerrissey said booms are defined by momentum on several different fronts. Successful strikes — with success meaning that workers were able to win all or most of what they were asking for when they went to the picket lines — are easily the most visible.

And there have been many of those over this past year and in many different industries, said Kerrissey, citing the UAW strike, the averted UPS strike — a settlement that was reached gave more than 300,000 workers represented by the Teamsters significant wage hikes and new minimums — and the new contracts won by actors and screenwriters. But there have also been “successful” strikes in healthcare — In October, Kaiser Permanente struck a deal with a coalition of unions granting them 21% wage increases over the next four years — and many teacher strikes, including several in Massachusetts, that have garnered higher wages, especially for paraprofessionals.

But momentum is visible in other fronts as well, Kerrissey said, including what she called a “wave” of new union organizing over the past few years, elections that go through the National Labor Relations Board.

“These have stood out, both because it’s more workers doing these elections, but it’s also in industries that have typically not had a lot of union presence,” she said, listing the action at Starbucks as both the most visible and impactful example of such movement, with more than 300 locations across the country now unionized and the total of represented workers approaching 10,000.

But there have been others as well, including Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Chipotle, and REI, the camping and outdoor sports equipment retailer.

“That’s a real shift to have those types of elections in industries that have long been non-union,” Kerrissey told BusinessWest, adding quickly that workers in those industries, while now unionized, have mostly had a difficult time bringing companies to the table to negotiate.

“The bottom line is … if workers are happy, they’re not going to strike. If your employees are happy, they don’t feel like they need to organize. Usually, it’s one or two people that are upset about something and start to gather their forces, and they start nodding their heads and say, ‘yeah, you’re right, we do deserve more.’”

And while some numbers are trending upward, she went on, overall union representation is relatively flat, if not actually declining.

Indeed, according to the NLRB, union petitions increased 3% in fiscal 2023 compared to 2022, with 2022 seeing a 53% increase in union election petitions from the previous year. However, U.S. union membership declined to 10.1% in 2022 from 10.3% in 2021, the lowest on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although the number of workers belonging to unions increased by 273,000 workers to 14.3 million in 2022, the total number of workers in the U.S. workforce grew by 5.3 million, resulting in the drop in union density.

Those numbers show that, while labor is enjoying momentum, there is still room for more improvement, Kerrissey said.

“The next big hurdle is making the playing field more even for working people, and that comes down to labor policy,” she said. “The labor policy we have in this country is antiquated, and it’s been hard to change; the basic structure is still from the 1930s. But work has changed a lot since then.”

“It’s been quite difficult to make an updated, 21st-century labor policy,” she went on. “And I think some of the strikes are in reaction to that — there are few alternatives.”

Meanwhile, it’s difficult to project what will happen short- and long-term.

“It’s hard to make predictions,” she said. “Historically, when workers are striking and winning, union membership also surges — those two things are correlated. But it’s really hard to look too far into the future.”

 

Labor Pains

While long-term projections may be cloudy, Cannon-Eckerle said it’s rather easy to look short-term and see a time (it’s already here, actually) when it is much easier for unions to gain the right to represent employees, and for an election to come much more quickly.

Indeed, as she recapped the changes made by the NLRB in September, she said they have the potential to be as impactful as any of the recent strikes and could cause some real anxiety among employers.

The NLRB decisions, which came down in one hectic week in late August, bring significant changes to the landscape and essentially enable unions to get faster elections, make it easier to show that individual employee comments or actions constitute concerted activity, and limit past practice as a justification for unilateral changes, she explained, adding that these are all clear wins for employees and unions.

Summing them all up, Cannon-Eckerle said, “my clients are afraid — and they should be. They don’t know what they’re allowed to say or not allowed to say; there’s a gray line about whether you can actually say something to somebody, even if they’re being disruptive to the workplace.

“The fear is, ‘am I not going to be able to police the conduct of my employees, because they’re essentially allowed to say and do whatever they want?’” she went on. “And it just takes that one really upset or really vocal employee to create that pre-storm, if you will.”

That pre-storm is the series of events that can lead to a union election, she said, adding that the NLRB decisions can bring one about faster and more easily than perhaps ever before. In essence, the new rule resurrects what was known as the ‘ambush election’ process, which inhibits employers’ ability to educate their workforces about union representation and adequately prepare for union elections — hence the term.

In such a climate, businesses large and small should be focused on transparency, she said, adding quickly that this doesn’t necessarily mean wide-open books but does mean being open and honest about the financial big picture and a detailed explanation of revenues and expenses.

“If you explain to your workforce, ‘here’s what our budget is, and here’s the cost of each employee,’” she began, noting that this means the full cost of each employee, meaning salary, benefits, training, and more. “Most employees don’t know that; they understand budgets, and they understand what it costs to run their households, most likely, but they don’t fully understand everything that goes into charging $7 for a cup of coffee.”

Overall, Cannon-Eckerle said, business owners and managers should do what they can to impress upon workers that they are valued and heard when it comes to the issues that impact them, meaning everything from wages to working conditions to flexibility around where people work.

“The bottom line is … if workers are happy, they’re not going to strike,” she noted. “If your employees are happy, they don’t feel like they need to organize. Usually, it’s one or two people that are upset about something and start to gather their forces, and they start nodding their heads and say, ‘yeah, you’re right, we do deserve more.’

“The way to control that, first of all, is to right your ship; you have to make sure that your house is in order at your company,” she went on. “If it’s not, maybe there’s justification for the union cozying up to the workforce.”

How AIC Minimized Disruptions in Its Health-sciences Programs

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The top of Courniotes Hall is covered with plastic
Education

After the Fire

The top of Courniotes Hall is covered with plastic

The top of Courniotes Hall is covered with plastic now while AIC leaders discuss both short-term winter preparations and a long-term strategy for the building.

When a lightning strike set fire to Courniotes Hall at American International College (AIC) on July 27, the safety of everyone in the building was the paramount concern; fortunately, no one was hurt.

The longer-term concern is for the future of the heavily damaged building, and that process has only begun.

In between was one key question: what to do with all the health programs based at Courniotes and all the students and faculty who typically work and learn there — and do it before the fall semester, which was only a few weeks away.

That process has not been easy, and it’s far from over, said Karen Rousseau, dean of the School of Health Sciences at AIC. But with no programs or classes curtailed (though many have been relocated), the experience has been a valuable lesson in pivoting — and may pose opportunities to “reimagine” the design of the building once it’s repaired and renovated.

“The night of the fire was pretty devastating, but immediately the next morning, we got to work trying to figure out where to put classes that were housed in that building and how we would function,” Rousseau told BusinessWest, listing challenges from replacing the nursing program’s simulation-lab equipment to relocating cadavers and identifying new space for physical and occupational therapy labs and a large number of classrooms.

Part of the solution was finding temporary space in the Colaccino Center for Health Sciences, across State Street from Courniotes Hall, as well as other buildings on campus. Meanwhile, most of the nearby colleges and universities (and some from across Massachusetts) reached out offering space.

AIC took up one offer: from UMass Medical School – Baystate, located in Tower Square in downtown Springfield, which offered not only classroom and faculty space, but also storage for equipment and free parking for students.

“The night of the fire, we had students come to watch it, and they were concerned and sad. But we said, ‘we’re going to make sure it’s business as usual. We don’t know what it is right now, but we will make sure it’s OK for you.”

“UMass fortunately had this space that they weren’t using a tremendous amount; they use it for their accelerated baccalaureate program, but they’re mostly out on clinical placement in the fall,” Rousseau said. “So it was serendipitous that we were able to work around their schedule; primarily, it’s our junior nursing class that needed labs in the fall.”

AIC also quickly rehabbed the basement of its Amaron Hall to use as classrooms and storage for occupational therapy and physical therapy, and it will begin renovating the Lissa Building, which is attached to Courniotes Hall and also sustained damage in the fire, with the goal of opening it to students this spring; meanwhile, a building next to Lissa will be renovated to become an occupational therapy lab and training room where OT students learn how to work with patients on activities of daily living.

In short, the entire health sciences curriculum felt the weight of the fire and its aftermath, but AIC’s leaders made sure all students were able to continue their education this fall.

“I don’t want to make it sound like it was easy,” Rousseau said. “And it’s not all perfect, but it’s good. I mean, the students are receiving their education, and the faculty are happy they all have their own offices. To be able to say that, when we lost all those offices, is a miracle. And a lot of equipment from the labs had to be replaced.”

Karen Rousseau

Karen Rousseau says it hasn’t been easy, but students have been able to continue their studies following the July 27 fire.

They got creative, Rousseau added, because … well, because they had to.

“All of our [health sciences] students flowed through there. The majority nof the faculty for physical therapy was over there, and occupational therapy, and all of the nursing faculty. So all the nursing, PT, and OT students walked through there all the time. A lot of people were affected.”

 

No Interruptions

The reason AIC had to act quickly, and the reason so many other institutions reached out, was a shared feeling that interrupting the students’ education was unthinkable.

“This was devastating to the students,” Rousseau said. “The night of the fire, we had students come to watch it, and they were concerned and sad. But we said, ‘we’re going to make sure it’s business as usual. We don’t know what it is right now, but we will make sure it’s OK for you.’ That’s what we keep telling students: ‘it’s been OK, and it’ll continue to be OK. It will get better and better as we have more time to roll out our plans.’ But they were really nervous.”

In the longer term, AIC has engaged the services of an experienced project manager to navigate the logistics of assessment and reconstruction of Courniotes Hall.

“We haven’t had a final ruling from insurance, but it’s sounding like we will renovate and restore, maybe not in the same exact configuration, but within that same footprint — but, again, that’s not official,” Rousseau said, noting that the top of Courniotes is now covered in plastic, but some kind of temporary roof will likely need to be erected before winter sets in.

AIC’s much-discussed strategic plan for 2022-27 is called “AIC Reimagined,” and AIC President Hubert Benitez has taken to calling the future of the fire-damaged structure “Courniotes Reimagined,” sensing an opportunity to determine if the building’s current design and layout best serve students and faculty, and making changes as needed.

“He wants to pull faculty together and plan what would be appropriate for the future for that building and whether that means more space, whether we’d look to expand, and address any needs we might have,” Rousseau said. “This was OK when it was built in the ’90s, but if we had to rebuild it, we wouldn’t build it the same way. So, what would it look like? Do we want to replace it exactly the same, or do we need to make some changes? This is an opportunity. You can always use more space than what you had.”

AIC leaders are seeking engagement from students and faculty about what the building should look like for the future, she said, but stressed that the long-term planning process has only begun.

“Our focus right now is on the interim piece for the nursing lab and the occupational therapy lab; that has to come first because we want to get our students back on campus as soon as we can — hopefully for spring. We need more space for OT than what we have right now. We’re making do right now, but we need more.

“And then, with nursing, we don’t want them to have to go downtown to do their simulation and their nursing-practice skills,” she added. “And that is a bigger need in the spring for students. There are a lot more students that have to go through the lab in the spring. It’s important to us that they’re back home.”

This unusual year in AIC’s health sciences programs comes at a time when the medical world is still experiencing staffing shortages in many fields, particularly nursing, Rousseau said, but colleges nationwide have weathered a dip in enrollments in those programs.

“But enrollment across colleges in general is down for all professions, so I think it’s a symptom of the times,” she added. “A lot of people are worried about college debt, and you can go to work right away and still make an OK living wage because unemployment has been so low. There’s also the fact that we’re at that cliff where the birth rate has dropped off, so we’ve just got less people coming out of high school.”

And while nursing opportunities are still soaring — the profession has seen many older entrants who are changing careers to take advantage — there’s also lingering burnout from the pandemic, she added.

“You heard a lot of negativity around anything in healthcare. So I think that’s impacted healthcare. But it’s starting to rebound again — because then people heard about how much travel nurses make.”

 

Grit and Gratitude

Benitez recently expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support from the community following the fire. “I want to acknowledge the remarkable resilience and unity displayed by our faculty, staff, and students. It is this collective effort from our community that gives me confidence that we will overcome this adversity together.”

Rousseau agreed. “We wanted to reassure our students that we’re still open for business. We’re going to figure it out. And we’re trying to listen to them when there are issues.

“There are some things we can’t control, you know,” she added. “They don’t really want to be in class in a different building and not having their usual space. And the nursing faculty are farther across campus. The biggest struggle is that we’ve lost a large parking lot, so we’ve got some growing pains around figuring that out, making sure it’s OK before we start having snowbanks to deal with, too.”

But all those issues pale in comparion to the main one: ensuring that life continues at AIC, and so do the college careers of its nursing, PT, and OT students.

“We’ve tried to be thoughtful, to make sure this had the least amount of impact on students,” Rousseau said. “We’ve tried to reassure students that AIC is still here, and that we’re an equal partner in their success.”

MassReconnect Is Altering the Paradigm at Community Colleges

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Cover Story Education

Change of Course

STCC students Sarai Andrades, left, and Destiny Santos

Sarai Andrades is a second-year student at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). She’s enrolled in the health sciences program, with the goal of starting work toward a nursing degree in 2024. Her ultimate ambition is to become a travel nurse.

To pay for her first year at STCC, she had to take on $5,000 in loans because she and her husband were earning too much to qualify for financial aid. But this year, she’s going for free, essentially, because of the MassReconnect program, which enables individuals 25 and over (she’s 49) to attend one of the state’s 15 community colleges without the burden of having to pay tuition — or even for books.

For Andrades, relief from the burden of debt is, in a word, “huge.”

Indeed, she eventually decided to resign from her job so she could attend school full-time, and the debt she took on for that first year was certainly burdensome.

“Not to take out a loan, not to be in debt when there’s only one income in my family, is a big relief for us,” she said. “Before, there was worry — this is a two-year program, and to become a full-time college student with only my husband working was going to be tough. I’m ecstatic that they’re doing this for us.”

With that, she spoke for hundreds of others in similar situations — and for administrators at the area’s community colleges, who have seen dramatic, and much-needed, increases in enrollment and vibrancy on their campuses this fall, and can attribute those increases, at least in part, to the MassReconnect program.

Jim Cook

John Cook

“When you reduce this cost barrier all the way, people can now find the time and space in their lives to actually imagine themselves back here.”

“When you reduce this cost barrier all the way, people can now find the time and space in their lives to actually imagine themselves back here,” said John Cook, president of STCC, noting that the school has seen its first increase in year-over-year enrollment in more than a decade. “People really do want to make a difference for themselves and their families, and this is that thing that has really grabbed their attention and carved that space back out in their lives.”

Tim Sweeney is back on the campus at Greenfield Community College roughly 20 years after he left school to start working.

Tim Sweeney is back on the campus at Greenfield Community College roughly 20 years after he left school to start working.

MassReconnect is a program created through legislation passed earlier this year, modeled on similar, and thus far successful, initiatives in other states, including Michigan and Tennessee.

For many individuals, the burden of tuition expenses and debt has kept them from attending school or forced them to the sidelines before they could complete a degree or certificate program, said Mark Hudgik, interim dean of Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid at Holyoke Community College.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in adult students applying and enrolling who had no college before, and we think that’s a direct impact of MassReconnect,” he said. “We also see a fair number who are coming back after a break.”

Linda Desjardins, director of Student Financial Services at Greenfield Community College, agreed.

“For some, coming up with a few thousand dollars for tuition and fees, plus another couple hundred for books, was making it difficult just to get here and get through the door,” she said. “This has just really opened up a new world for these students and new opportunities, which is great for the college and great for our student body because now we all have these diverse and enriching experiences coming into the classroom and on campus.

“And to see the amount of stress that just melts away from a student who was really worried about the cost — they’re thinking, ‘I know I want to come, I’m driven to do this, I want to change my life, but I’m going to have to give up groceries to pay for my books’ — it’s really encouraging,” she went on. “Now they don’t have to do that; they can concentrate on the work at hand in the classroom.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an early look at MassReconnect and the many ways it is changing the paradigm at area community colleges. Spoiler alert: you’ll read ‘it’s huge’ more than a few times.

 

Class Act

Tim Sweeney is back at Greenfield Community College, roughly two decades after he spent parts of five years there going to school — sometimes full-time but mostly part-time — in pursuit of an associate degree in liberal arts.

“I almost finished up, but was at a point in my life where I needed to support myself financially and concentrate less on school,” the 44-year-old told BusinessWest. “I never had the inspiration or motivation to go back.”

Mark Hudgik

Mark Hudgik

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in adult students applying and enrolling who had no college before, and we think that’s a direct impact of MassReconnect. We also see a fair number who are coming back after a break.”

But through MassReconnect, he found that motivation, and he’s back on campus, taking the three courses he needs to complete that degree: “Gothic Literature,” “Interpersonal Communications,” and “American History, 1985 to the Present.”

His plan is … well, to graduate and then transfer to UMass Amherst to pursue a four-year degree. Beyond that, he doesn’t know … yet.

“I don’t have a particular direction yet,” he said, adding simply, “just forward — finally.”

Moving lives and careers forward is the basic motivation behind MassReconnect, which is designed to help people like Sweeney who had to put college aside, or who never got started in the first place, for any of several reasons, but often the cost of tuition — or even the cost of a semester or year’s worth of books.

For others, it is the apprehension of taking on debt, especially at a time in their lives when they have many other responsibilities — housing, children, and more — that keep them from taking an important step that might help them trade a job for a career.

But MassReconnect is about more than helping individuals and families cope with the cost of a community-college education, Cook said. It’s also about putting more individuals in a position where they can relieve some of the stern challenges facing employers in every sector of the economy when it comes to finding qualified talent.

And for community colleges, the program comes at a time when they are facing stern enrollment challenges that began before COVID and were exacerbated by the pandemic, to the point where, as Cook said, the schools had essentially reached bottom and “there was no place to go but up.”

It’s only been a few weeks since the start of the fall semester and the introduction of MassReconnect, but already there are signs that it is making an impact, though it will certainly take longer, at least a few years, before its influence on the workforce crisis is known.

For individuals of various ages and in various life situations, MassReconnect represents a chance to continue in school, or go back to the classroom, but without the financial burden. As DeJardins noted, the reduced stress is palpable, and is enabling individuals to focus all — or at least more — of their energy on what’s happening in the classroom.

That’s certainly the case for Destiny Santos, another student at STCC, now in her third semester, who has designs on being a nurse.

Solymar Fraticelli, left, and her mother, Nicole Rodriguez

Solymar Fraticelli, left, and her mother, Nicole Rodriguez, are both attending HCC, while Fraticelli’s daughter is attending daycare there.

“What MassReconnect has done for me is allow me to go into this semester without the financial burden,” she explained. “And now that I’m 26, I have more things to care of; this program has allowed me to go to school knowing that everything will be OK, and I’ll be able to succeed without the burden of paying a school bill.”

Similar tones were struck by Nicole Rodriguez, 43, a second-year student at HCC who wants to advance within the human-services field, and her daughter, Solymar Fraticelli, 27, who returned to the school this fall after a lengthy hiatus.

Without MassReconnect, Rodriguez said, she would be facing a bill of more than $7,000 for tuition, fees, books, and more. And the thought of taking on debt to cover that bill is intimidating.

“That’s a lot for me, and it would likely limit me as I look to further my education,” she told BusinessWest, adding that MassReconnect has enabled her to continue without the burden of debt and, in so doing, helped inspire her daughter and other adults — her sister-in-law and best friend among them — to return to school or get started.

It’s been nearly eight years since Fraticelli first took classes at HCC — she attended for roughly a semester and a half before having to put her education aside — and she now has a daughter as well. The time gap and her parental responsibilities were just two of the factors to weigh as she considered the risks and rewards of attending community college and pursue a career in the healthcare field.

MassReconnect made it that much easier to meet those challenges head-on.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to go back to school,” she said, adding that her daughter attends daycare around the corner from the campus. “It’s free, or almost free, and that makes it that much easier to go back.”

For Sweeney, who has been unemployed for more than a year now, going back to school seemed like a more fruitful course than trying to test the current job market.

“I wanted to advance myself educationally in order to advance myself in my career,” he said, adding that being able to do so without having to pay for those three courses listed above certainly factored into his decision.

 

Degrees of Change

Meanwhile, the college administrators we spoke with said MassReconnect is at least partially responsible for a surge in enrollment they’re seeing this fall.

Cook said current enrollment at STCC has risen to 4,500, up from 4,000 a year ago. That number is still a long way from the 5,000 recorded in the fall of 2019, the last September before COVID, and a long, long way from the high-water mark of 7,000 notched in 2012, just a few years after the Great Recession.

But it is an important step in the right direction.

“For the first time in a decade, we’ve had a meaningful increase in enrollment,” he told BusinessWest. “We’re up 13% to 14%, and there are a number of factors involved with that, including MassReconnect.”

Desjardins agreed. She said the overall student headcount is up by 8.6% over last fall, a significant boost for GCC, one of the smallest community colleges in the state.

At HCC, enrollment had declined close to 30% during COVID, Hudgik said, adding that this fall, the school has seen its first increase year-over-year since 2010, with a 5.5% increase in total students and a 14% climb in new students, numbers that can be attributed at least in part to MassReconnect.

Beyond these soaring enrollment numbers, though, college administrators are buoyed by the stories behind the numbers — individuals who are returning to community colleges, or finding them for the first time years, and in some cases decades, after they graduated from high school.

And they’re attending school without having to borrow money, which removes a financial burden that weighs on individuals while they’re working toward a degree or certificate program.

Desjardins noted that the amount of grant aid Massachusetts residents is receiving has increased by 32% at GCC over last year, which represents more than $243,000. Meanwhile, the amount borrowed has dropped by 35%, or $123,000.

“Applications for federal financial aid have gone up by 16%,” she noted. “It could be for various reasons, but with all the attention that MassReconnect is getting — and the word is spreading — it’s safe to assume that MassReconnect is a good generator of that increase in financial-aid application.”

Like others, she is encouraged by the manner in which the program has enabled many who were not eligible for financial aid because they exceeded wage limitations to now attend community college without the burden of paying for it directly or taking out loans to be paid back over several years.

“The thing that’s most remarkable to me, in my position, is how low- to middle-income wage earners who have been left out of receiving free dollars for college, like grants and scholarship dollars, are now eligible to get this money to attend college,” Desjardins said. “If you were someone who was 25, single, with no children, and you made a little over $30,000 … before MassReconnect, you may have been eligible for just a few hundred dollars for the entire school year; now, you’re eligible for enough free money to pay for your tuition and fees, plus give you something toward the cost of books and course materials. That’s huge. Someone who is a low- to middle-wage earner is struggling already to pay their rent, their mortgage, childcare, groceries, gas, and more.”

Hudgik agreed. “Loans are scary,” he said. “MassReconnect allows them to not have to worry about the income threshold; they know the Commonwealth will support them and minimize the amount of loan they have to take out, and bring it to zero if they want.”

And while community college is essentially free for these individuals, the administrators we spoke with said this hasn’t diminished the value of the education their schools provide or lessened the degree of grit and determination behind the decisions to go back to school or attend for the first time.

“What we know to be true about our adult students is that, when they make the decision to come, it is usually with a lot of thought behind it,” Hudgik said. “It’s a fairly big risk for someone who has been out of school for a while to try to restart their school-going mentality. If they’ve decided to come, they’ve usually been pretty serious about it.”

 

Bottom Line

When asked what it was like to be back on the GCC campus 20 years after he last attended a class there, Sweeney said it was strange on some levels, and there was a period of adjustment, but, overall, he’s comfortable — with both his decision and with being back at school.

“I feel like I’m a different person than I was,” he said, adding that he realizes the importance of a college degree to advancing himself professionally, and just needed some motivation to take this big step.

This is what MassReconnect is all about, and while it will take some time to effectively quantify its impact on many different levels, at the moment, to those surveying the scene, it is a qualified success.

STCC’s Architecture and Building Technology Program Turns 10

By
Professors Warren Hall and Jennifer DeForge
Education

Strong Foundation

Professors Warren Hall and Jennifer DeForge

Professors Warren Hall and Jennifer DeForge of the Architecture and Building Technology program at STCC.

Warren Hall calls April 23, 2013 — the day the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education approved architecture and building technology as a two-year associate-degree program at Springfield Technical Community College — “a great day.”

“We were approved after a seven-year process,” said Hall, a professor in the program at STCC. “Creating programs is something I love to do. I like to figure it out and find out how to get people through the door.”

As of commencement this past May, the degree program boasts more than 200 graduates who hail from the Greater Springfield region and beyond. Students enroll in the program — the only one of its kind in Western Mass. — to acquire skills that prepare them for careers in architectural design and construction-related fields. Some students can start their careers after graduating from STCC, while many transfer to four-year colleges and universities.

STCC has agreements with UMass Amherst and other state colleges and universities that provide for a smooth transition into a bachelor’s degree program.

The program drew interest from Nathalia Hermida, who was living in Colombia in 2013 and considering colleges in the U.S.

“I always wanted to go for architecture,” she said. “I started looking for universities with my mom. She found out about a program at UMass Amherst, but the cost was too high for us, especially coming from Colombia. So, lucky for us, we found out that STCC had a program that would transfer into UMass’s architecture program. We looked into that. As a community college, it seemed like a really good program and was more affordable for us, so we decided to go with it.”

She earned her degree from STCC in 2016 before transferring to UMass and earning a bachelor’s degree in sustainable community development. Today, Hermida works at Uncommon Architectural Places, founded by Alfonso Nardi, an adjunct professor in the STCC architecture program.

“I’m lucky enough to share my design and building experience with them and watch them move onto some incredible positions in the building industry and continuing their education in architecture and building technology.”

In addition to professors Nardi and Hall, the program’s faculty includes Jennifer DeForge, now the program coordinator, who graduated from STCC in 2009 with an associate degree in civil engineering technology and is working on her second master’s degree.

“Working in the architecture and building technology program has been one of the best career decisions I could have made,” DeForge said. “Every day, I work with our students and fellow colleagues, who are some of the most driven individuals I have met, and I’m lucky enough to share my design and building experience with them and watch them move onto some incredible positions in the building industry and continuing their education in architecture and building technology.”

Hermida plans to pursue her architecture license and a master’s degree. STCC provided a solid foundation for her continuing education, she said. “I was really impressed about how complete the program was. They packed a lot into two years.”

The program has drawn other international students. Obed Otabil and Asra Afzaal both graduated in 2018. Otabil hails from Ghana, while Afzaal grew up in Pakistan.

Otabil attended UMass to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He is taking time off to raise a child, but hopes to work at an architectural firm and own his own firm one day.

“All the training I received from Springfield Tech was very helpful,” Otabil said. “Having the basic knowledge about architecture actually helped me sail through the undergrad program pretty smoothly.”

Afzaal left Pakistan to pursue educational opportunities in the U.S. She entered the U.S. educational system as an 11th-grader in high school and then found the STCC architecture and building technology program. Like Otabil, Afzaal went to UMass and received her bachelor’s degree in building and construction technology. In March 2023, she moved to Texas to work for an architecture, planning, and design firm as the space planner and project planner.

“STCC was the base, the foundation. And then on top of it, I laid the layers,” she said. “My basics were so strong that I was able to build on it and learn more and more. And I am so grateful that I was in the architecture program at STCC.”

Michael Caine, a 2016 graduate of the architecture and building technology program, later earned his master of architecture professional degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from UMass Amherst.

Today, he lives in Philadelphia and works as a lead conceptual designer for an architectural firm that focuses on multi-family residential projects. He describes his conceptual work as “the dream job of architecture.”

Caine enrolled at STCC in part because the college is the most affordable in Springfield. He didn’t know what he would major in when he started, but later discovered the architecture and building technology program was a good fit.

“It is really unique to have an architecture department at a community college,” he said. “Having the exposure to architecture at such an early stage in an academic career of higher ed is really beneficial. It allows that barrier of entry to really be demolished.

“It was really beneficial for me to get the exposure and the breadth of knowledge to be career-ready at such an early stage. For me, that was really beneficial. After my first semester at STCC, I was able to win an internship, and from there, just learning both the technical side at school, but also the practical side during work while going to school, was the one-two punch.”

Caine said he is proud to call himself a graduate of STCC’s 10-year-old architecture and building technology program, and he recommends it to anyone interested in a career in building construction or design.

“It’s a super-unique program,” he said. “The way that professors Warren Hall, Jennifer DeForge, and Al Nardi have shaped it over the years is really something special. When I transferred to UMass, I had all these skills they weren’t even teaching over there until later down the road.”

 

Even Without Race-based Admissions, Colleges Aim to Cultivate Diversity

By
Harry Dumay
Education Special Coverage

Embracing Differences

Harry Dumay

Harry Dumay says some race-conscious policies have benefited both colleges and students over the years, even if Elms College doesn’t employ them.

Harry Dumay said he was disappointed, though perhaps not surprised, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race-based criteria in college admissions on June 29.

At the same time, he said the ruling wouldn’t change anything at Elms College, where he serves as president.

“We do not use race-conscious policies in admissions,” he explained. “The way we go about having a diverse student body — and we are very satisfied that our student body has been increasingly diverse — is by projecting the idea that we are a campus where everyone is accepted, everyone is embraced, and everyone belongs.”

Elms recruits heavily from Greater Springfield and the broader Western Mass. region, as well as Connecticut, areas that are already demographically diverse, he noted. “We attract those students by creating an atmosphere on campus where every student feels this is the place where they’re valued and where they belong, so all students can benefit from the additional educational advantages of being in a diverse campus environment.”

“We sought legal counsel on whether we should be changing our practices, and also whether this would hamper us in achieving our mission of having a diverse student population, and it doesn’t.”

When the SCOTUS ruling came down, Dumay added, “we sought legal counsel on whether we should be changing our practices, and also whether this would hamper us in achieving our mission of having a diverse student population, and it doesn’t. We will continue to have a campus where all people, faculty, students, and staff feel that they belong, and feel the diversity that they bring is embraced.”

His sentiments were reflected across the region by college and university leaders who felt the court’s ruling was creating barriers to opportunity — affirmative action began in the 1960s as a tool to prevent discrimination at selective institutions, and has been used as an admissions tool ever since — but stressed that their own policies would continue to promote a diverse student body in lawful ways.

“While we have been anticipating and preparing for this outcome for some time, the court’s decision dismantling affirmative action in college admissions marks a historic and challenging moment for all of higher education, including institutions such as ours that are deeply invested in inclusive education,” said Kumble Subbaswamy, outgoing chancellor at UMass Amherst. However, “while the court may require us to change our methods, it cannot change our mission.”

Kumble Subbaswamy

Kumble Subbaswamy

“While the court may require us to change our methods, it cannot change our mission.”

Noting that university leaders will work closely with the UMass Office of General Counsel to ensure the admission process continues to reflect those values while operating within the boundaries of the law, he also cited the campus mission statement, which reads, “we draw from and support diverse experiences and perspectives as an essential strength of this learning community and accept for ourselves and instill in our students an ongoing commitment to create a better, more just world.”

To achieve this end, Subbaswamy explained, the admissions process has, for the past decade, employed a holistic approach that considers the entirety of an applicant’s life experiences. “Holistic admissions, which does not use race as a determinative factor, has served us well. Since 2011, the percentage of students of color in the incoming class has grown from 21% to 37%.”

Dumay, like most college presidents in Western Mass., was among more than 100 leaders from higher education, advocacy organizations, and the Massachusetts Legislature who signed a letter on June 29, the day of the SCOTUS decision, criticizing it.

“Massachusetts will always be welcoming and inclusive of students of color and students historically underrepresented in higher education. Today’s Supreme Court decision overturns decades of settled law. In the Commonwealth, our values and our commitment to progress and continued representation in education remain unshakable,” it reads. “We will continue to break down barriers to higher education so that all students see themselves represented in both our public and private campus communities. Massachusetts, the home of the first public school and first university, will lead the way in championing access, equity, and inclusion in education.”

Kerry Cole

Kerry Cole

“This doesn’t actually change our fundamental admission structure. But there are changes I think the industry can make to stop putting up additional barriers for certain populations of students.”

Even if the ruling doesn’t change practices at Elms, Dumay told BusinessWest, he is concerned about the broader higher-education sector.

“Studies have demonstrated the value of diversity,” he noted. “Studies have demonstrated that, without some race-conscious policies, elite institutions are not succeeding at recruiting a diverse student body. In the broader higher-education sector in general, one has to be concerned about the Supreme Court decision, but at Elms, we’ll continue to fulfill our mission to make sure that we have a very diverse and inclusive campus.”

American International College President Hubert Benitez released a statement following the ruling that struck a similar balance between concern over the ruling and a conviction that AIC doesn’t need affirmative action to be diverse.

“The Supreme Court’s decision will have minimal impact on AIC, as the college has always operated based on core values that prioritize access, opportunity, and diversity,” he noted. “Given our student demographic, diversity naturally thrives at AIC, and we must continue to serve this diverse population.”

 

Evolving Legacy

Kerry Cole, AIC’s director of Admissions, reiterated to BusinessWest that the college’s process will not change. “We have a holistic admissions process. We naturally have diversity within the student body, and we’re very fortunate, and we embrace that. So this doesn’t actually change our fundamental admission structure. But there are changes I think the industry can make to stop putting up additional barriers for certain populations of students.”

One of those, she said, is for colleges to start moving away from legacy admissions, which historically have not benefited minorities. Another is to recruit in all geographic areas, including low-income areas, because successful students can be found in all types of communities. “We heavily recruit in Hampden County, followed by Hartford County, and those are areas that are extremely diverse.”

Hubert Benitez

Hubert Benitez

“Given our student demographic, diversity naturally thrives at AIC, and we must continue to serve this diverse population.”

Over the past decade, Subbaswamy noted, UMass Amherst has significantly broadened its recruitment efforts across every demographic. “Since 2012, our Admissions team has recruited and received applications from underrepresented students from 66 additional high schools in Massachusetts alone. We have also partnered with more community-based organizations to help us recruit and enroll a more diverse class, including lower-income and first-generation students. We will also continue to work with our partners in the state and federal government to develop funding for pipeline programs and advocate for financial-aid investments.”

UMass and other institutions are doing this because of a shared belief that a diverse campus creates a sense of inclusion and belonging, which in turn promotes a healthy environment for everyone.

“We will continue to implement data-driven initiatives and procedures to ensure students of all backgrounds experience a strong sense of belonging and inclusion in our community,” Subbaswamy said. “We want every prospective student, no matter their background, to see their values reflected across the institution and recognize UMass as a place where they will thrive.”

Even absent the SCOTUS ruling, he added, “our commitment to upholding our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion would drive us to deepen our investments in recruiting and welcoming students from diverse backgrounds.”

Dumay agreed, arguing that a diverse student body reaches into the community, creating a more robust Western Mass., and the Supreme Court’s ruling only strengthens Elms’s resolve to enhance representation of all kinds.

He conceded that the ruling mainly impacts colleges that admit only a small percentage of their applicants. At Elms, which admits all students who have demonstrated they can do the work and succeed there, diversity efforts are a matter of attracting more applicants, as opposed to making tough decisions to admit or reject equally qualified students. “If you can do the coursework, regardless of race, you are admitted. We do not use any race-conscious policies in our admissions.”

However, he emphasized that the court’s ruling narrowly focused on the use of race in admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina; it did not reject the importance of campus diversity itself, only certain means to achieve it.

“That is a great comfort to us because diversity is part of the Elms College mission statement,” Dumay went on. “The statement says that Elms serves a diverse student body in a nurturing educational environment. That is part and parcel of our mission: to foster an atmosphere that is diverse.”

Benitez added that AIC’s mission is to educate next generation of a diverse regional workforce, making a diverse campus an issue of economic development.

“What do we want in a student body? What do we want our classes to look like?” Cole added, noting that AIC recently launched a guaranteed-admissions initiative to qualified students, designed to ensure a fair and transparent admissions process for students who meet eligibility requirements.

As opposed to race-based admissions practices, AIC assures that all prospective freshmen applying to AIC will be admitted, provided they fulfill certain academic requirements. “We bring more transparency to the process,” she noted. “We at AIC don’t have the same challenges as some institutions, but it’s really important for us to show transparency.”

 

New Ways Forward

Late last month, the U.S. Department of Education drew more than 100 academics, government officials, and administrators to a National Summit on Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, where discussions touched not only on the post-affirmative-action landscape, but whether there should be change in the practices of legacy admissions and preferences for family members of donors.

According to the New York Times, attendees discussed the importance of developing and expanding tools to achieve diversity beyond race-based admissions, including recruiting through academic-enrichment programs for talented low-income students; improving financial aid; initiating direct admissions, or automatically admitting students who have met certain threshold requirements, as AIC has done; bringing disadvantaged students to campus to generate interest; and making it easier for community-college students to transfer to four-year colleges.

“We’re very committed to access, opportunity, and diversity as the foundation of the institution — it’s who we are,” Cole said. “We’re always making strategic decisions as an institution to make sure we’re able to maintain that, and to support all students moving forward.”

After all, people learn more amid different perspectives than in a homogenized environment, she said, and that goes for more than just students.

“I’ve been at AIC since January 2014. I learn things from the student body every year, even every day. It’s really important for folks to learn from each other and have a diverse campus like AIC,” she told BusinessWest. “We’re constantly learning, using different lenses when we looking at problems and issues. There’s a huge benefit to diversity on campus.”

Zelda Harris Chosen to Lead WNE School of Law

By
Zelda Harris
Education

Courting an Opportunity

Zelda Harris

Zelda Harris sees WNE Law as a natural progression in her career and mission.

Zelda Harris says she was already aware that Western New England University (WNE) was looking for a dean for its law school — a search firm had reached out to her.

But when a former student and mentee, who is working as associate dean of Law Student Affairs at WNE School of Law and was on the search committee to find the next dean, reminded her that the job was open and that she should look into the position, she took even more interest.

And her interest was already piqued because she already knew quite a bit about WNE and its law school — and saw the dean’s position as a unique opportunity, one that would eventually prompt her to leave the Windy City and the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she has taken on a number of positions, including interim dean, a post she held for a year until July 2022, and her current role as director of the Dan K. Webb Center for Advocacy.

Specifically, it’s an opportunity to work for a school that has “a great mission” that aligns with her work, specifically in the broad and important realm of experiential learning.

“Most of my experience, as a litigator, a practitioner, and an educator, have been in that space, making sure that students are prepared for practice by ensuring that they have quality experiential courses within the law school,” she explained.

Elaborating, she said that, while at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law, she “ran a law firm within the law school,” one that was dedicated largely to domestic violence but that also took on a number of other issues ranging from child-welfare matters to immigration to criminal defense.

“Western New England has a laser focus on experiential learning opportunities that are carried out through the clinics that are internal to the law, but also the amount of community engagement.”

“That’s experience that employers don’t necessarily want to pay the students for on the job,” she explained. “So if you can get them trained up on how to litigate or understand the professional dynamics of practice … that is what a modern law school not only should strive to do, but is required to do under our accreditation standards.”

Some schools do it better than others, and Western New England has developed a strong reputation in that realm, especially through the creation in 2019 of the WNE School of Law Center for Social Justice, which, through pro bono initiatives, assists marginalized, underserved, BIPOC, low-income, women, LGBTQ+, and immigrant communities.

Harris said she intends to continue and build upon a strong track record of excellence when it comes to the center’s efforts to strengthen collaborative efforts between the law school and the local region to work toward a more just, equitable, and inclusive society.

Harris, who is slated to start at WNE later this summer, although she is onboarding now and meeting with the law school’s leadership team on a weekly basis, takes the helm at a time when enrollment at law schools nationwide is at a crossroads of sorts.

There was a period of decline roughly a decade ago, but then a bump that coincided with the pandemic and the wave of social unrest that swept the country, she said, noting that many “felt that going to law school was a way to address issues of systemic inequity that was brought to the forefront.”

By most accounts, that bump is over, she said, adding that there are question marks concerning where the numbers will go in the months and years to come.

Meanwhile, there is evidence of growing need among those in many different sectors for the skills that law-school education can provide, she said, adding that there are master’s degree programs at many law schools that meet that need and have become increasingly popular, and she would like to bring them to WNE (more on that later).

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Harris about this opportunity she’s seized and how she intends to build on the already-solid foundation at WNE Law.

 

Case in Point

Harris, a graduate of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis who began her practice as an attorney at the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation in Alton, Ill., brings more than 30 years in law-school education and administration to her new role at Western New England.

She started at the Northwestern University Law School in 1992, where she was a senior lecturer, staff attorney, and adjunct faculty member. Later, at the University of Arizona and its James E. Rogers School of Law, she served as a clinical professor of Law and director of the Domestic Violence Law Clinic, a multi-disciplinary clinical program. She also co-directed the Child and Family Law Clinic.

“The number of people who are interested in law school, nationwide, are down in comparison to those pandemic years. But if you compare them to 2019, they’re level, and we’re even a few points ahead when it comes to interest at Western New England.”

At Loyola University Chicago School of Law, she has held numerous positions, but is perhaps most noted for her work overseeing all aspects of the Center for Advocacy, including work in collaboration with others to develop programs and curriculum in the areas of trial and appellate advocacy and alternative dispute resolution, while also overseeing curriculum development in both the JD certificate and LLM programs in advocacy.

She served as associate dean of Academic Affairs from 2018 to 2021 and, as noted earlier, served for a year as interim dean, overseeing all aspects of operation for the law school, which at the time had more than 1,200 students (undergraduate and graduate); 150 full-time faculty, staff, and administrators; and a $54 million operating budget.

The position at WNE represents an opportunity to come home, in some respects, said Harris, noting that both she and her husband are from Massachusetts (Newton and Cambridge, respectively) and were married in Williamstown. Beyond that, it’s an opportunity to take her career, and her ongoing work in experiential learning, in an intriguing new direction.

“Western New England has a laser focus on experiential learning opportunities that are carried out through the clinics that are internal to the law, but also the amount of community engagement — sending the law students out into the legal community, mostly in Springfield, to practice under the supervision of other practicing attorneys — and there’s an academic component as well, so the students are receiving academic credits.

“But they’re also providing a key service to the community because, as in all communities, there’s high demand and unmet legal needs among people who are unable to afford legal representation in the private market,” she went on, adding that it will be her goal and mission to continue and build on these initiatives.

Returning to the subject of enrollment, Harris said things have certainly “settled” since the sharp declines witnessed a decade or so ago, a phenomenon that, coupled with the retirement of many Baby Boomer lawyers, created severe challenges for firms looking to hire, challenges that persist today on many levels.

There was that surge that accompanied the pandemic, she noted, but recent data shows numbers returning to where they were in those years before COVID arrived.

“The number of people who are interested in law school, nationwide, are down in comparison to those pandemic years,” she noted. “But if you compare them to 2019, they’re level, and we’re even a few points ahead when it comes to interest at Western New England.”

As for who is going to law school these days, she said most are coming right from an undergraduate institution, although some are finding their way there after a few — or, in some cases, more than a few — years of work in various fields.

That’s the case at Western New England, she said, which has a robust part-time program that is attractive to working professionals that tend to be somewhat older than the mean for incoming law-school students — the mid-20s.

Meanwhile, there is, as noted earlier, growing interest in the skillsets provided by a law-school education, she said, adding that such training, through those master’s degree programs, is contributing to the professional development of those in many fields, while also opening doors career-wise.

“Take, for example, someone in the healthcare insurance industry — a field that’s adjacent to the law, if you will, but that person wouldn’t need a full law degree,” Harris noted. “Another example would be a social worker, such as those involved in the criminal-justice system; they don’t need to be a lawyer, but they do need to have legal knowledge in order to move up the ladder in their career or just be better practitioners for their clients.

“Those types of master’s degrees are not currently part of the programs at Western New England, but it’s something that I would like to explore,” she went on. “We’ve had great success with them here at Loyola; in fact, we offer them in an online format to make them more accessible to the working professional.”

 

Bottom Line

Creating such programs will require planning and resources, Harris said, adding that this will be one of many priorities she will address upon arriving later this summer.

Overall, she intends to do a needs assessment for the region, determine how the region’s only law school might address those needs, and then create a new business plan moving forward.

Her broad intention is to build on an already impressive record of success and set the bar — that’s an industry term — even higher.

George Timmons Set to Take the Helm at HCC

By
Education Special Coverage

A Calling to Serve

George Timmons

George Timmons

George Timmons recalled a conversation he had a with a friend — a college president and mentor — several years back. He had a simple question for him.

“I asked him, ‘doc, how to you know when you’re ready?” he recalled, meaning, in this case, ready to become a college president himself.

The answer wasn’t quite what he expected.

“He said, ‘George, you’ll know when you know you’re ready,’” he said. “And I used to say, ‘what do you mean?’”

Timmons said he would eventually come to understand what his friend meant — that there would come a time, after years of preparation, earning needed degrees, and working in different jobs that would provide learning experiences and the ability to hone leadership skills … when he would know that he was ready.

He said he reached that time a few years ago and soon began to at least consider jobs that carried that designation. But — and this is a big but — he stressed that he wasn’t chasing a title.

“When I looked at the student profile, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my roots, my humble beginnings, and where I came from; I’m a first-generation college graduate.”

“It was really about chasing the right opportunity that allowed me to demonstrate the skills and talents that I have that aligned with the needs of the organization and where I thought I could really add value,” he said. “For me, it’s really important that I’m at an institution where I can bring value and that I connect with, and be able to take it to a new level of excellence.”

And that’s what he saw when Holyoke Community College (HCC) began its search for someone to succeed Christina Royal last fall.

Specifically, it was the presidential profile, and especially its student profile, one that showcased a diverse population featuring a large percentage of first-generation college students, that caught his attention.

“When I looked at the student profile, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my roots, my humble beginnings, and where I came from; I’m a first-generation college graduate,” he told BusinessWest. “Also, with 48% students of color … that was very attractive to me, and would allow me to add value, particularly with an emphasis on equity and student success. I saw myself in that student profile.”

Fast-forward several months — we’ll go back and fill in all the details later — and Simmons is winding down his work at provost and senior vice president of Academic and Student Affairs at Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson, N.Y., getting ready to start at HCC the middle of next month.

Upon arriving, he intends to embark on what he called a “soft launch of a listening tour,” one that will involve several constituencies, including students, faculty, staff, area elected officials, and members of the business community.

George Timmons says it’s important to hear from all constituencies

George Timmons says it’s important to hear from all constituencies — from students, faculty, and staff to local officials and business people — early in his tenure.

“I think it’s important to hear from the stakeholders who are present, as well as getting into the community, meeting members of the business community and key stakeholders, to hear what they have to say and understand their views on the college and where they see areas of opportunity. I think it’s important that I immerse myself in the community to understand and learn where there are challenges and opportunities, get to know people, and build relationships.”

Elaborating, Simmons said that, overall, he wants to build on all that Royal has been able to accomplish at HCC — everything from bold strides on diversity, equity, and inclusion to a food pantry and a student emergency fund — while putting his own stamp on the oldest community college in the state, one that recently celebrated its 75th anniversary.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Timmons about his new assignment, what brought him to the HCC campus, and what he hopes to achieve when he gets there.

 

Course of Action

Timmons told BusinessWest that, during one of his visits to the HCC campus for interviews, he was given a 90-minute driving tour of the city by perhaps the best-qualified person in the region to give one.

That would be Jeff Hayden, vice president of Business & Community Services at HCC and former director of Planning & Economic Development for the city.

“He’s a great tour guide,” Timmons said. “He’s a history guy, and I love history and people who like history — and there is a lot of it in Holyoke.”

The tour of the city pretty much confirmed what Timmons said he already knew — that this was a community, and a college, that he wanted to be part of, one that would provide that opportunity that he spoke of, and not merely a title.

His journey to the Paper City has been an intriguing one, and it began not far from here.

“She made me understand that, when you want to achieve a goal, it really doesn’t matter what others say or if other people will support you. Only one person gets to decide whether you will achieve that goal — and that’s you.”

Indeed, Timmons said he grew up in the Hartford area, and was essentially raised by his grandmother, who instilled in him a number of values, including the importance of education.
“She made me understand that, when you want to achieve a goal, it really doesn’t matter what others say or if other people will support you,” he recalled. “Only one person gets to decide whether you will achieve that goal — and that’s you.

“I made a commitment to myself at a very early age that no one was going to outwork me when it came to me achieving my goals,” he went on. “Those values shaped who I am today.”

Timmons has spent more than 25 years working in higher education in several different realms, from academic support services to online education; from working with adult learners to roles in both academic affairs and student affairs.

“I have a really broad breadth and depth in higher education that allows me to have a comprehensive view of a college,” he noted, adding that he believes his diverse résumé will serve him well as he takes the proverbial corner office at HCC, becoming just its fifth president in 75 years.

Timmons, who earned a bachelor’s degree in financial management at Norfolk State University in Virginia, a master’s degree in higher education at Old Dominion University in Virginia, and his Ph.D. in higher education administration at Bowling Green University in Ohio, started his career in academia in 1996 at Old Dominion as a site director at a satellite campus as part of a groundbreaking program called TELETECHNET. It provided the opportunity for students to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at remote locations through the use of satellites and televisions with two-way video connections, a precursor of sorts of the remote-learning programs that would dominate higher education during the pandemic.

Later, he served as assistant dean of Adult Learning at North Carolina Wesleyan College before being recruited to be the founding dean of Online Education and Learning Services at Excelsior College in New York.

He served in that role for several years before becoming provost for Online Education, Learning, and Academic Services, and also serving later as dean of the School of Liberal Arts.

During that time in his career, he was able to take part in a number of professional-development opportunities, including the Harvard MLE program, as well as the American Council of Education Fellowship Program and the Aspen Rising Presidential Fellowship, which is focused on preparing community-college presidents.

“I’ve really had the opportunity to learn and hone my skills,” he explained. “I think it’s important that you learn your craft — it’s a journey; you continue to work to get better and strive to be better. There’s always room for improvement, and so it’s really important that you stay current and abreast of the trends in higher education to be effective.”

After his lengthy tenue at Excelsior, he became vice president of Academic and Student Affairs at Columbia-Greene Community College, a role that carried many responsibilities, including student affairs, athletics, events planning, partnership development, and more.

It was at some point during his tenure at Columbia-Greene that he reached that point his friend and mentor alluded to: when he knew he was ready to become a college president. But as he mentioned earlier, it’s one thing to be ready, but finding the right opportunity is something else altogether.

“I’m very selective — I’m not chasing a title,” he told BusinessWest. “I say this humbly, but I could have been a president a few years ago if I was just chasing a title. It was really important for me to align myself with an institution that I could have longevity with, and I believe Holyoke Community College allows me the opportunity to plant roots in Western Mass. and work with the board of trustees, the faculty, students, staff, and administrators to carry out its mission.”

 

Grade Expectations

Which brings him back to that that profile of HCC and how it resonated with him, personally and professionally.

“I actually felt a call to serve — that’s when I knew. I felt I was ready based on what they were looking for and my background; I felt like that profile was calling me.”

And after several rounds of interviews, those conducting the search for a new president would ultimately decide to call him — literally.

And as he winds down at Columbia-Greene, he is looking ahead to July and using his time before the fall semester starts to learn more about the school, the city, the region, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

There are plenty of both, but especially opportunities, he told BusinessWest, adding that, in this time of skyrocketing costs in higher education and ever-greater emphasis on value, community colleges are an attractive alternative — as a place to start, and often as a place to finish.

“Community colleges are, to me, a great pathway to a better life,” he said. “And when you consider that almost half of all students who are in higher education are enrolled in a community college, I don’t think that’s by accident, because there’s fair criticism about the cost of higher education and how prohibitive it is for some members of community to go to college. The community-college mission of access is one that I cannot underscore enough.

“Community college is a great way to get a quality, affordable education to advance one’s social mobility, and with minimal debt,” he went on. “It gives people a great foundation that prepares them to transition to a four-year institution or to go into the workforce and earn a livable, sustainable wage. That’s why community colleges are near and dear to my heart; thay are an important pathway to the middle class.”

Getting back to that aforementioned listening tour, Timmons said listening is a huge part of what could be called his management style. Other parts include transparency, being collaborative, fostering excellence, and more.

“As a contemporary leader in higher education, you should have a broad and comprehensive leadership style grounded in transformational, collaborative, and servant leadership,” he explained. “And by that, I mean encouraging people, inspiring them, knowing how to listen, building community, leveraging mutual respect for one another … these are all vital aspects of the leadership needed to advance an institution’s success.”

Elaborating, he stressed the importance of knowing how to transform “in a way that is acceptable, but that also challenges the culture to stretch and grow.

“And to do that, you have to be able to listen, respect your colleagues, understand why things were done the way they were, and, without judgment, maybe ask the question, ‘how can we be better?’” he went on. “As people, we can always be better, and as institutions, we can always be better. So what does that look like?

“You also have to stay current with what’s happening in our space,” he continued. “You have to continually ask, ‘are we remaining competitive, and are we meeting the needs of our students and the community?’”

When asked how someone masters that art of listening, he said simply, and with a laugh, “the key is not to talk.”

Instead, “you listen by seeking input and asking questions and giving people a platform to at least share their opinions, their thoughts, and their expertise,” he went on. “One of things I want to do coming in is listen to key stakeholders and say, ‘historically, what have you liked most about the institution, where do you see areas of opportunity, and if you could make a change, what would it be?’ And then you start to look at themes, see what themes emerge, and use that to guide your next steps.”

There will be a number of next steps for Timmons, who at first didn’t really grasp that he would know when he was ready to be a college president.

Eventually he would understand what his mentor was saying, and he did know when was ready — not for a job or a title, but for a real opportunity to make a difference.

And that’s what he intends to do at HCC.

Proposals for ‘Free’ Community College May Have Broad Impact

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GCC campus, as a whole, is innovative and entrepreneurial
Education

A Potential Game Changer

John Cook says that, while the cost of a community-college education (roughly $7,000 per year) isn’t high, at least when compared with that of a four-year institution, public or private, it can be, and often is, a barrier that some cannot overcome, even with financial aid.

And for others, it’s enough of an obstacle for them to think twice about college — or not at all.

“Like anything in our lives, we can’t just separate this cost or isolate it from all the other considerations for a human being; it’s one more thing, one more cost in the lives of so many … this is why we see students drop out, or say ‘now is not the time,’” said Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). “Any way to get a whole lot of people, frankly, to take this second look is a good thing.”

With that, Cook added his voice to many others who are praising Gov. Maura Healey’s inclusion in the budget of something she calls MassReconnect, which would fund free community-college certificates and degrees to the Commonwealth’s residents who are age 25 and older and have not yet earned a college degree.

“This is a group of adults, many of whom have college credits, that we really want to encourage to come and take another look at college.”

John Cook

John Cook

According to some statistics released by the state, roughly 2 million residents would be eligible for the program — individuals who have a high-school diploma but not a college degree — and perhaps 700,000 of these individuals already have some college credits.

MassReconnect, which is actually one of two ‘free’ community-college programs that have been proposed (Senate President Karen Spilka has proposed free community college for all students), would provide both incentive and the means for many people to return to college and get the degree or certificate that might open a door to not just a job, but a career, said Christina Royal, president of Holyoke Community College (HCC).

“This is a potential game changer,” she told BusinessWest, adding that MassReconnect targets what she called the “emerging space of adult learners,” individuals who want a college education, but are held back by competing demands on their life, including family and work.

“The governor’s MassReconnect proposal is a great starting point that increases access for adult learners who don’t already have a college credential,” she went on. “It’s designed to help them finish that stretch so they can get a college credential.”

Michelle Schutt, president of Greenfield Community College, concurred. She said GCC ran some numbers and determined that nearly 200 of the roughly 1,400 students currently enrolled would qualify for the program. “That’s not insignificant,” she said, adding that many more in the community who are not enrolled who might be inspired to connect, or ‘reconnect,’ as the case may be.

“I’m incredibly excited about this,” she added. “Reconnecting with those people who have some college but no degree and letting them know that there’s a new opportunity here has great potential for the community colleges and GCC specifically.”

Rick Sullivan, president and CEO of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, agreed.

Using similar language, he said MassReconnect could have broad and powerful impact over time, providing benefits for the region, its employers, and both community colleges and the four-year institutions for which they are feeders.

“Reconnecting with those people who have some college but no degree and letting them know that there’s a new opportunity here has great potential for the community colleges and GCC specifically.”

michelle Schutt

Michelle Schutt

Based on initiatives in Michigan and Tennessee, the MassReconnect proposal actually goes further than those programs by covering more than just tuition; it also covers mandatory fees, books, and various support services. It is designed to remove barriers to getting the college degree that is needed to succeed in most jobs today, and it holds significant promise to just that, said those we spoke with.

Cook told BusinessWest that the average age of a student at STCC is 26, a statistic that might surprise some, but certainly helps explain the thinking behind MassReconnect and its potential impact.

“This idea is right in our wheelhouse,” he noted. “This is a group of adults, many of whom have college credits, that we really want to encourage to come and take another look at college.”

Indeed, he went on, for many individuals over age 25, there are now many competing forces when it comes to the weekly budget, and for a good number of them, higher education is something that doesn’t make the cut. MassReconnect, as he noted earlier, provides people an opportunity to rethink college education.

“There are many students who might just have the perception that they are priced out,” he said. “And when we give them a chance to look at this, they might realize, ‘OK, that business degree is not out or my reach,’ or ‘maybe a manufacturing program isn’t going to be too big a lift for me.’”

 

Ripple Effects

Royal concurred, and noted that MassReconnect will bring more attention to the state’s community colleges — and the careers that individuals can access with two years (or less) of college education.

“Massachusetts, as a state, needs to move beyond the notion that everything requires a bachelor’s degree,” she told BusinessWest. “There are many jobs where an associate degree would either elevate their wages or help them gain a footing toward a career change or a particular job.”

Cook agreed, and said he considers MassReconnect to be an investment in the state’s community colleges and a huge opportunity to introduce more individuals to the value of the education provided by these schools and their ability to help open doors.

“At this price point, and with our class sizes, you won’t find a better deal,” he told BusinessWest.

“Massachusetts, as a state, needs to move beyond the notion that everything requires a bachelor’s degree.”

Christina Royal

Christina Royal

Schutt noted that these arguments and others have been born out in other states where the notion of free community college has become reality, especially Michigan, which adopted a model on which MassReconnect is based and has had it in place for three years now. She said that state has measured its success in many ways.

“From the number of people who came to the college to the number earning better wages, and more, this model has proven successful,” she said. “Those schools recognize that these are students they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

As he assesses MassReconnect and the broad concept of free community college, Sullivan said there will be a broad trickle-down resulting from making these schools more accessible.

For starters, the community colleges themselves will benefit, he said, noting they have been hit hard by sharp declines in enrollment over the past decade, a trend only exacerbated by the pandemic.

Cook qualified this decline by pointing out that STCC’s enrollment — just over 3,600 — is down a full 50% from the school’s peak in 2012 of roughly 7,000, numbers that reflect everything from smaller high-school graduating classes to a still-robust economy featuring low unemployment — the conditions that don’t spur enrollment at community colleges.

But enrollent has become a challenge at most all public and private institutions, Sullivan noted, adding that, over time, this concept of free community college could provide a boost for the large and important ‘Eds’ component of the region’s economy.

“Western Mass. is really lucky … obviously, we have four community colleges [STCC, HCC, Greenfield Community College, and Berkshire Community College] that are well-respected and do a great job,” he said. “But they are also feeders into our four-year colleges and universities, and we’re fortunate that we’ve got such a high-end cohort of four-year and community colleges in this region, and it is an important part of our economy.

“Most all of these schools are looking to bring in more students to be able to grow,” he went on. “So it shouldn’t be lost on people that, in many cases, the community colleges are the start of the training and retraining of that workforce.”

Elaborating, he said that while the higher-ed sector will benefit from free community college, the broader impact will be on the region’s employers, which have been struggling with workforce issues, to one degree or another, for the past several years.

“Workforce is the issue that every single employer is facing right now, and it’s probably the biggest barrier to growth; it doesn’t matter what sector you’re in,” Sullivan said. “This opportunity to bring it back — or, to use the governor’s phrase, ‘reconnect’ — is a good one for our region.”

Cook agreed, and noted that while sectors — and college programs — may not be greatly impacted by MassReconnect (many healthcare programs, such as nursing, already boast strong enrollment), there are others that will, because the assistance from the state might act to remove a barrier to exploring certain fields.

He mentioned manufacturing as one of them, noting that, while this sector features well-paying jobs and attractive opportunities, it still manages to elude the attention of many job seekers.

“I would love for us to continue to demystify manufacturing, to see people realize it’s very much a high-tech, high-end, laboratory type of setting for so many of the professionals working in this field,” he said, adding that MassReconnect, if it becomes reality (and it has the support of many in the State House), could help achieve that.

 

Bottom Line

Overall, and combining MassReconnect with the elimination of COVID vaccine requirements and proposed fee-stabilization initiatives, Cook can envision a lift in enrollment for this fall’s semester — perhaps a 2%, 3%, or 4% gain, this on top of a 4% improvement registered this spring.

Just how big a lift remains to be seen, obviously, but any improvement would be a step in the right direction, he said, and hopefully the first of many such steps.

Discovery High Students Gain an ‘Identity’ Through Early College

By
Izabella Martinez
Cover Story Education

Taking Themselves More Seriously

Izabella Martinez

Izabella Martinez

At first, Izabella Martinez said, she was somewhat intimidated by the prospect of taking college courses when she was only a freshman in high school.

But then, when she got into it, that apprehension soon melted away and was replaced by a host of emotions and feelings, but mostly pride in accomplishment in taking, and doing well in, courses such as Introduction to Computer Technology, English 101, Art, Philosophy, Public Speaking, and what she considers her favorite thus far — College Writing.

“The teacher gave us a lot of freedom to write about what we felt passionate about,” said Martinez, a student at Discovery Early College High School in Springfield, a unique learning center that opened its doors in 2021. “I was able to improve my writing skills while also having creative freedom.”

Martinez believes she’ll have at least 24 college credits by the end of her sophomore year at Discovery. But she’ll have much more than that. She’ll have a higher level of confidence and perhaps something even more important — higher aspirations when it comes to her career and what’s doable, and the wherewithal to get to where she wants to go.

“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path to a living wage. The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing college, in the way we wanted.”

And this, is a nutshell, is what Discovery High School (DHS), part of the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP) — an independently governed nonprofit established in 2015 as a collaboration between Springfield Public Schools, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Springfield Education Assoc. — is all about.

It uses what’s called a ‘wall-to-wall’ model to build viable future career pathways for students by enabling them to take college classes while in high school — and perhaps even earn an associate degree by the time they graduate — without having to pay for the college courses.

As he talked about the school, why it was created, and its overall mission, Matt Brunell, co-executive director of the SEZP, said the inspiration came in the form of statistics showing that, while Springfield’s high-school graduation rates were improving, the number of students going to college, and succeeding there, were not growing.

Matt Brunell

Matt Brunell says Discovery High School was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of graduation.

“One thing that we continued to struggle with was the number of people attending college and who were on a path to a living wage,” he explained. “The usual marker for success is graduation, and we were ringing that bell. But we weren’t seeing students entering into high-paying positions right after college, or who were pursuing college, in the way we wanted.”

“Three years ago, we took a hard look at industry and labor trends in the area, and we looked at which businesses were going to be growing over the course of the next several years,” he went on. “And we thought differently about a high-school model that would project and send students on that path to a living wage.”

Elaborating, he noted that DHS was designed to propel students to achieve a living wage within four years of high-school graduation. It does this by providing academic pathways that focus on high-demand careers in technology, computer science, engineering, and teaching.

But mostly it does this by inspiring students to “take themselves seriously.”

There are quotation marks around those words because all those we spoke with at DHS used them early and often.

“What she’s developed is an identity around college, and it’s really sticky.”

Especially Declan O’Connor, executive principal of Discovery, who referenced one student who will have amassed 24 college credits by the end of her sophomore year.

“What she’s developed is an identity around college, and it’s really sticky,” he told BusinessWest. “Kids are just starting to understand that this is real, and they’re looking toward their future, and they’re taking themselves seriously.”

Farrika Turner, assistant principal at Discovery, agreed.

“We’re really excited to see our Black and Brown students not be afraid of college, for their families not to be afraid of college and whether it will be attainable for them, to see parents become interested in returning to college and maybe take some of the classes that their children are taking,” she said. “And to have students see themselves as a college student, not as a high-school student that’s taking a course or two here and there that doesn’t add up to anything — they’re working toward the degree they’re interested in after high school.”

Farrika Turner

Farrika Turner says students at Discovery High are taking themselves, and their prospects for future employment, more seriously.

It will be another two years before DHS graduates a class of students. And it will be several years before those involved can compile real data on the outcome of students. But those we talked with said the early-college model is demonstrating promising results in many settings. Meanwhile, they say it is not too early to say it is succeeding at Discovery — at least when it comes to the very unofficial mission of getting students to take themselves more seriously.

 

Course of Action

As he led BusinessWest on a tour of DHS, O’Connor stopped in one classroom where students were learning how to create a circuit and, ultimately, a very small-scale solar panel, and in another, an Introduction to Digital Media class was ongoing where students were getting their pictures taken and compiling information to create their ‘digital brand.’

As inspiration, they were using a brand created by Ruth Carter, the costume designer from Springfield who has won two Oscars for her work on the Black Panther film franchise.

These are not college courses, he explained, but they are solid examples of how students at the school learn by doing, work together, and gain resolve by creating solutions and solving problems.

And this is what Brunell and others had in mind when they conceptualized this relatively new kind of high school.

“We’re really excited to see our Black and Brown students not be afraid of college, for their families not to be afraid of college and whether it will be attainable for them, to see parents become interested in returning to college and maybe take some of the classes that their children are taking.”

“We wanted to create a very small high school where kids were known, where they were cared for and loved during their time here, and where they could get really personalized attention and see themselves in careers that have been under-represented by Black and Brown folks in this community,” he said.

“Discovery High School is our attempt to take a really critical look at the STEM industries and to get students on a stronger pathway to those jobs,” he went on, adding that the Empowerment Zone board ultimately authorized the school in the spring of 2021, and it opened its doors that fall.

The school has open enrollment and is open to all students, said O’Connor, adding that there is no selection process. Overall, the school boasts a diverse population and draws from across the city. These students represent all levels of academic achievement as well.

“The child who chooses us … they know we are and what we’re about,” he explained. “They choose us mostly because they’re invested in our STEM pathways; they like to game, they like computers, they’re interested in engineering — or at least they think they are — and a lot of our students are those who traditionally didn’t do well in school, but have a big curiosity about technology.”

Now boasting 120 students, with plans to expand to 90 students per grade, DHS, as noted earlier, operates under the Early College model, which, as that name suggests, introduces students to college classes while they are high school. This not only gives them a solid head start when they get to college, said Declan, but it gives them that confidence and pride in accomplishment that Martinez spoke of.

Declan O’Connor

Declan O’Connor, principal of Discovery High School, says students there “gain an identity” by taking college classes.

O’Connor said every student at the school can take college classes, and most of them do, with DHS working in partnership with Holyoke Community College, Springfield Technical Community College, Worcester State University, and Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester. Classes take place at Discovery, online, and on the Quinsigamond campus.

As they take them, they are provided with plenty of support, he noted, adding this is an essential ingredient in this success formula, because they are real college classes, something he needed to be assured about himself.

“When I first started this and as I was learning about early college, I asked, ‘are these real college classes, or are they watered-down college classes that are a version for high-school kids?’” he recalled. “And Worcester State sternly said, ‘these are the same college classes.’ So the expectations didn’t change, but what had to be put in place was just a lot of supports for students.”

And what he’s learned over the past 20 months or so is that the students can handle these classes, academically; it’s the other aspects of that challenge, as they are for actual college students, that prove to be the bigger hurdle.

“These students didn’t have trouble doing the work,” he explained. “The challenge was more just ‘teenager stuff’ — following through, doing your homework, and submitting your assignments. Some of the students will say some of the classes they will take in the colleges are easier than 10th-grade English class.

“It’s really cool to see the shift from when they entered high school — to go from being scared and wondering, ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ to start future-planning and talking about their future in ways that make sense, and the feeling ‘I’m going to make some good money.’”

“A lot of it was just executive functioning,” he went on. “But when it came to the actual content of the classes, they were just fine because what we know about all of our kids is that, cognitively, they all have the capacity to learn.”

 

Learning Experiences

The learning at DHS has a stated purpose, said all those we spoke with — to put students on a path to not just a high-school diploma, but that living wage Brunell spoke of.

And this goes back to that notion of the students taking themselves seriously, an undertaking that comes with that confidence gained from taking those college classes, thus making students more ready not only for their actual college experience, but what can come after it.

“Early college for these students is an identity thing,” he explained. “They develop an identity around going to college, and there’s a lot of demystifying of going to college that happens along the way — they no longer have to wonder what college is like. Maybe they’re the first generation in their family to go to college, and in their freshman year, they can break down that psychological barrier of going to college.”

This ability to establish such an identity is one of the ways the faculty and administrators at Discovery are measuring success, more than two full years before anyone is handed a diploma or earns enrollment at a college or university.

Students at Discovery High

Students at Discovery High participate in a project to create a circuit, one of many examples of hands-on learning at the school.

“When the Empowerment Zone surveyed the schools in the entire country that were getting the strongest results for kids, the most predictive quality of the schools that were propelling kids to earn a living wage was whether or not kids were taking college classes in high school,” Brunell said. “It is far more predictive of college matriculation, of college success, of college achievement, of getting the diploma. If they can, during their high school years, actually spend the time in college-level classes and see themselves as being able to take those classes … this is the biggest element for us.”

Brunell said the state recently started compiling data on the salaries earned by the graduates of specific high schools. Looking out five years or so, he projects this data will show that DHS students are faring better than those in high school with more traditional models.

“We see this as the benchmark for whether or not the school is a success,” he said. “When we look at the average number of college credits earned by freshman and sophomores at Discovery High School, we’re incredibly enthused — this is a leading indicator that the school is on the right track.”

Elaborating, he said there will be several ‘winners’ to emerge from the creation of DHS and schools like it, starting with the students, who can earn up to 60 college credits and, as noted, perhaps even a degree in high school, without having to go into debt (those costs are absorbed by the school’s general-fund budget or philanthropy from groups such as the Barr Foundation and New Schools Venture Fund, as well as, locally, the Davis Foundation).

Other winners are the participating colleges, who gain enrollment, revenue, and, in some cases, future students, as well as area employers, especially those in technology-related fields, who are struggling, as other sectors are, to attract and retain qualified talent.

Another indicator of early success at DHS is the level of confidence exuded by students like Izabella Martinez, said Turner, noting that she and others can see this confidence build and reflect itself in how students see themselves and talk about the future.

“It’s really cool to see the shift from when they entered high school — to go from being scared and wondering, ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ to start future-planning and talking about their future in ways that make sense, and the feeling ‘I’m going to make some good money.’

“We see students come in and say, ‘I just want to graduate from high school, get a job, and help my family,’” she went on. “Now they’re understanding that they don’t have get a job at Geek Squad at Best Buy — ‘I can be a programmer; I can use my skills to go in the military and work in cybersecurity.’ It’s really cool to see that change, that mind shift.”

That’s what happens when young people start to take themselves, and their futures, more seriously.

Amid Enrollment Challenges, Colleges Stress Culture, Support

By
Hubert Benitez
Education

It’s Not Simply Academic

Hubert Benitez

Hubert Benitez says AIC strives to create a sense of belonging for students.

With high-school graduation numbers down in the U.S. and college enrollments following suit, Hubert Benitez says higher-education institutions must take a multi-pronged approach to enrollment management and their “overarching value proposition.”

“The academic portfolio of all our institutions across the region are very strong. So the students have options: wherever they will go, they will receive a sound education,” said Benitez, who began his tenure as president of American International College (AIC) last spring. “So, having said that, what truly differentiates one college from another?”

To answer that question, he pointed to a report called “AIC Reimagined 2022-2027,” which considers how to rethink strategies in six different pillars, including academics; student life, engagement, and support; fiscal growth; internal and external community engagement and development; diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and athletics.

Take the first pillar, academics. “We realized, post-pandemic, that we have to reimagine our academic enterprise and what the collegiate experience is all about,” Benitez told BusinessWest. “We have to rethink how we offer education. Students learn differently, and they want to attend college in a different way. We have a lot of non-traditional students coming back to education, people who, post-pandemic, want to retool themselves for a career change — adult learners, students who have family commitments. If we are to address their needs, we really have to rethink how we offer our academic portfolio.”

Colleges and universities everywhere are having similar conversations about how to attract, and then shepherd to graduation, a smaller pool of potential college students than in past decades, due largely to changing demographics.

“The return-on-investment case has been made over and over again. The economics have been quite clear for a long time: people with a college degree earn over a million dollars more over their lifetime than those who don’t have one.”

According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges fell by 1.1% in fall 2022 compared to 2021, a pace of decline that’s nearly returned to pre-pandemic rates. In between was a year, 2020, when enrollment dropped 3.4%, followed by 2.1% in 2021. The net effect of those years is an enrollment total that’s down close to 7% from 2019.

“The trend for higher-education enrollment had been on the decline, but this was certainly exacerbated by the pandemic years,” Elms College President Harry Dumay said. “But things are coming somewhat back to normal these days for us.”

That’s reflected in some healthy numbers for Elms’ various segments, including first-time freshmen, traditional transfer students, and especially graduate students; the only segment that has seen some erosion is transfers from community colleges, which were hit hard by the pandemic.

A stabilization of enrollment makes sense, despite the high cost of college, Dumay said. “The return-on-investment case has been made over and over again. The economics have been quite clear for a long time: people with a college degree earn over a million dollars more over their lifetime than those who don’t have one.”

What Elms and many other schools are now doing is providing more flexibility for adult and non-traditional students, such as stackable, short-term certificates that ease the way to gainful employment and accumulate toward a degree down the line.

However, he noted, beyond the economics, what shouldn’t be undervalued is the formative aspect of college, especially for the shrinking 18-22 age demographic. “Whether you go full-time or part-time, whether residential or commuter, there is something that happens in those years — forming character, learning to think critically — which affects the value.”

Benitez said culture is a key element of AIC’s message to prospective students and their parents.

“One differentiator is how we create a sense of belonging for the students. It’s very important to today’s students,” he explained. “When they arrive on campus, they need to feel like they belong. I truly believe AIC provides that value to any student from any background because we have intentionally created an environment where every single student feels like they belong.”

Once enrolled, he added, “we follow the student along their educational journey, providing support services at every single stage of their academic journey.”

“If any students are struggling for any reason that would keep them from persisting and staying enrolled at college, we have a whole team dedicated to helping them work through that.”

Darcey Kemp

Darcey Kemp

In fact, that’s a key element of one of the six pillars, and it’s important, especially for first-generation college students, to have the peace of mind offered by such supports.

“For a parent who did not have the opportunity to attend college, leaving his or her child in an environment where they don’t know if they’re going to feel right has to be daunting,” Benitez said. “We try to approach parents and students alike, making them understand that’s important to us. I hope they are relieved when they come here and feel the caring environment.”

 

Support System

Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), whose enrollment figures are up slightly from last spring, is also heavily focused on culture and student support, said Darcey Kemp, vice president of Student Affairs.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach,” she added. “Our students are individuals, with individual experiences.”

The support starts early, with outreach to high-school students to help them with applications, placement testing, financial aid, choosing class schedules, and more. “We come to you,” Kemp said, noting that STCC also invites guidance counselors to campus so they can gather information to bring back to their schools.

Aware of the impact the pandemic had on men of color, who dropped out disproportionately during that period, STCC also created the Male Initiative for Leadership and Education (MILE), a program that provides inclusive academic support, mentoring, and community-engagement opportunities to male students, particularly Black and Latino students. Participants connect with professionals who serve as mentors throughout the student’s time at the college, helping them stay on track to reach their degree goals.

That can be a challenge at many institutions. The Education Data Initiative reports that first-time undergraduate freshmen have a 12-month dropout rate of 24%. Among first-time students in bachelor’s-degree programs, almost 26% do not earn their degree; among all undergraduate students, around 40% drop out.

The economic impact can be significant; the same report notes that college dropouts make an average of 33% less income than those who hold bachelor’s degrees, and college dropouts are almost 20% more likely to be unemployed than any degree holder.

That’s why student advisors at STCC work closely with students to make sure they’re taking the classes they need to achieve their degree goals, and why the college regularly looks back five semesters and reaches out to anyone who has paused their education and not returned during those two and a half years, to talk about what supports they might need to continue, and what steps to take to re-enroll.

“We need, in higher education in general, to invest time and energy into resources that help students reach their personal and academic goals,” Kemp said. “It’s an individualized conversation for each student.”

Dumay said 44% of Elms students are Pell-eligible, meaning they come from low-income families, so it’s important that they succeed. “You don’t want to come to Elms and not graduate, whether with debt or without debt, because of the investment of time. It’s really important we help our students graduate.”

With a student graduation rate and a first-year retention rate higher than the national average, that effort has paid off, he added. “There are a variety of things we put in place to ensure we help students be successful, including a physical Center for Student Access, but also supports like coaching.”

Benitez said 50% of AIC’s student body is Pell-eligible, and many are the first in their family to attend college. “We have a number of programs for first-generation college students that include very basic things like time management, how do you learn, how do you study, how to you financially plan? This is often new to them, so helping them navigate their college experience is very important to us.”

STCC’s Center for Access Services helps students tackle issues such as homelessness and food insecurity that could hinder their ability to get an education and climb the economic ladder.

“If any students are struggling for any reason that would keep them from persisting and staying enrolled at college, we have a whole team dedicated to helping them work through that,” said Kemp, adding that the STCC website also has a ‘chat now’ feature for student questions on anything from admissions to financial aid to understanding the Blackboard learning-management system. “It’s another way to demonstrate to students that we will engage with them in any way they want to engage with us.”

 

Rolling with the Changes

In short, Kemp said, “it’s important that we continue to share with students that there are opportunities to manage all the things they have going on. If a working parent wants to go to college, they can; they don’t have to choose between taking care of the family and obtaining a degree.”

That proposition is easier now, she added, with the program flexibility — in person, hybrid, or fully online — that emerged during the pandemic.

Benitez believes academic institutions today need to serve as engines for workforce development, and in AIC’s case, the impact is local, as most of its students hail from the region, and many stay and work here after graduation.

“We ask our business partners, what do you need in a graduate? What is the skillset, the competency set? And how are we going to revise and reimagine our academic offerings so it’s responsive to the workforce needs of this region?”

Because young people today plan to change jobs many times, one role of colleges is to teach them to be lifetime learners, he added, so they can easily adapt to their changing environment; in some cases, they’re training for jobs that don’t even exist yet. “We should prepare the groundwork for them to learn as they grow,” Benitez said.

Dumay told BusinessWest that the past few years have been a difficult time for all colleges, one in which they’ve had to be prudent financially. But he believes those efforts to tighten up and adapt are worth it.

“We’re providing a tremendous service to the general public — not just Elms, but all colleges like us — by helping the citizenry, both young people and not so young, get a foot on the economic ladder. That benefits all of us,” he said.

“If higher education struggles, the entire economy struggles,” he went on. “We are certainly staying strong, and the help that has been provided by the federal and state government helped a lot of colleges remain strong. But it is still a challenging time for higher education, and we want to remain healthy and strong so we can serve our students.”

To do that, Benitez said, requires a willingness to do things differently — in other words, to reimagine a college education. He believes the alternative, stagnation, is unsustainable.

“Academic institutions must be able to adapt to the current times, to meet the student where they are,” he said. “That’s critically important in these times.”

Outgoing HCC President Makes Strides on Everything from Food Insecurity to … Pickleball

By
HCC President Christina Royal
Education Special Coverage

Looking Back — and Ahead

HCC President Christina Royal

HCC President Christina Royal

 

Christina Royal wanted to make one thing clear.

Her decision to step down as president of Holyoke Community College (HCC) later this year has nothing whatsoever to do the Great Resignation.

“The Great Resignation, to me, reflected people who were in various stages of unhappiness with their respective roles and looking for a change,” said Royal, the school’s fourth president, who arrived on campus in 2016. “I love this college, and I love my position.”

Elaborating, she said her decision is about finding the space to decide what she wants to do next, and at this point in time, she really doesn’t know what that might be, other than some travel (destinations still to be determined), planning her wedding, and what she calls “voluntary unemployment” until at least the start of 2024.

In a wide-ranging interview during which she looked back as well as ahead, Royal talked at length about the past three years, especially, and what it has been like, personally and professionally, to lead an institution like HCC through the pandemic. She said it was a tremendous, and exhausting, learning experience, one in which she and members of her team had to reach down and find the determination and imagination to see the college and its students, staff, and faculty through an unprecedented crisis, during which the school was mostly closed to the public for more than a year.

Indeed, while talking about the length of her tenure at HCC — which will be close to seven years by the time she steps down this summer — Royal jokingly asked if there is a “multiplier” for the COVID era, a roughly two-and-a-half-year stretch that probably seemed like it was exponentially longer.

She likened that period to another one in the school’s long history, a devastating fire that destroyed its one building in 1968. Royal told BusinessWest that she has read and heard a lot about those days, and she believes they were in many ways similar to what the college and its leadership endured starting that day in March 2020 when the governor shut down the state.

“The Great Resignation, to me, reflected people who were in various stages of unhappiness with their respective roles and looking for a change. I love this college, and I love my position.”

“I never thought that in my lifetime and during my tenure there would be another moment to rival that one, but the global pandemic did,” she said. “And being in a leadership capacity during such uncertain times, you tap all of the skills that you’ve developed over a lifetime to be able to learn and lead in such times.”

While efforts to lead the school through the pandemic have in many ways dominated her tenure, she said there have been many important accomplishments, especially in the broad realms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as addressing student basic needs, ranging from food to housing to childcare.

With the former, she said the school has made significant strides, and on many different levels.

“We have really prioritized equity at all levels within our organization, including at the board level, with a statement on anti-racism, and also with the great work of our facility and staff. We’ve invested financial resources to grow our wrap-around support services for our under-represented students, and we continue to help all of our students be successful regardless of what their starting point is, who they are, and what their background is.”

With the latter, Royal, named a Woman of Impact by BusinessWest in 2020 for her work at the school and within the community (the two often overlap), said there have been some important and innovative steps forward, and several ‘firsts.’

Christina Royal meets with students

Christina Royal meets with students at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute, which opened its doors in 2019.

These include the Homestead Market, at which HCC became the first institution of its kind in the Commonwealth to accept SNAP benefits.

“This was pretty significant — we had to get federal approval from the USDA to be able to accept SNAP benefits,” she told BusinessWest. “To be able to do that on a college campus is innovative and an example of how we listen to students and respond to what we’re hearing.

“Our students who found themselves food-insecure and receiving SNAP benefits said, in essence, ‘why can’t I use my benefits on campus?’” she went on. “And we said, ‘good question.’”

As for her own future and what the next chapter might be professionally, Royal said that is … still to be determined. And it may not be determined for a while yet. Indeed, while she has already received some invitations to look at opportunities, she is determined to take her time — and take at least the balance of 2023 off — and find the right fit.

In the meantime, she is focused on the remainder of her tenure at HCC, continuing the work that has been done there and preparing the school for a successful transition in leadership.

 

Court of Opinion

As she talked about what she and her administration have been able to accomplish over the past several years, Royal made sure she didn’t leave out pickleball.

Indeed, under her direction, and in response to the meteoric rise in popularity of the game — a combination of tennis, badminton, and ping pong — the college created several pickleball courts in the Bartley Athletic Center on campus.

“I was looking for something to burn off stress, and as a former tennis player, I really enjoyed the racket sports, and this is something that’s a little easier on my knees,” she said, adding that a former trustee of HCC turned her on to the sport. “We have seven courts here now, and the response from the community has been tremendous; people are calling and asking if we can expand the hours. I think we’ve really tapped into an outlet that people are looking for.”

Beyond pickleball, Royal can provide a long list of accomplishments and milestones that have happened during her tenure. It includes the college’s 75th-anniversary celebration in 2022— put off for one year because of the pandemic — as well as the 50th anniversary of the HCC Foundation; the opening of a new life-sciences building and the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute, located in a renovated mill in the city’s downtown; and extensive renovations to the Campus Center, which reopened just a few weeks before the pandemic forced it to go dark once again.

Beyond infrastructure and new academic programming, Royal said the biggest strides made at HCC have come in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and meeting those basic needs of students that she mentioned earlier.

As for meeting students’ basic needs, Royal said there have been many steps forward, perhaps none as significant, and symbolic, as the Homestead Market and the acceptance of SNAP benefits.

Today, other schools and other institutions are looking to follow suit, she said, and they are looking at HCC as a leader in what Royal called “hunger-free college campuses.”

“We’ve used this as an opportunity to be responsive to students, and also to be able to further our work with basic student needs,” she noted, adding that there was a prime motivating force behind the school’s perseverance in this matter: “it’s hard to educate a hungry student.”

“This has been an incredible journey … I think about how much I’ve grown in this role. I never imagined leading through such uncertain times, with a pandemic that few saw coming and for which there was no playbook.”

As noted earlier, meeting student needs goes well beyond food, said Royal, who has been at the forefront of many such efforts, from housing and internet service to an important recent addition to the portfolio: the President’s Emergency Fund, which is … well, just what it sounds like, a fund to help students in emergency situations.

They can apply quickly and easily, said Royal, and they get a response within 24 hours.

“We cut a check immediately,” she said, noting that funding for the program was set up through the school’s foundation and has grown through the support of alumni and other donors to the college, including faculty and staff. “If you’re experiencing an emergency, that means you don’t have weeks to wait for financial resources to come in. And this fund has made a huge difference.”

Overall, these various programs reflect an operating philosophy at the college that, especially in a community like Holyoke, students need more than the right mix of courses to succeed — however they might define success.

“When we started our strategic plan, we defined our basic needs as encompassing four key priorities — food insecurity, housing insecurity, housing, and childcare,” she explained. “And in the process of addressing those, we had a few others emerge over time, including mental-health support and digital literacy.

“We knew that, in order to really support students, not only through wrap-around services but particularly with other barriers to them successfully completing, we had to address these other basic needs,” she went on. “The public at large tends to think of colleges as needing to focus on academics and the curriculum in order to set up students for success, and that is certainly a key priority — we’re focused on having the academic rigor that can allow for students to transfer successfully to our four-year colleges and universities. And in doing so, we needed to set students up outside of the classroom for success, and that is helping to address the other barriers that sometimes hinder their ability to stay continuously enrolled.”

 

Forward Thinking

The decision to move on from this work and to the next stage of her career came at a time of great change and reflection in her life, said Royal, who turned 50 last summer, traveled to Bali with her partner for an extended vacation, got engaged, and, amid all that, started to think about what’s next.

“I didn’t necessarily want to leave HCC … it was more about creating space for me to expand and engage in some creative projects and simply have some space,” she noted. “This job is an intense job, and I wanted to give it its due respect. And as I turned 50, I thought, ‘here is an opportunity for the next chapter.’ But first, I wanted to have some space to figure out what that might look like. So I didn’t want to rush into something; if I wanted to move into another presidency or another CEO position, I could have easily done that, but I wanted to focus on HCC.

“I’ve had a lot of opportunities come my way, but it felt too soon to commit myself to something else because I wanted to take a break,” she went on. “And that’s very important to me; I’ve been running hard for a number of years.”

Indeed, she has, with the pandemic years, especially, testing her in ways she could not have imagined. And they have left her reflecting on how those years have changed education, the world, and, yes, what she wants to do next.

“I’m a very intentional and reflective leader, so I make this shift with a great deal of intention around creating space for reflecting on this extremely unique and significant period in our lifetime — at least in my lifetime,” she said. “This has been an incredible journey … I think about how much I’ve grown in this role. I never imagined leading through such uncertain times, with a pandemic that few saw coming and for which there was no playbook.”

With that, Royal returned to 1968 and that fire that forever changed the college, and drew some direct comparisons to how the two disasters, more than 50 years apart, forced leaders to challenge themselves — and others — to find answers to complex problems.

Indeed, there were large amounts of learning and leading over the past three years or so, she went on, regarding everything from teaching from a distance — and supporting students at a distance — to simply reopening the college when the conditions allowed.

“It made me a better leader, and it certainly took a lot out of me,” she said of that period, adding that such experiences help explain why a large number of college presidents have moved on from their jobs in recent months, and more have announced intentions to do so.

For Royal, the pandemic provided large doses of perspective on what she could do next — and should do next.

“I feel excited for the next chapter, I feel excited about the possibilities, and perhaps something the pandemic did for me was invite me to expand those possibilities in my imagination of what can come next,” she said. “It was one of the most palatable reminders of just how short life is, and that in the blink of an eye, we’re dealing with an international crisis and health threats that were unprecedented in my lifetime.

“All that had a significant impact in shifting my perspective on what I want to do with the second half of my life,” she went on, adding that she won’t get around to figuring that out for a while.

After all, she still has a college to lead.

Westfield State to Host Virtual Information Session for Accounting Graduate Program

By
Business Management Daily News Education News

WESTFIELD — Westfield State University will host a virtual information session for the master of science in accounting (MSA) program on Wednesday, Jan., 25 at 6 p.m. via Zoom.

The graduate program is designed to foster leadership skills and prepare students for successful careers in public and private accounting. It allows students to complete the additional 30 credit hours necessary to fulfill the educational requirements for the , (CPA) license in Massachusetts and several other states.

The program offers a foundation curriculum for students who have an undergraduate business degree but lack the necessary coursework in accounting to complete a series of prerequisite courses as part of the master’s program. The advanced curriculum is for students with an undergraduate major or concentration in accounting. It is comprised of 10 courses (the majority are offered in a hybrid format, and certain courses are 100% online) that can be completed in only two semesters. The MSA program offers students flexibility and affordability to achieve a greater degree of sophistication in accounting.

Information-session attendees will have an opportunity to speak with faculty and members of the outreach team about the program and its application process. The $50 application fee will be waived for all attendees. To RSVP, visit www.gobacknow.com. For more information, call (413) 572-8461 or email [email protected].

HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute Marks Five Years at New Location

By
Warren Leigh, co-chair of the HCC Culinary Arts program.
Education Special Coverage

What’s Cooking?

 

Warren Leigh, co-chair of the HCC Culinary Arts program.

Warren Leigh, co-chair of the HCC Culinary Arts program.

 

Restaurant work is not easy.

Maureen Hindle knows that, having graduated from Holyoke Community College’s (HCC) Culinary Arts program in 2013 and working as a sous chef before returning to work in the HCC program about seven years ago as a lab technician.

“It’s a challenging industry, but it’s all passion-based, and I think that’s a huge thing,” she said. “Our students come here because they have a passion for cooking, and they want to grow that, and this is a good place to do that. And we wouldn’t continue to work in the industry in some capacity if we didn’t love it as well.”

By ‘we,’ she meant the team at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute, which occupies the first two floors of the Cubit building in downtown Holyoke. The $7.5 million, 20,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility opened in January 2018, so it will soon mark five years of growth and innovation, which included weathering the pandemic.

Chef and Professor Warren Leigh, who co-chairs the Culinary Arts program, said he’s surprised enrollment isn’t even higher, given the opportunities available in a restaurant industry that’s crying out for workforce help.

“Our students come here because they have a passion for cooking, and they want to grow that, and this is a good place to do that. And we wouldn’t continue to work in the industry in some capacity if we didn’t love it as well.”

“They can’t find employees,” he told BusinessWest. “Nobody knows why we’re not packed to the gills; we should be turning students away, but it’s not happening. Every industry is looking for employees, and especially hospitality. Most all the restaurants are hiring for some position.”

The fall enrollment numbers were encouraging, however, and spring looks strong as well, perhaps because more students are hearing about the needs in a field where pay typically starts in the high teens per hour and can move quickly into the twenties as they move into higher responsibilities. “There is that ability to grow, so you’d think they’d be busting down the doors here.”

Degree programs at the center have been described as ‘stackable.’ Students can choose a one-year certificate program in culinary arts, and if they want to go further, they can enter the associate-degree program and essentially build on what they started.

With that associate degree, a student could transfer to, say, Johnson & Wales, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), or any college that offers a four-year program in the culinary field. But most of the time, they don’t pursue more education, because of the career opportunities already open to them.

Briana Marizan

Briana Marizan says instructors consider the unique qualities each aspiring chef brings to the program.

“Most of the time, they want to get their degree and go to work. That’s what we see,” Leigh explained. “The question is always, are you getting your money’s worth for this? Compared to other four-year schools and culinary schools, community colleges are inexpensive — a great value. And what we’re seeing is the students who have the associate’s degree tend to wind up in supervisory positions.

“The students who do the two-semester certificate and stick with it also end up moving fairly quickly, but most of the supervisors out there who are alums have associate degrees,” he went on. “That doesn’t mean if you don’t have an associate degree, you won’t get a supervisor’s job. Some of those have made it to some level of supervision, absolutely.”

At a time when career stability is important to so many, enrolling in the Culinary Arts Institute is certainly an attractive option.

 

Heating Up

The institute represents a big step forward in the realm of workforce development within the culinary-arts field, both locally and regionally, a segment of the economy that was already growing and now faces even greater pressure to retain workforce in the post-pandemic era, beset by the Great Resignation at the same time when most people have returned to their old dining-out habits.

“Every industry is looking for employees, and especially hospitality. Most all the restaurants are hiring for some position.”

There has a been a culinary-arts program, in one form or another, at HCC for about 35 years, though the program was more hospitality-related than culinary-focused years ago. It has had several homes over the years, none of them large or particularly well-equipped.

The facility at the Cubit, however, features a fully equipped demonstration kitchen; a production kitchen set up European-style, with the student chefs facing each other and communicating with each other as they work together to prepare a meal; two teaching kitchens; a bake shop; classrooms; a student lounge; and an 80-seat dining facility to host events. As a broad hospitality program, it also maintains a hotel lab with a mock front desk and bedroom.

Hindle, whose role includes food ordering, making sure classes run smoothly, supporting the students and instructors, and more, has seen the program and its physical home evolve since she graduated more than a decade ago, and she’s beyond impressed.

Chef Warren Leigh speaks with students at the start of a class.

Chef Warren Leigh speaks with students at the start of a class.

“It’s incredible. We went from one and a half kitchens to five. So that in itself is huge growth for us,” she said. “But seeing the students able to use this equipment, versus what we had when I was a student, it’s just incredibly beneficial to them because this is what they’re using in the industry. We’re not shoving six students around a range. In fact, this is better than they would see in most industry kitchens; they can learn on the best equipment possible.”

Briana Marizan is one of those current students, working toward her associate degree.

“I came here because I want to be a chef. I want to perfect my craft and then move up,” she said, adding that instructors are sensitive to the learning and work styles of each student. “Each chef brings something unique to the table, and they teach us not only what works best for them, but also what might work best for us.”

As part of its mission to support the region’s hospitality industry, the institute also regularly runs free, eight-week line-cook training and certification courses. Participants learn all the essential competencies they need to become successful line cooks: knife skills; how to prepare stocks, soups, sauces, desserts, poultry, fish, and meat; culinary math and measurements; moist- and dry-heat cooking methods; as well as workplace soft skills, such as building a résumé and presenting themselves at job interviews.

Maria Moreno Contreras, a culinary instructor who was administering a midterm test to one of those classes the day BusinessWest visited, said some participants are already in the industry and want to upgrade their skills, while others are exploring a possible new career in a high-demand field.

“With the non-credit training, many of them getting ready to get a very entry-level job, or it’s exploratory to see if they even want to go there,” Leigh said. “Their endgame is to get a job — but that’s everyone’s endgame here.”

 

Rolling Along

Five years since opening its new headquarters, HCC’s Culinary Arts program is evolving in some intriguing ways. For instance, it was awarded a $147,000 Skills Capital Grant by the state to purchase a truck that will be used as a mobile kitchen for community outreach and education.

“The mobile kitchen has nothing to do with raising income,” Leigh said, noting that it’s not going to set up on the corner and sell tacos. The main purpose is to engage the community while giving students experience in food-truck operations.

According to the award letter, HCC will use the $147,000 to purchase and outfit a mobile food lab that will support both credit and non-credit culinary-arts programs and also incorporate other areas of study, including nutrition, health, business, and entrepreneurship. HCC’s grant application notes that residents of Holyoke face a high level of food insecurity and that downtown Holyoke has been identified as a ‘food desert.’

Maureen Hindle

Maureen Hindle says the state-of-the-art facilities are a far cry from what she used as a student more than a decade ago.

“HCC will deploy the truck to bring food to neighborhoods of downtown Holyoke,” HCC wrote in its application. In addition, the college plans to connect this project to its downtown Freight Farms initiative with a focus on basic nutrition, local produce, and healthy eating.

Leigh envisions using the mobile food lab to engage community partners such as the Holyoke Boys & Girls Club and area food pantries. Students will meet with representatives from area organizations to create menus based on ingredients of their choice or what might be seasonally available.

Food trucks are one way to enter the industry more inexpensively than opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant, he added, citing the example of HCC culinary arts alumna Nicole Ortiz, who wrote a letter in support of the grant and started her own culinary career with her Crave food-truck business. She now also runs Crave restaurant on High Street in Holyoke.

Leigh also said the institute is working with Holyoke Medical Center on putting together some professional development for nurses and nutritionists, planning to package it as a non-credit course with possible grant support.

The facility also recently partnered with the Boys & Girls Club by helping lay out its new kitchen and hosting the club’s eighth-graders at the Cubit.

“We’re trying to be a community partner,” Leigh said, adding that the school started preparing Thanksgiving to-go packages — everything but the turkey for a family of four — to raise money for the President’s Student Emergency Fund at HCC, which assists thousands of students with basic needs.

The program is reaching out to the community in other ways as well, such as a plan to offer professional-development opportunities for culinary-arts teachers in several vocational and technical schools in the region. “It would clearly cost less than at Johnson & Wales or CIA,” he noted. “But maybe we can get grant funding for it.”

At the same time, Leigh and his team are trying to be more purposeful in recruitment, an ongoing effort, as he said, to get the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Center “packed to the gills.”

“We’re trying to tag-team a faculty member and an admissions person and go to those six or eight voke-tech schools, and we’ll try to do the same with the non-culinary students at the other high schools,” he said. “They might only hear about Johnson & Wales and CIA, where the price starts at $50,000 or $60,000.”

With the need for culinary talent more critical than ever before, and the cost of a community-college education within reach for most, he hopes HCC has a winning message for those young people.

As Hindle said, the work isn’t easy, but it’s a field where those with a passion can thrive.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

International Language Institute Adapts to New Realities

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Caroline Gear says the pandemic brought challenges
Education

What’s the Word?

Caroline Gear says the pandemic brought challenges

Caroline Gear says the pandemic brought challenges to ILI, but also new ways of connecting with language learners.

 

A global pandemic hit businesses and nonprofits in different ways. For the International Language Institute of Massachusetts (ILI), which relies on a steady flow of international students, the impact was especially great, as global travel slowed and those connections quickly dried up.

“We went from close to $350,000 a year in our Intensive English programs to $86,000,” said Caroline Gear, the institute’s executive director since 2015. She noted that the CARES Act and other emergency COVID relief, PPP loans, and an employee-retention tax credit helped ILI over the roughest whitewater, and international students are coming back … to an extent.

“I don’t think it’s ever going to come back to pre-pandemic times, but I like to say that we’re emerging anew,” Gear said. “I wouldn’t call it a recovery, because I don’t think we’ll ever recover to those numbers.”

The headwinds include a strong U.S. dollar making it expensive to travel to the States for study, as well as more competition from other countries with programs that teach English and other languages. “Canada opened up much quicker than us after the pandemic, so a lot of students went to the Canadian market and not to the United States. With Brexit, the U.K. lost a lot of international students, too.”

Still, Gear said, “I believe the United States academic culture and expertise and prestige is number one, but we have to make sure that we stay that way and continue to be welcoming. When you’re looking at where our students are coming from, I love the fact that we’re so diverse.”

The numbers bear that out. ILI’s Free English program alone — just one of several major programs at the institute (more on them later) — boasts 120 students from 27 different countries, ranging in age from 17 to 80. In one change from before COVID, five of the six sections are online, though the Intensive English program, because of its immersive aspect, is delivered in-house.

“We’ve all put in extra time because we all believe in this mission of promoting intercultural understanding and diverse communities through high-quality language and teacher training.”

“When the pandemic hit, we thought we would be back in a few months, but we wound up moving all of our classes online,” Gear said, adding that the Intensive English students were the first to return to face-to-face instruction, in August 2021. “Other than that, most of the classes were still meeting online. Our teachers are amazing; they went from emergency teaching to really creating an amazing curriculum online. Online teaching is another revenue stream, which is important for a nonprofit, but I really didn’t want to do it that way.”

But while much of the live instruction has returned to New South Street in Northampton, remote learning will remain part of the plan going forward, which allows ILI to reach students anywhere.

With nine full-time and 23 part-time instructors and staff at the moment, Gear said, “we’ve all put in extra time because we all believe in this mission of promoting intercultural understanding and diverse communities through high-quality language and teacher training.”

 

An Idea Takes Root

In 1984, Alexis Johnson was a language teacher without a job. But she didn’t lack for vision or passion. So she and another teacher, Janice Rogers, decided to open a language school, one that would meet the needs of myriad clientele, from local non-English speakers aiming to improve their workplace communication to student visa holders preparing for college stateside, to Americans skilled in other languages seeking training to become teachers overseas.

After decades of growth that affirmed her initial vision, Johnson stepped down from the executive director’s chair in 2015 after 31 years, handing the reins to Gear, who has been at the institute since the mid-’80s.

From left, Macey Faiella, director of English Programs; Heather Hall, office manager; Caroline Gear, executive director; and Samira Artur, instructor and program coordinator.

Perhaps the most well-known of ILI’s programs is its World Language program, which teaches a number of languages to students with a variety of goals. Some have a son or daughter marrying someone from another country. Others want to boost their communication skills on the job in an increasingly multi-cultural world. Still others want to advance on the job.

Another popular option is the Free English program, a partially grant-funded initiative that provides free classes for immigrants and refugees looking to improve their English skills for work, college, and their daily lives. English classes meet two evenings a week for a total of six hours.

On the flip side is the Intensive English program, which offers an immersive education for international students, with 21 hours of instruction weekly.

“Maybe their company sends them here, or maybe they know their ability to get a job is improved with a better English level,” Gear said. “The average intensive stay is three months; some take longer. Then they go to university or go home and get a job. Area employers will also send employees here to improve their English.”

Four scholarships — funded by Dean’s Beans; immigration law firm Curran, Berger & Kludt; an anonymous donor, and in honor of a board member’s late uncle, Richard Martin — are offered annually to move four students from the Free English program to Intensive English.

“It’s phenomenal to see what they have to say of the difference between six hours and 21 hours,” Gear said. “It takes about a year of classes in the Free English program to go from one level to another, and now they can do that in three months, so it’s really accelerated learning.”

Meanwhile, students in the University Pathways track of the Intensive English program receive individualized support to transition successfully to a university or college. Instead of cramming for exams or memorizing grammar rules, they practice a set of skills including essay writing, classroom participation, interactive presentations, small-group discussions, team collaboration, academic research, and critical analysis. By focusing less on test taking and more on academic training, they’re better positioned to succeed. 

ILI boasts partnerships with more than a dozen colleges and universities, Gear said, that offer these students conditional admission if they meet certain criteria. “They don’t have to take a standardized English test because those schools trust us and know we won’t recommend them unless they are ready to go. We’ve been in this business many years, and we know when people are ready to be successful.”

She added that, “no matter how great your English level is, academic culture in the United States is completely different from their home culture academically. We get them away from rote learning and rote test taking by working on cultural skills, active participation, written and oral production, independent self-direction, peer collaboration, and critical thinking. It’s really helpful for students because they’re so used to one way of teaching for so many years, and we don’t do it that way here.”

ILI’s Workplace Training program offers language courses for companies and employees that bring specialized language training to the workplace. Small businesses can apply to a state fund that pays for this training, Gear said, which makes sense at a time when worker recruitment and retention are such a challenge.

“We all know the situation with finding employees. So if a company finds a great employee but finds their language skills need improvement, working with the state of Massachusetts to have them pay for it is phenomenal.”

As one example, as Gear was giving a tour of ILI to BusinessWest, Office Manager Heather Hall had just gotten off the phone with Flour Bakery in Boston, which employs more than 400 people and was looking for English and Spanish training for many of its staff.

“I’m always learning from our students, and we are making a difference in so many people’s lives. It’s incredibly gratifying to be able to do this work.”

“We’ve also worked with the Holyoke public school system, where we teach the teachers Spanish and the parents English,” Gear said. “It’s not only about learning a language, it’s about learning a culture, navigating systems, and playing an integral role in making sure people feel safe to take risks and get to the next step of their career.”

The sixth — but certainly not least — major component of ILI’s programs is Teacher Training, specifically the SIT TESOL Certificate program, which becomes the graduate’s ticket to teaching language, both in the U.S. and internationally.

 

Diving In

At the heart of all these programs is a teaching style that, as noted earlier, ditches rote memorization for an immersion approach where constantly putting language into practice, student to student, trumps getting every word perfect.

There’s an element of fun to this immersion, too, Gear said. As one student told her, “we play a lot, but I’m learning a lot.”

Gear and her team are learning, too — about how to navigate a post-COVID world that offers new challenges, but new opportunities as well.

“We’ve diversified more, but we still do the same thing: we teach languages, and we train teachers,” she told BusinessWest, noting that a permanent online presence will be a positive from a revenue and growth perspective.

“It was pandemic-driven because our school runs tuition-based programs that support our partially funded Free English classes. So we need students as well as grants and incredibly generous donors to support our school,” she explained. “We wanted to do online instruction, and now we will always teach online, even as people start to come back to more face-to-face programming.”

After all, she said, “not everyone wants to have classes face to face. There are transportation issues, there are childcare issues, so it’s all about access to education. If we can continue to provide classes to folks virtually and also bring them back in here, that’s a positive.”

At the same time, those in the Teacher Training program are learning to teach online, too, a necessary skill post-COVID.

Coming up on ILI’s annual giving season, when letters of appeal are sent to potential supporters, Gear noted that “it’s not just one thing that runs this school; it’s a variety of revenue streams — tuition-based programs, generous community supporters, grant foundations that support us … and love.”

She’s also hoping for some of the ARPA money being distributed by the city of Northampton, which would be put to use upgrading the institute’s space and air flow as part of a three-phase improvement plan.

But mostly, she’s adapting — and appreciating the impact the International Language Institute has on individuals, families, businesses, and communities both locally and around the world.

“I love my job. I love who I get to work with, what we do to help people to the next step,” she said. “I’m always learning from our students, and we are making a difference in so many people’s lives. It’s incredibly gratifying to be able to do this work. It’s not been easy through the pandemic, but we’ve learned to embrace the uncertainty and look for opportunities.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Haiti Nursing Program Lets Students, Elms College Extend Their Reach

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Spearheading the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program are Elms College officials
Education Special Coverage

Learning Experiences

Spearheading the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program are Elms College officials

Spearheading the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program are Elms College officials, from left, Anne Mistivar, project faculty coordinator and cultural consultant; President Harry Dumay; Maryann Matrow, director of School of Nursing Operations; and Deanna Nunes, assistant clinical professor and associate dean of the School of Nursing.

 

Harry Dumay says the initial talks began more than four years ago.

They involved nurse educators in Haiti and leaders at Elms College, including Dumay, who is from Haiti, and they centered around how Elms, which has a strong Nursing program, might be able to partner with those in Haiti to continue the education of nurses in a broad effort to improve health outcomes in that country through nurse-faculty development.

Through a $750,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a partnership between Elms and the Episcopal University of Haiti School of Nursing (EUH) was created that brings together nurse faculty from across Haiti and uses a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach to instruct the faculty with leading-edge nursing skills.

To date, more than 47 nurses in two cohorts from all provinces of Haiti have gone through the program — there was an elaborate graduation ceremony in May for both groups — and a third cohort has begun, with a fourth and perhaps more planned, thanks to a second grant from the Kellogg Foundation for $1.1 million.

That is the short, as in very short, version of a truly compelling story.

“The Elms program was very helpful because in Haiti they don’t have this type of training for nurses. They have nurses that are in different specialties and in different roles, and they find themselves teaching, but they’ve never been taught how to teach, so this program is very important because they are learning how to be an instructor.”

The longer version involves how all this has been accomplished during a time of global pandemic and an earthquake, a severe hurricane, and extreme political upheaval and general unrest in Haiti, including the assassination of the country’s president, Jovenel Moise, more than a year ago.

In short, very little about this initiative has been easy, but those involved — here and in Haiti — have persevered because the stakes are high and need to train nurse faculty is great, said Dumay.

Elaborating, he noted that the original model for this program called for in-person learning, with educators from Elms flying to Haiti once a month to lead classes.

Those plans were eventually scrapped because of the pandemic and other factors, including safety issues, in favor of a remote-learning model that came with its own set of challenges, especially the securing of needed equipment (tablets, hotspots, and even solar chargers in case power was lost) and getting them in the hands of the students who would use it.

In May, the first two cohorts of nurse educators in the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program attended their graduation ceremony in Haiti. With the graduates in the front row are, from left, Anne Mistivar, project faculty coordinator and cultural consultant for the program; Hilda Alcindor, project co-director from the Episcopalian University School of Nursing in Haiti; Harry Dumay, president of Elms College; Joyce Hampton, associate vice president of Strategic Initiatives and dean of the School of Arts, Sciences and Professional Programs at Elms; and Bapthol Joseph, project co-manager from the Episcopalian University School of Nursing in Haiti.

And these issues were compounded by other challenges, including those aforementioned natural disasters and the general upheaval in the country. Some students had to stay at their workplaces to take part in the classes because the WiFi was better there; meanwhile, class times were shifted so that students wouldn’t be traveling after dark to take them because of the increased risk to their own safety.

But, as noted, all those involved have pushed through these challenges because of the importance of this training. Indeed, most healthcare in Haiti is provided by nurses, not doctors, so the need to train nurse educators and thereby heighten the skills of those providing care is paramount.

People like Lousemie Duvernat, a nurse who was part of the second cohort that went through the Elms program. Via Zoom and through an interpreter — Anne Mistivar, project faculty coordinator and cultural consultant for what has come to be known as the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program — Duvernat said the program, and, specifically, its ‘train-the-trainer’ approach, has made her a better nurse, not to mention a better educator.

“The Elms program was very helpful because in Haiti they don’t have this type of training for nurses,” she explained. “They have nurses that are in different specialties and in different roles, and they find themselves teaching, but they’ve never been taught how to teach, so this program is very important because they are learning how to be an instructor.

“This, in essence, has helped them to understand the students, how to deliver the message, how to present, and how to evaluate the students and make them better educators,” she went on, adding that she would like to see the program continue because they simply don’t have anything like the ‘train-the-trainer’ approach in Haiti.

Such sentiments clearly explain why this initiative was undertaken and why it has persevered through so many extreme challenges, said Deana Nunes, associate dean of the School of Nursing and assistant clinical professor at Elms and nurse educator and course faculty for the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program, adding that the results thus far have been encouraging on many levels, but especially in what she called the “thirst for learning” she has seen from the nurses from Haiti who have been involved with the program.

For this issue and its focus on healthcare education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at this inspiring program, its goals, and the many ways in which success is being measured.

 

Course of Action

Duvernat — again, through her interpreter, Mistivar, who is also from Haiti — told BusinessWest that, since she was a child, she harbored dreams of becoming a doctor. In Haiti, though, the road to that profession is long and difficult, and she eventually set her sights on becoming a nurse, a vocation that, as noted, brings even more responsibilities than it does in this country.

But, and also since childhood, she has wanted to be an educator. And these twin passions, coupled with her desire to help others, have now come together as she advances her career as a nurse educator, with the goal to one day earn a doctorate — a path that has been accelerated and helped in many ways by the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program and its heavy emphasis on those words ‘continuing education.’

This is what all those involved with the initiative had in mind, said Dumay, noting that the program was born out of need, one that he was quite familiar with, and a desire among those at the college to meet that need.

“Elms College has a great School of Nursing and a strong reputation in the area for preparing great nurses and healthcare professionals in general,” he said. “But Elms College has also had a desire, and some efforts, in reaching outside Chicopee, outside Massachusetts; some of our students have gone to Jamaica for clinical programs, and we’ve had conversations with our partners in Japan around global health initiatives.
“I’ve also had interactions and collaborations with those in higher education in Haiti, and I’ve also had interactions and collaborations with the Kellogg Foundation,” he continued, while explaining the genesis of the initiative in that country. “And I know that one of the strong desires of the Kellogg Foundation has been to support the reinforcement of human resources for health in Haiti, particularly around the support of maternal and child healthcare.”

Looking at those synergistic aspirations and competencies, it was natural to propose to the Kellogg Foundation to help Elms in efforts to reinforce nursing education in Haiti, he continued, adding that the pieces eventually fell into place for what would become the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program, for which Elms would partner with the Episcopal University of Haiti and its school of Nursing.

That was back in early 2019, said Dumay, adding that there were visits to Haiti by officials at Elms and those with the Kellogg Foundation to explore the facilities of the Episcopal University of Haiti’s School of Nursing and meet with officials there to brainstorm about how the initiative could take shape.

Eventually, continuing education for nurse educators became the focus, he went on, adding that a ‘train-the-trainer’ model was identified as the most effective course of action — figuratively but also quite literally.

“We know that a lot of the nurse educators in Haiti are at varying degrees of preparation, and we heard from our partners from the healthcare system in Haiti that the nurses that are coming out of the various schools of nursing in that country have varying degrees of preparation as well,” Dumay explained. “So helping to reinforce the capacity, the level, and the preparation of nurse educators in Haiti so that they, in turn, can teach the nurses who are on the front lines became the concept that we created.”

Lousemie Duvernat shares the stage with Elms College President Harry Dumay

Lousemie Duvernat, a graduate of the second cohort of nurse educators, shares the stage with Elms College President Harry Dumay at the recent graduation ceremonies.

With a $750,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation, plans were put in place for two cohorts of 24 faculty members from approved nursing schools across Haiti to take part in this ‘train-the-trainer’ program, he noted, adding that the original plan was for in-person classes at the Episcopal University of Haiti — specifically a “very intense” once-a month model.

Obviously, this plan had to change, because of COVID but also other factors, including the growing danger of traveling from one province to another in Haiti, said Dumay, noting that the program was halted at one point as plans were developed for an online format. This was a challenging adjustment because of the need to provide the nurse educators with needed equipment in the form of laptops and hotspots — and then actually getting this equipment into their hands, an assignment fraught with challenge on many levels, from the transportation and safety issues to the pandemic itself.

“We worked with and leveraged the network of the telephone company in Haiti, which has stores throughout the country,” he said. “We worked with them to coordinate the distribution of the technology to individuals all across Haiti; it was a logistical feat to be able to have all of the students have access to that material so they could complete the program.”

Overall, said Mistivar, the move to a remote format provided other learning opportunities.

“Not only did they learn about nursing, but also about technology,” she told BusinessWest, adding that the students were nurses representing all 10 provinces in Haiti. Some were already nurse educators, and many were working in various hospitals. Some had bachelor’s degrees, while others had a master’s.

The common denominator was that they wanted to take their education, and their ability to train others, to a higher level.

 

School of Thought

Nunes told BusinessWest that the shift to remote learning in Haiti was similar to what was happening at Elms College and other schools in this country during the pandemic. But there were many subtle, and not so subtle, nuances and adjustments that had to be made.

“Each week, on Wednesday afternoons, we met with the students via Zoom,” she explained. “We had to adjust our course time because, once darkness comes, it becomes much more dangerous. It became an example of the ways we had to work with our students to make sure we were not only providing them with a great education, but also keeping them safe.”

Overall, the nurse educators displayed great resilience, she went on, and a strong desire to learn, despite the many challenges they are facing in their daily lives, because they understood its importance to them becoming better educators and nurses — and perhaps advancing in their careers.

This resilience, desire to learn, dedication to helping others, and the knowledge and experience they already brought to the table certainly made an impression on those at Elms.

“Speaking with them, it was just fascinating to learn the way Haitian medicine and nursing care is delivered, and the amount of experience these nurses have is incredible,” Nunes told BusinessWest. “For me, as an educator, I feel I learned so much from them in addition to what they learned from us.”

As she talked about what was taught, and how, Nunes said there was prepared curriculum, obviously, but those leading the courses would often take their cues from the students, the nurse educators.

“One of the courses I taught was ‘Health Assessment,’ and in the beginning, we asked them, ‘what do you want?’ she recalled. “One of the things they identified was maternal health, but one of the things that surprised me was that they wanted to know more about how to use a stethoscope because, in Haiti, they said, the physicians do that.

“But they wanted to become more competent as nurses and develop that skill, so we were able to provide resources online, such as videos that demonstrated the sounds they’d hear and where to listen, things like that. In the development of our curriculum, we wanted to integrate knowledge in addition to keeping the focus on how to teach this knowledge.”

This same approach is being used with the third cohort of nursing educators, which just began its course work several weeks ago. This latest chapter in the story has provided more insight into the many challenges to be overcome, and more lessons in perseverance, said Maryann Matrow, director of the School of Nursing Operations at Elms and project co-manager for the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program.

She noted, for example, that some students were held up on the road as they traveled to the kickoff for the third cohort, but eventually made it there safely. She also noted some the difficulties in getting new models of laptops to the students that will be using them.

“Once we found and ordered it, things began to get more difficult in terms of travel and delivery,” she said. “As for the kickoff ceremony … to be able to get the people there was trying.”

Despite all this, the attrition rates for the first two cohorts were extremely low, only a few students, said Matrow, adding that she attributes this to everything from that thirst for knowledge that all those involved recognized to the strong support system involving those in both Haiti and Chicopee that has helped students make it to the finish line.

For Duvernat, the challenges involved in taking part in this program went beyond transportation, navigating around extreme weather, and coping with crime. She also had a baby during the course and was working full-time as well, adding up to a juggling act and very stern test that she and others have passed.

“Life in Haiti is very stressful,” she said through Mistivar. “Every day, people have to deal with that stress, which makes them resilient and able to adapt. I was motivated to continue to attend the class because it was something that was very important to me. I tried to focus on the experience because I did not want to miss the opportunity.”

 

Bottom Line

While there are many words and phrases that can be used the describe the Haiti Nursing Continuing Education Program, including all those in its title, ‘opportunity’ probably sums it up the best.

For those in Haiti, it is an opportunity to continue their education and, as Duvernat said, learn how to become better teachers. Meanwhile, for Elms College, it is a chance to extend its reach and its ability to make a difference in the lives of others, well beyond Chicopee and Western Mass.

In short, it has become a learning experience on many levels and for all those involved. It is a compelling story that hopefully has many new chapters still to be written.

Enterprise Awards More Than $14,000 to Square One


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Back to School Daily News Education Health Care

SPRINGFIELD — For the second consecutive year, The Enterprise Holdings Foundation has awarded funding to support Square One’s Campaign for Healthy Kids. This year’s gift totaled more than $14,000.

The contribution is made possible through Enterprise Holdings Foundation’s FY22 ROAD (Respect Opportunity Achievement Diversity) Forward program. This is an employee-driven initiative focusing on the improvement of social and racial equity in communities they serve.

In presenting the donation, Shawn Fleming, group Human Resources manager, said, “we are so proud to continue to support Square One in its commitment to providing opportunities for children and families in greater Springfield, for a second year. Advancing diversity, equity and inclusion is a company-wide priority for Enterprise Holdings, and we’re committed to strengthening our community with the help of outstanding organizations like Square One.”

“We were beyond excited to learn that Enterprise selected Square One to receive this very generous gift, again this year” said Kristine Allard, vice president of Development & Communication for Square One. “Our success in serving the children and families in our region is dependent upon the generosity of business and individuals who recognize the need to support our important work. We are so grateful to the Enterprise Holdings Foundation for this amazing gift.”

Last summer, Enterprise Holdings launched its inaugural local ROAD Forward grants to nearly 700 nonprofits addressing social and racial equity gaps facing youth and families in local communities.

The Campaign for Healthy Kids is a multi-year fund development initiative focused on Square One’s commitment to providing healthy meals, physical fitness, social-emotional wellbeing, and a healthy learning environment. All funds raised will directly support the children and families who rely on Square One to help meet their early learning and family support service needs. The campaign includes numerous opportunities for businesses and individuals to become involved as donors and partners.

Square One currently provides early learning services to more than 500 infants, toddlers and school-age children each day; and family support services to 1,500 families each year, as they work to overcome the significant challenges in their lives.

Michelle Schutt Takes the Helm at GCC with a Focus on Diversity, Inclusion

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Education Special Coverage

Grade Expectations

Michelle Schutt says that, while it may seem like Greenfield, Mass. is a long way from Twin Falls, Idaho (3,160 miles, to be exact), it’s really not.

At least when it comes to the issues and challenges facing the institutions that now comprise the top lines on her résumé — College of Southern Idaho (CSI), where she was vice president of Community and Learner Services, and Greenfield Community College (GCC), where she started just a few weeks ago as the school’s 11th president — and their overall missions.

“There are many similarities between these communities,” she explained. “There’s a high number of first-generation college students, people who are hungry for educational opportunities, definite need within the community … they are very much alike, which lends itself to the applicability of what I’ve done in the past and what I hope to do the future. I’m a big believer that education opens doors and changes family trees, and that we can all be educated.”

Schutt comes to GCC with a résumé that includes considerable work in the broad realms of student services and diversity, equity, and inclusion, and she said this will be one of the main focal points at GCC.

“If we’re going to recruit and retain students,” she told BusinessWest, “we’ve got to take into account their entire experience because often, it’s not the academic rigor or even the finances that keep them from succeeding; it’s the social-capital issues of how they’re maneuvering through life.

“COVID definitely exasperated the social needs of our students,” she went on. “But they were always there.”

Regarding diversity, she said this issue is often looked at through the lens of ethnic diversity — and that is certainly part of it. But there are many aspects to this matter, some more visible than others, and they must all be considered at institutions like GCC.

“If we’re going to recruit and retain students, we’ve got to take into account their entire experience because often, it’s not the academic rigor or even the finances that keep them from succeeding; it’s the social-capital issues of how they’re maneuvering through life.”

“It’s a little cliché, but this is a bit of an iceberg topic,” she explained. “There are the physical things that we notice about each other, and then there’s the 90% of the iceberg that’s below the water line; you really need to get to know someone before you can fully understand how they, too, are diverse.”

Schutt told BusinessWest that, after more than 20 years of work in higher-education administration — work that had taken her from St. Cloud, Minn. to Hanover, Ind., Laramie, Wyo., and then Idaho, she considered herself ready to be a college president, and began looking to apply for such positions.

This recognition didn’t come overnight, she said, and it was actually several years after the then-president of CSI asked her to consider that position before she considered herself truly qualified and ready to take the helm at a campus.

She said she looked at a few opportunities that presented themselves — there have been a number of retirements and shifts in leadership in higher education (as in other sectors) over the past few years — but soon focused her attention on GCC.

Schutt said the school — which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary — and its mission, the area it serves, the team in place, and the institution’s prospects for future growth and evolution all appealed to her.

Her immediate goals are to become acquainted with the school, its staff and faculty, as well as Greenfield and the broader area served by the college.

Looking longer-term, she said she wants to properly position GCC for a future where enrollment will be even more of a challenge than it is today, and where students’ ‘needs,’ a broad term to be sure, will only grow.

“Nationally, we’re heading for an enrollment cliff,” she said, adding that 2025 is the year when already-declining numbers are expected to reach a new and more ominous level. “We have to ensure that we’re offering what people need and what people are looking for; we have to take a look at what we’re doing in workforce and in community education and what we’re doing with credit-based courses, and align those with good outcomes.”

 

Course of Action

As noted, Schutt brings to GCC a résumé dominated by work in student services, with a focus on diversity and inclusion.

At the College of Southern Idaho, where she started in 2015, she held several positions, starting with associate vice president of Student Services, then vice president of that same department, and, starting just last year, vice president of Community and Learner Services.

“If they’re stressed about some sort of insecurity or some issue related to childcare or transportation, it’s really difficult to focus on calculus. That’s where student affairs and student services come in — to educate the entire student.”

She lists a number of accomplishments, including a sharp rise in enrollment for the 2020-21 school year; steady increases in Hispanic student enrollment, from 17.8% in 2015-16 to 26.3% in 2109-20; and improvement in the graduation rate from 20% in 2016 to 34% in 2020.

But she believes many of her most significant gains came in the realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Indeed, Schutt noted that, in helping CSI become a Hispanic Serving Institution (HIS), she recruited and hired bilingual staff members for each area of Student Services, spearheaded CSI’s first HIS Week, lobbied the board of trustees for gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, developed and offered a program called Parent College in both English and Spanish, established the Gay-Straight Alliance student group, and advocated for and hired the school’s first full-time veterans’ coordinator.

Prior to CSI, she served as director of Student Affairs at Penn State University’s campus in Scranton. As a member of the school’s senior administrative leadership team, she was engaged in strategic planning, policy development, and problem solving.

She said that she gravitated toward work in student services (she also teaches) because of its importance to the success of not only students but the institution in question. Summing it up, she said such work falls into the realm of student success and making sure they can get on — and stay on — a path to achieving their goals, whatever they may be.

“It’s about ensuring that their housing and food and social integration and mental health and physical health are all taken into account as it relates to their journey,” she explained, “because all of those things play a factor in their academic success.

“If they’re stressed about some sort of insecurity or some issue related to childcare or transportation, it’s really difficult to focus on calculus,” she went on. “That’s where student affairs and student services come in — to educate the entire student.”

When asked what she liked about this aspect of higher education, she said there are many rewards that come with it, especially those derived from helping students clear some of the many hurdles to success.

“I love that we’re able to help each and every student achieve their goals, and that we are looking at them as individuals, as humans, and not another person in a seat, and that we’re educating the whole person.”

“I love that we’re able to help each and every student achieve their goals, and that we are looking at them as individuals, as humans, and not another person in a seat, and that we’re educating the whole person.”

Looking to take her career in higher education to a higher plane, Schutt looked at several job opportunities, but eventually focused on the presidency at GCC because of what she considered a very solid match.

Compatibility was revealed the initial interview, conducted via Zoom, and then reinforced at a day-long, in-person session, during which she met and took questions from several constituencies, including faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders.

“There is a shared set of values that focuses on students and recognizes the importance of community integration for a community college,” she said when asked what she came away with from that day’s experiences.

“When I came to campus, it was validating to meet people who truly care about students,” she went on. “And that was conveyed in every group that I met with; that was conveyed by the students — that they felt they were cared for. And those things are really important to me; you can’t make that up. And the end of the day, if you don’t care about students, the students know that.”

 

School of Thought

As noted, Schutt will bring a deep focus on the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion to her new role, noting that, while she has always had an appreciation for these matters, it reached a new and much higher level through her experiences teaching English and social justice.

“I was teaching in the evening, when we had the greatest diversity of students,” she explained. “And to understand the general college-student experience was really eye-opening to me and made me a better administrator.

“That’s because, as a vice president, you see the highly successful students, or the students who were in great despair, who may not persist no matter how we helped them,” she went on. “To see the 40-year-old mom coming back to school, the 16-year-old dual-credit student, the student with limited English acquisition, the working dad … all those people coming together in one class really opened my eyes to the immense diversity in who we educate in community college.”

At CSI, Schutt said, it became a priority for the school to become a Hispanic Serving Institution, and the many steps taken to achieve that status became learning experiences on many levels. And, ultimately, they helped enable the school to better serve all its students.

“We worked really hard to make sure we were understanding the Hispanic student experience and that we were ensuring equitable outcomes and inclusionary practices,” she explained. “There were always critics who would say, ‘you’re focused on Hispanic students only.’ Well … no, we were making all our practices and policies better for all of our students.

“We worked very hard to get designation, but along the way, we also worked on broadening our understanding and awareness of all students,” she went on. “I lobbied in front of the board of trustees for more gender-neutral bathrooms and started a food bank and made sure we had a full-time veterans’ coordinator. Those are things that improve opportunities for all our students.

“When we’re taking about equity, we’re making sure that everyone has the same opportunity,” she continued. “But how they get there may look very different, and the inclusion component of it is celebrating those differences, and there’s a lot of work to be done — in the field, in society — and Greenfield isn’t any different.”

Elaborating, she said it’s one of her goals to soon have an administrator focused specifically on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a broad realm that, as she said, goes beyond ethnic diversity and to those matters below the tip of the iceberg.

“DEI here might look at educational attainment, it might look at poverty and wealth inequities, it may include LGBTQ identities — there’s diversity everywhere,” she said. “We can’t say, ‘we all look the same here in Greenfield or in the Pioneer Valley, so there is no diversity.’ Diversity is everywhere; it just may not be as obvious.”

 

Class Act

Looking ahead, Schutt said she’s looking forward to filling her calendar with meetings with local officials and members of the business community as she works to gain a broader understanding of the community served by the college.

She’s also looking forward to the fall, and a projected increase in enrollment as the school looks to fully recover from the pandemic and its many side effects, as well as the coming year, an important milestone for GCC as it celebrates 60 years of growth and change.

Mostly, though, she’s looking forward to continuing what has become, in many respects, her life’s work in student services and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As she said, if schools like GCC are to successfully recruit and retain students, they must take into account their entire experience. And this will be the focus of her efforts.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

An Educational Assistance Program Can Bring Many Benefits

By Contributor
Education

A Class Act

By Keara Moulton

 

Educational assistance programs provide access to learning opportunities for staff members to gain new skills and maintain up-to-date knowledge in their field with financial assistance from their employer.

This is a commonly offered employer benefit, but not all business owners might be aware of the current opportunity to expand this offering.

Keara Moulton

Keara Moulton

“Whether your business already has an educational assistance program in place or you are considering providing one as a benefit soon, this can be a great recruitment and retention program.”

The CARES Act of 2020 included an expansion of Section 127, which allows employers to expense payments to employee student loans in addition to previously allowed payments on tuition, fees, books, and supplies. This expansion was extended through Dec. 31, 2025 by the Taxpayer Certainty and Disasters Tax Relief Act.

Whether your business already has an educational assistance program in place or you are considering providing one as a benefit soon, this can be a great recruitment and retention program. With the expansion to include public and private student-loan payments toward both principal and interest, employers have the potential to provide educational assistance not only to employees currently enrolled in courses, but also to recent graduates who are already making monthly payments using their post-tax income.

To qualify as an educational assistance program, the plan must be written, accessible to all employees, and spell out what the money can be used for. The business can either directly pay the educational institution or student-loan servicer on behalf of the employee, or they can pay the employee directly and then potentially request a receipt of employee payments if their specific written plan requires it.

If the total payments for educational assistance are under $5,250, the employee will not be taxed on this additional benefit. However, if the payments for tuition and loan assistance exceed $5,250, the employee would then pay taxes on the overage as it would now be included in box 1 of their W-2.

Recently, we had a local business reach out to inquire about the potential implementation of an educational assistance program that takes advantage of this expansion of Section 127. One of their key questions was ‘is this something you think we should offer to employees, knowing that we handle payroll in house using QuickBooks?’ Ease of implementation to process this pre-tax contribution will vary with the type of QuickBooks product the business uses (i.e. desktop or online).

QuickBooks payroll will need to be set up to accept and track the payments by going through the CARES Act section to check off the applicable pay items to include. With this expansion available through 2025, your employees can benefit from it for more than three years if your bookkeeper can adapt your program to your payroll system now.

This fringe benefit does mean that employees who receive this money will not be able to claim any of the tax-free education expenses (the amount received under $5,250) as the basis for another deduction or credit on their 1040 tax return. This includes the Lifetime Learning Credit and Student Loan Interest Deduction. However, the Lifetime Learning Credit is limited to a maximum of $2,000 per return and is non-refundable. In other words, the employee could use the credit to pay any tax owed, but they wouldn’t receive any of the tax credit back as a refund.

This credit is also phased out completely if the employee has an adjusted gross income over $69,000 as a single filer or $138,000 if married filing jointly. Moreover, the Student Loan Interest Deduction is limited to $2,500 and is eliminated by a phaseout if adjusted gross income is more than $85,000. With the income limits in place on the credits and deductions currently available to individual students and student-loan borrowers, this expansion to Section 127 has the potential to benefit a broader base of employees than the credits and deductions.

If you have any questions about how this might affect your educational assistance program or any other programs, deductions, or credits, please feel free to reach out for detailed tax advice. u

 

Keara Moulton is an associate at the Holyoke-based accounting firm Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.

Berkshire Economic Recovery Project Launches W/MBE Module

By
Berkshire County Business Innovation Business Management Daily News Economic Outlook Education Women in Businesss

The Berkshire Economic Recovery Project, a program of 1Berkshire and Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, with funding from the United States Economic Development Administration, announced the launch of its women- and minority-owned business enterprise (W/MBE) module.

The training module, available in both English and Spanish, provides a high-level overview of what it means to be a certified women- and/or minority-owned business enterprise, and how such a certification can help support the small businesses in the Berkshires. In addition to the short overview training modules, interested businesses will also find a direct link to schedule a free intake consultation with the Economic Development team at 1Berkshire.

These consultations will allow 1Berkshire to make direct referrals to technical assistance support to help guide interested women- and minority-owned businesses through the certification process.

“We know we have many incredible small businesses in the Berkshires owned and operated by women, immigrants, minorities, and LGBTQ community members, however we find very few businesses are certified as such,” said Benjamin Lamb, 1Berkshire’s director of Economic Development. “This effort aims to move the needle on helping our underserved business owners access the opportunities that W/MBE certification unlocks, including government contracting opportunities, specific loan and grant programs, tax incentives, and more.”

Businesses and business owners are invited to visit the W/MBE module page at https://bit.ly/3yff8zP for more information and to view the recordings.

The Mount’s 2022 Summer Lecture Series Kicks Off on July 11

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Berkshire County Daily News Education Events Tourism & Hospitality Travel and Tourism Work/Life Balance

LENOX — The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home, announced its 2022 Summer Lecture Series line-up. Now in its 29th year, the Summer Lecture series brings leading biographers and historians to the Berkshires. This year’s series includes journalist and New York Times bestselling author Kati Marton, Pushcart prize-winning poet Ravi Shankar, and Syrian/Jordanian thought leader Luma Mufleh, among other notable speakers. 

Lectures will be held outdoors under an open-air tent on Mondays at 4 p.m. and Tuesdays at 11 a.m., beginning July 11 through August 30. To view the full line-up and purchase tickets, visit EdithWharton.org.

“We have a fascinating mix of narratives about historical figures and contemporary underrepresented voices in this year’s lineup,” said Patricia Pin, The Mount’s Public Program Director. “We are looking forward to welcoming our community back to The Mount for what promises to be an engaging season of meaningful storytelling.” 

  • July 11 and 12: Grace M. Cho, author of Tastes Like War; 
  • July 18 and 19: Victoria Kastner, author of Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect 
  • July 25 and 26: Luma Mufleh, author of Learning America: One Woman’s Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children.
  • August 1 and 2: Ravi Shankar, author of Correctional: A Memoir;
  • August 8 and 9: Susan Branson, author of Scientific Americans;
  • August 15 and 16: Chad Williams on “The Voice of W.E.B Du Bois”
  • August 22 and 23: Ann McCutchan, author of The Life She Wished to Live;
  • August 29 and 30: Kati Marton, author of Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel.

For more information, visit EdithWharton.org

HCC Accepting Applications for Free Community Health Worker Program

By
Daily News Education Events Health Care

HOLYOKE – Holyoke Community College is now accepting applications for its free Community Health Worker training and apprenticeship program. 

The program begins in September and is tuition free thanks to a federal grant HCC received in 2020. 

The purpose of the four-year, $1.89 million grant, awarded in 2020 from the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) is to increase the number of CHWs qualified to help children and families affected by opioid use.   

HRSA’s Opioid-Impacted Family Support Program supports training programs like HCC’s CHW program that enhance and expand paraprofessionals knowledge, skills, and expertise. 

 

The training involves college level coursework during the first year, as well as supervised field work experience at Behavioral Health Network in Holyoke. Classes are held in person at HCC and require basic computer proficiency and literacy skills. After the first year, students can apply for a full-time, paid apprenticeship placement — the first of its kind in Western Mass. 

 

During the pre-apprenticeship training at HCC, students take two core Community Health Worker classes across two consecutive semesters.

 

“The HCC Community Health Worker Apprenticeship Program is an initiative that offers free training for people interested in pursuing community health and human services,” said Tina Tartaglia, CHW project coordinator. “There is a specific focus on teaching students how to support children and families affected by opioid use and substance use disorders. Students with lived experience are encouraged to apply.”  

 

This is the third year of the four-year grant, which aims to train 25 individuals as CHWs each year. The grant also provides stipends to students as incentives to complete the program and seek employment in the field. Students who enter an apprenticeship after they finish training are eligible for an additional annual stipend of $7,500.

 

“COVID-19 has made clear how essential community health workers are in addressing the wide range of physical, behavioral and mental health issues faced by members of our community,” President Royal said in 2020 after the HRSA grant was awarded. “Through this program and with our partners, we will not only have the ability to support more families struggling with substance use, but we will also be creating more jobs in a sector central to our region’s economic growth.”

 

HCC’s partners in the grant include Behavioral Health Network, Holyoke Health Center, and the MassHire Hampden County Workforce Board.

 

For more information or to apply, please visit hcc.edu/chw-free

bankESB commits $30,000 to Girls Inc. of the Valley

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Daily News Education News

EASTHAMPTON — Matthew Sosik, president and CEO of bankESB, announced that the bank has pledged $30,000 over three years to Girls Inc. of the Valley.

The money will be used to help support the organization’s Her Future, Our Future campaign, a $5 million fundraising effort designed to help the organization better meet the needs of girls from under-resourced communities in Hampden County and beyond. Through this campaign Girls Inc. seeks to triple the number of elementary and teen girls served, reaching more than 1,000 girls annually. Efforts include renovating a new dynamic, state-of-the-art headquarters and program center in Holyoke, expanding geographic reach in public schools in Springfield, Chicopee, and beyond, and supporting their innovative Eureka! STEM program that prepares girls for college and career.

“This incredible gift from bankESB to support the Her Future, Our Future campaign shows their impactful commitment to community,” said Suzanne Parker, executive director at Girls Inc. of the Valley. “We are proud to have bankESB’s support as we aim to deliver our research-based, engaging programs to more youth across the Valley — and in our new headquarters.”

The donation was made as part of the bank’s charitable giving program, The Giving Tree, which reflects the roots the bank has in its communities, its commitment to making a real difference in the neighborhoods it serves, and the belief that everyone’s quality of life is enhanced when we work together to solve our communities’ biggest problems.

“Children are our future, and Girls Inc. of the Valley is helping to build that future for young girls with innovative, supportive, and life-changing programs that inspire them to be strong, smart, and bold,” said Sosik. “bankESB is pleased to do its part in supporting Girls Inc. and its efforts to provide a high-quality environment and programs that help elementary school-age and teenage girls unlock their full potential.”

CDC Designates UMass Amherst as Center of Excellence in Vector-borne Diseases

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Daily News Education Environment and Engineering HCN News & Notes Health Care News Sports & Leisure Summer Safety Travel and Tourism

AMHERST — UMass Amherst has received a $10 million, five-year award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to create the New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEWVEC).

The UMass-based center is one in a group of regional centers of excellence designated by the CDC to reduce the risk of vector-borne diseases – such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus – spread by ticks, mosquitoes and other blood-sucking arthropods across the U.S.

Stephen Rich, vector-borne disease expert and professor of microbiology, is the principal investigator on the project and will serve as the executive director of NEWVEC, whose three-pronged mission will integrate applied research, training and community of practice to prevent and reduce tick- and mosquito-borne diseases in New England. NEWVEC aims to bring together academic communities, public health practitioners and residents and visitors across the Northeast.

“We’re really excited about building this community of practice and embracing all the stakeholders in the region who need to know how to do things like reduce ticks and mosquitoes on school properties and public spaces. It is also important to inform the public on best practices to keep ticks and mosquitoes from biting people and their pets,” Rich said. “Part of that mission entails training public health entomologists — undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D.-level students — who are going to be the next generation of people confronting these challenges.”

Infectious disease epidemiologist Andrew Lover, assistant professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, will serve as deputy director of the center, with co-principal investigator Guang Xu at UMass Amherst, and co-principal investigators at Northern Vermont University, the University of Maine, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island and Western Connecticut State University.

“This center fills a critical gap in responses to vector-borne disease in the region,” said Lover, who aims to apply his prior work with regional malaria elimination programs to build strong networks across the Northeast region. “As pathogens and vectors don’t pay attention to borders, coordination across states is essential for public health response. Among other things, we’ll develop practical public health tools to understand how and where people are most likely to interact with ticks, which will then allow for well-targeted and efficient health programs.”

His lab also will provide technical assistance to directly support local health practitioners in optimizing vector surveillance strategies and designing operational research to improve program effectiveness.

Xu, research professor of microbiology, will be responsible for the center’s pathogen testing core and will conduct applied research in the evaluation of tick suppression approaches.

Rich notes that blood-sucking ticks transmit more vector-borne diseases than any other arthropod in North America, accounting for some 400,000 cases of Lyme disease alone every year. “And at least a half-dozen other pathogens are associated with the blacklegged tick,” commonly known as the deer tick, he adds. “It’s kind of a silent epidemic.”

The researchers say it’s critical to attack the problem on all fronts by using applied research projects to reduce tick populations and optimize personal protection and control products, and by training public health students and workers, as well as individuals.

Basketball Hall of Fame Announces “Hoophall Hangouts”

By
Daily News Education Events News

SPRINGFIELD —   The Naismith Memorial Basketball hall of Fame has announced the return of “Hoophall Hangouts” which will replace “60 Days of Summer,” the museum’s annual summer program featuring family-oriented fun.

Starting on July 1 and running through August 31, the Hall of Fame will host various appearances from basketball players, personalities, and Hall of Famers.

“The hall is excited to bring summer programming back to Springfield starting in July,” said John L. Doleva, president and CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame. “Paired with our newly renovated museum, Hoophall Hangouts will elevate the experience for our museum guests and will hopefully leave everyone with fantastic memories of their visit.”

On August 12, Bob Hurley Sr. (Hall of Fame Class of 2010) will accompany his son, Dan Hurley head coach for UConn’s men’s basketball team for a special father/son appearance. Throughout the summer, museum goers will also have the opportunity to hear from Class of 2022 Inductees Tim Hardaway, Bob Huggins, and George Karl, as well as hall of famers Grant Hill from the Class of 2018 and Jay Wright from the Class of 2021. Head coach Frank Martin from UMass will also be making an appearance.

“Hoophall Hangouts” appearances are free of charge to museum guests, however some appearances will have select VIP opportunities. “Hoophall Hangouts” will be scheduled throughout the summer and will occur at 1 p.m. For more information, visit www.hoophall.com/hoophallhangouts or follow @hoophall on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Junior Achievement Recognizes Young Leaders from Across the Region

By
The 18 Under 18 Class of 2022.
Education

The 18 Under 18

The 18 Under 18 Class of 2022.

The 18 Under 18 Class of 2022.

Junior Achievement of Western Massachusetts (JAWM) honored its inaugural 18 Under 18 Class of 2022, sponsored by Teddy Bear Pools, on May 19 at at Tower Square in Springfield. The event — which included poster board displays by the students, remarks, appreciation presentations and a buffet — recognized outstanding young people throughout Western Mass. who exemplify innovative spirit, leadership, and community involvement.

“We were impressed with the caliber of the nominations we received for this recognition,” said William Dziura, Development Director, JAWM. “It’s gratifying to know there are so many young people committed to making an impact on the world, and we are thrilled to be able to offer a forum through which they can be applauded for their efforts.”

 

The following 18 students comprise the 18 Under 18 Class of 2022:

 

Trinity Baush, Grade 11, Chicopee High School: A multi-sport athlete and member of the National Honor Society and Student Council, Bausch has shown leadership in all these groups by facilitating fundraisers and leading discussions about important issues. She maintains high academic standards and currently has a 4.0 GPA. Outside of school, she works in a leadership role at Applebee’s. Recently, she has helped increase awareness about the war in Ukraine through a fundraising program with money raised sent directly to a school in Ukraine.

 

Nevaeh Branyon, Grade 8, Marcus M. Kiley Middle School, Springfield: An outstanding student with a GPA over 4.0, Branyon is passionate about financial literacy and entrepreneurship because of the unique and innovative perspectives they provide. She serves as a Student Council liaison and is a member of the Yearbook, Math and Art clubs. In addition to being a student athlete, she participates in the FitZone after-school programs and is a member of Girls on the Run.

 

Nathaniel Claudio, Grade 12, Business Information Technology Program, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy, Springfield: Claudio is president of the National Honor Society and the student representative to the Springfield School Committee. He has been involved with Junior Achievement since his freshman year, participating in the Stock Market Competition, the 100th Anniversary Gala and Parade, the Summer Accelerator and served as a High School Hero, teaching financial literacy to younger students. Outside of school, he is participating in a cooperative learning experience at Freedom Credit Union.

 

Chase Daigneault, Grade 10, Chicopee High School: Daigneault has participated in school leadership since middle school, where she served and still serves in various class officer positions. Recently, she was voted the class president of the class of 2024. In this role, she plans activities and monitors the social media presence for her class, in addition to organizing fundraisers for charity and scheduling volunteer opportunities for the class.

 

Ella Florence, Grade 11, Chicopee High School: As a member of the National Honor Society and Class Council, Florence leads many fundraisers, social projects and progressive initiatives. She is vice president of her school’s Best Buddies program, which involves students with autism into school events. Last year, she became a member of the Special Olympics Youth Activation Council and attended the statewide Winter Youth Summit, and she recently attended Capitol Hill Day with a Best Buddies peer. Outside of school, she volunteers at the Springfield Boys & Girls Club Family Center.

 

Elise Hansel, Grade 10, Business Information Technology Program, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy: A longtime participant in Junior Achievement programs, Hansel was a student leader in JA’s internship program with the Springfield Thunderbirds, where she played a crucial role in the event’s marketing efforts, including designing the event flier, partnering with area schools to coordinate a group, and making cold-calls to area businesses to sell event business packages. Recently, she won first place for her marketing and design skills in a billboard design competition for the Stop the Swerve campaign.

 

Liberty Basora, Grade 10, Marketing/Retail Program, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy: Known for her outstanding communication skills, fantastic aptitude for working with other students, and innovative mindset, Basora’s most recent project was bringing to life the dormant social media accounts for the school store: Putnam Vocational Beaver Lodge. She analyzed the problems faced by the Beaver Lodge, then created new content that allowed the site to reflect the Marketing Shop and open up two-way conversations with the store’s growing customer base.

 

Adyan Khattak, Grade 12, Chicopee Comprehensive High School: A member of Student Council, Business Club, sports teams, and the DA’s Youth Council Board, Khattak is passionate about creating opportunities for other students to connect with resources that improve and better their lives. As an intern at the Chicopee Comp College & Career Center, he has applied many creative and innovative approaches to help better answer student queries and needs. In addition to fluency in English, this first -generation American also speaks Urdu and Punjabi and reads Arabic.

 

Grace Kuhn, Grade 12, Westfield High School: A member of the cross-country team and vice president of the National Honor Society, Kuhn is also a member of the Best Buddies Club, which works with West Springfield’s preschool program, and the Reshaping Reality Club, which focuses on mental health and body image. She completed and published her first novel, Knox Hollow: Murder on Mayflower, during the pandemic and recently completed her second novel, Dalton Ridge: Homicide on Holiday Hill. She enjoys working closely with children and plans to be a speech pathologist.

 

Katelynn Mersincavage, Grade 12, Hampden Charter School of Science–East: Excelling academically, Mersincavage pushes herself with multiple advanced placement classes and college dual enrollment courses. She is a member of the National Honor Society, Student Council and the soccer team. Outside of school, she is an organizer and active participant in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, where she regularly participates in fundraising and awareness events for the cause, which hits close to home; her brother lives with type-1 diabetes.

 

Alondra Nieves, Grade 10, Business Information Technology Program, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy: Academically, Nieves maintains a 4.0 GPA. Creatively, during the pandemic, she started teaching herself to play the guitar and write music, using her skills and talents as a poet to create songs. She is actively involved in the Hampden County District Attorney Youth Advisory Board with responsibilities on the Mental Health Teen Task Force. She also reads to elementary students, participated in the Stop the Swerve Campaign, and helped with a school-wide food collection.

 

Sean O’Dea, Grade 12, Mohawk Trail Regional High School: O’Dea is captain of his cross-country team, a member of the Student Council, secretary of the Key Club, a member of the National Honor Society and student representative to the School Committee. He was also selected by his teachers to represent the Town of Heath for Project 351, a non-profit lead by Governor Baker to develop the next generation of community-first leaders through youth service. For his AP language course, he wrote and produced a video essay highlighting local environmental issues in Franklin County.

 

Ricardo Ortiz, Grade 8, Marcus M. Kiley Middle School: Ortiz moved to Springfield from Guatemala at age 11, speaking only Spanish. He has since participated in the Empowerment Academy and the school band, where he plays clarinet. This year, he campaigned successfully to establish a Yearbook Club and inspired the idea of painting an 8th grade mural, so students can leave their mark for future generations. He aspires to be the first person in his family to graduate from college, with the goal of becoming an entrepreneur and opening his own flower shop to honor his late grandmother.

 

Het Parikh, Grade 12, West Springfield High School: Leader of the percussion section of the school band, Parikh is also a member of the National Honor Society and the Key Club, and serves as a student tutor and participant in the Innovation Pathways Program. He has maintained a 3.92 cumulative GPA while simultaneously earning more than 30 transferable college credits. Outside of school, he has volunteered at the Lions Club Food Kitchen at the Big E, the clean-up of Mittineague Park, and the local senior center, where he runs a smart phone clinic.

 

Parmila Sarki, Grade 12, Business Information Technology Program, Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy: Since her freshman year, Sarki has been involved with Junior Achievement, participating in the annual Stock Market Competition, the 100th Anniversary Gala and Parade and the Summer Accelerator. She also served as a High School Hero, teaching financial literacy to younger students. During the pandemic, she worked with her teacher to create videos to help younger students understand financial literacy concepts. After school, she helps first graders with schoolwork.

 

Jadyn Smith, Grade 11 Chicopee High School: This student activist works to make the school a better place by advocating on behalf of the entire student body. As a member of the National Honor Society, Smith helps facilitate fundraisers, including one for a school in Ukraine, and is also on the Student Council fundraising committee. Outside of school, she enjoys volunteering at her local church, helping to address food insecurity, and is an assistant manager at McKinstry Market Garden.

 

Kayla Staley, Grade 11, Springfield Conservatory of the Arts: An accomplished singer, Staley has been featured at events across the community ranging from school graduation ceremonies to the Union Station Tree Lighting Ceremony and the Western Massachusetts Chorus Festival. She also excels academically and is president of her class and a member of the National Honor Society. She was selected as a student representative for the Springfield Public Schools Portrait of a Graduate, and to receive private coaching from Broadway stars, college professors and other masterclasses.

 

Victoria Weagle, Grade 11, Frontier Regional High School: This exemplary student leader is passionate about her community and finding creative solutions to complicated problems. Weagle is greatly gifted in scientific research, and hopes to develop these skills in college and throughout her life. She is involved in Quiz Bowl and many extracurricular science projects, including a volunteer research trip to Dominica in 2023, for which she has saved up her own funds.

 

Nominations for the 18 Under 18 were open to anyone 18 years or younger who attends school in Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, or Berkshire counties. Judging criteria was divided in three categories: innovative spirit, leadership, and community involvement.

Beyond the award recognition, the students selected will benefit from a meaningful new network of community leaders and peers and may receive additional opportunities through event partners. They will also be invited to participate in a virtual leadership workshop later in the year.

At 75, HCC Celebrates All That’s Changed, and All That Hasn’t

By
The original home to HCC
Education Special Coverage

Marking a Milestone

The original home to HCC

The original home to HCC, the former Holyoke High School

The campus today

The campus, and its renovated campus center, today

Holyoke Community College, the state’s first community college, is marking its 75th anniversary this year. This has been a time to reflect on how the school has evolved to meet the changing needs of those living and working in the communities it serves, while remaining loyal to the mission with which it was founded — to open doors to opportunity.

 

It’s called the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center.

And the name says it all — if you know about this kind of facility. It’s not a daycare center — there’s already one of those on the Holyoke Community College campus. And it’s not an early education facility — the college has no intention of getting into that business, according to its president, Christina Royal.

Instead, it’s a … child-watch center, a place where students can bring young children for a few minutes or a few hours, while they’re attending classes, taking part in meetings, or perhaps huddling with advisors.

“In daycare, you drop your child off in the morning and you pick it up at the end of the day; it’s generally for full-time working parents,” she explained. “In a child-watch program, you’re dropping the child off for a short-term period that is very specific; you’re coming, you’re taking a class, you need to put your child in a child-watch program for that 50 minutes or an hour and a half that you’re in class.”

The presence of the Itsy Bitzy Child Watch Center is just one example of the profound level of change that has come to the institution now known as Holyoke Community College. There are many others, including the name over the door — the school was originally called the Holyoke Graduate School (a night program), and was later renamed Holyoke Junior College, before becoming HCC in 1964 — as well as the setting. Indeed, the college was originally located in the former Holyoke High School, which was totally destroyed by fire in 1968, to be replaced by the current campus, carved out of a dairy farm, which opened in 1974.

“We were birthed to create opportunities for working adults to be able to get a quality education, and that’s really important still today. Education is accessible to all — that’s the most important piece about community colleges; access is a tenet of a community-college education.”

But for perhaps the most dramatic change we need to juxtapose the picture of the first graduating class in 1948 with some statistics that Royal keeps at the ready, specifically those noting that more than half of the current students are women, and that during the most recent semester, 41 different countries were represented by the study body, and 33 different languages might be heard on the campus.

The first graduating class

The first graduating class (1948) was much smaller, and far less diverse, than the classes today.

But while celebrating all that has changed over the past 75 years, the institution is also marking what hasn’t. And there is quite a bit in that category as well.

Christina Royal, the college’s fourth president

Christina Royal, the college’s fourth president

Indeed, HCC has, seemingly from the beginning, been a place to start for those seeking a college education, but not a final destination, said Royal, noting that many have transferred to four-year schools to obtain bachelor’s degrees and then graduate degrees.

It’s also been a place for those for whom college is certainly not a foregone conclusion.,

“We were birthed to create opportunities for working adults to be able to get a quality education, and that’s really important still today,” said Royal. “Education is accessible to all — that’s the most important piece about community colleges; access is a tenet of a community-college education.

“No matter who you are, or where you’re at in your career, there is a place for you at HCC,” she went on. “This creates doors that open for many students, and it’s also why, when you look at our alumni, we talk about HCC being a family affair; we have many alums who say that either their parents had come here or their siblings or their cousins come here.” because you see many generations of students that continue to come back and have the next generation supported at HCC.”

Meanwhile, the school has always been known for the high levels of support given to its students, many of them being the first in their families to attend college. In 1946, and the years that followed, many of these students were men who had served in World War II and were attending college on the G.I. Bill.

Fire destroyed the college in 1968

Fire destroyed the college in 1968, leaving some to ponder whether HCC had a future.

Today, as noted, more than half are women and far more than half are non-white. Many arrive with specific needs — ranging from food insecurity to transportation to a child-watch facility — and HCC, while helping them earn a degree or certificate, has been steadfast in its efforts to address those needs and “meet students where they are,” as Royal likes to say.

Moving forward, the school is marking its first 75 years with a variety of ceremonies, a commitment to continue its tradition of being accessible, and a refreshed strategic plan, one that has put additional emphasis on academic success and meeting student needs.

“It’s important that we provide equitable opportunities and that there is an equitable chance of success no matter who walks through the door.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Royal about where HCC has been, where it is today, and where it would like to be in the years to come.

 

School of Thought

As she talked with BusinessWest late last month, Royal was planning for, and very much looking forward to, commencement ceremonies at the MassMutual Center on June 4.

This would be the first in-person ceremony in three years, and members of the classes of 2020 and 2021 were invited to join this year’s graduates in the proceedings. Royal; said several dozen members of those earlier classes accepted the invitation to march.

The new Center for Health Education and Simulation

The new Center for Health Education and Simulation on Jarvis Avenue is one of many recent additions to the HCC landscape in recent years.

“We’ve heard from some members of those classes that they desire to have that traditional pomp-and-circumstance experience,” said Royal, noting that, beyond the canceled in-person commencement ceremonies, the pandemic has tested HCC in myriad other ways, from enrollment to helping students secure access to the Internet.

“We were impacted as intensely as everyone else in the world,” said Royal, adding that this has been a test that has left the school stronger and more resilient, in her estimation.

And looking back on HCC’s 75 years of service to the region, the pandemic is certainly not the first, or only, time the school has faced adversity of the highest order — and persevered.

Indeed, the fire of 1968, which broke out on Jan. 4, just before final exams, left the school shaken to its foundation — quite literally, with some wondering if it even had a future.

“Culturally, we have fewer students who start, finish their education, and then focus on work for the rest of their career.”

“Springfield Technical Community College had just opened,” said Royal, only the fourth president in the school’s history. “And there was a lot of conversation about whether we needed another community college in this region — and if so, do we want to build it in Holyoke? It was amazing that while all this debate and discussion was going on, we inherited the land from the Sheehan family, what was the Sheehan Dairy Farm, and be able to rebuild the college in a place that allowed us to continue to expand and grow to what you see today.”

And since opening its facility off Homestead Avenue in 1974, the college has certainly grown within that space, adding several new facilities, including the Bartley Center for Athletics and Education, the Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development, a new health sciences facility, and a renovated campus center. It has also returned to its roots with facilities in downtown Holyoke, including the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Center in the Cubit Building on Race Street, and the Picknelly Adult and Family Education Center.

Meanwhile, it has become far more diverse, said Royal, adding that, overall HCC has changed and evolved as the region, its host city, the local business community, and society in general have.

The Kittredge Center

The Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development is another of the many recent additions to the HCC campus.

“We are a reflection of the community,” Royal explained, adding that the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center is just one example of this phenomenon.

“When you look at the history of our communities and when you think about how these communities have changed, then we’ve had to grow and change with them to keep up with the changing demographics of our region — both in growth in numbers and in terms of the ‘who’ that we’re serving; we really serve a lot of student populations.”

Elaborating, she said that today, as always, the focus is on inclusion, empowering students, and creating an environment in which they can not only attend school, but achieve success, however they wish to define it.

“We’re really focused on equity,” Royal explained. “It’s important that we provide equitable opportunities and that there is an equitable chance of success no matter who walks through the door. And the data shows us that our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of Color) students are not succeeding at the same rate as our white students.

“So our equity initiatives look to be able to provide the additional support and services so we can bring those numbers into alignment,” she went on, adding that, overall the school has become far more data-driven as it works to understand the changing demographics of those it serves — and usethat data to determine how it pivots and changes to better serve students and other constituencies.

Summing it all up, Royal said, “We have a reputation of being a place to come, to start your education at an affordable rate, with high-quality faculty, strong academic rigor, plenty of support services, and to set students up to transfer to any of the prestigious four-year institutions in our area or beyond.”

 

Course of Action

Looking at HCC today, and what she projects for tomorrow, Royal said the process of evolution at the school is ongoing. And that’s because change is a constant — change within the communities being served, change in the business community and the workplace, and change when it comes to the needs of the students coming to the Homestead Avenue campus.

The pandemic accelerated this process of change in some respects, said Royal, and it also brought a greater need for reflection on just what students need — and how those needs can be met.

Returning to the subject of the new child-watch center, she said it’s a reflection of how the school has been focusing on the basic needs of students and taking direct steps to address them, work that was part of the latest strategic plan, which was completed in 2017.

“We want to be a college of academic rigor, known for helping students overcome barriers to success,” she explained, adding that when discussions were launched on this matter, there were four barriers that were initially defined — food, housing, transportation, and childcare — with area focal points, such as digital literacy, mental health, and others, identified

Each has been addressed in various ways, she said, citing initiatives ranging from a program to house students in dorms at Westfield State University (which not only provides housing but provides exposure to potential next step in the higher education journey), to another program that provides 3,000 bus passes to students to help them get to and from the campus.

Childcare has taken longer to address, she went on, adding that collected data clearly showed the need for a facility where students could place children while they were attending class or accessing services at the college. With $100,000 in support from the state, HCC was able to become the second community college in the state (Norther Essex is the other) to offer child-watch services.

While addressing these needs, HCC is also focused on the changing world of work, what it will look like in the years and decades to come, and how to prepare students for that world.

“Our focus is on having students create life-long relationships with the college,” she explained. “Culturally, we have fewer students who start, finish their education, and then focus on work for the rest of their career. Now, the world of work has shifted, the future of work has changed a lot, and we know that people make job changes much more rapidly than they did in past decades, and so therefore, there’s a different interconnection and relationship between education and workforce.

“It’s not linear anymore,” she went on. “It’s integrated, and it changes depending on how a student’s path changes in life, how many career changes they make; they’ll come back and retool through short-term training or perhaps another degree, and then they make their way into a new career field.”

 

Class Act

Summing up both the first 75 years and what comes next, Royal said that while there has been tremendous change since HCC was founded, and there is much more to come, there is a constant:

“We believe in transforming communities through education; that is at the core of what we do,” she told BusinessWest. “We believe there are a lot of different ways that people can find their path and contribute to our local economy.”

Helping individuals forge a path is what this institution has been about since it was called the Holyoke Graduate School. And that is what is being celebrated in this milestone year. u

 

George O’Brien can be reached at
[email protected]

Veritas Prep Broadens Its Reach into High School

By Contributor
Education

Grade Expectations

By Elizabeth Sears

 

Rachel Romano certainly understands the importance of providing meaningful education opportunities to a community’s youth. She’s the founder and executive director of Veritas Prep Charter School, a charter-school system that uses innovative turnaround strategies to help students reach their full academic potential.

“Most of our students come into middle school performing below grade level, and the vast majority leave us headed to high school at or above the level of their peers across the state,” she said.

That transformative impact will no longer conclude at the end of eighth grade. Indeed, Veritas Prep High School is set to welcome its inaugural ninth-grade class in the fall of 2022. Now scholars have the opportunity to continue with Veritas, complete essential high-school graduation requirements, and even earn credits toward a college degree.

Veritas Prep Charter School started off in 2012 as a middle school in Springfield holding the belief that all students have the ability to achieve at high levels if given the right opportunities. It has been a decade now since the middle school opened, and since its founding, Veritas has grown more than those who created it could have imagined.

Rachel Romano

Rachel Romano

“Most of our students come into middle school performing below grade level, and the vast majority leave us headed to high school at or above the level of their peers across the state.”

The school now serves more than 370 Springfield students and is one of the Bay State’s top-performing middle schools. Veritas also has a Holyoke middle school in addition to its flagship Springfield location. Dramatic gains have been shown in student achievement, with double the ‘proficient’ and ‘advanced’ MCAS scores than those received in Springfield Public Schools. With such growth and success, the enthusiasm surrounding the opening of the new high school is immeasurable.

“We never had intentions of opening a high school when we started, but year after year, our students who matriculated on to ninth grade and were in high school would come back and say, ‘why don’t we have a high school?’” Romano explained. “So given the parent and student demand for Veritas to open a high school, a few years ago we decided maybe it is time that we expand our charter to serve our students through high-school graduation.”

 

Course of Action

Veritas Prep Charter School was given the approval to open a high school back in 2020. Veritas assembled a diverse design team to create a high school that can effectively serve the needs of its students. The design team was comprised of more than 200 Springfield community members, including current students, alumni, families of students, and stakeholders.

“We really wanted to center the voices of our students, our alumni, our teachers, our families, to design a high school that would meet the needs of our students,” Romano told BusinessWest.

That is where the ‘Portrait of a Graduate’ was developed — something Romano is particularly proud of.

‘Portrait of a Graduate’ was developed through the design team and embodies the vision of Veritas — that all of its scholars will “emerge as woke citizens, innovators, leaders of tomorrow, and learners for life.”

An important element of this mission includes the opportunity to earn up to 30 college credits — two years of college worth — completely free of charge. These college credits can be transferred to any state college or university. Students can even potentially earn an associate degree by the time they graduate high school.

“Too few Springfield students complete college degrees, and since we will have our students through high school, we want to go ahead and give them access to college courses while we can support them to earn some credits, tuition-free,” Romano noted.

Currently, only 26.4% of Springfield residents obtain a higher-education degree, compared to almost 50% statewide. Veritas is seeking to address key barriers to higher education such as access, lack of preparation, and cost.

“Our middle school is always focused on getting our students set up with a vision of themselves in college and pointing them toward high school ready to be on a college prep track. What we learned is that even that is sometimes not enough,” she went on. “We really are centering the need in Springfield for degree completion. We know degree completion is going to significantly increase the earning potential, health, and quality of life for our students and their families; earning a degree has been an asset that’s been pretty elusive for many Springfield Public School students.”

The Springfield community was prioritized throughout the entire planning process. Veritas scholars have played a key role in the planning and development of the new high school, providing input on everything from the school’s design to its curriculum. Students will have multiple areas of study to choose from that cover a wide range of high-impact careers, including health sciences, engineering, education, and more.

“With the right voices at the table, we have been able to reimagine what high school can look like and create a compelling, career-focused, early-college model,” Romano said.

Veritas Prep High School is following a career-focused early-college program. Students will not be able to select any course they want from the catalog, but rather will have pathways to choose from that are aligned with career trajectories. Veritas seeks to place its students on pathways where they can be certain about getting jobs and earning a good living.

“With the right voices at the table, we have been able to reimagine what high school can look like and create a compelling, career-focused, early-college model.”

Not only will students have the option to take college classes during their time at Veritas Prep High School, but they will also be able to get relevant and beneficial certificates — for example, a certificate in Google Suites or a nurse-aide certification for students who are in the health-sciences trajectory.

“We’re really trying to equip them with meaningful experiences in the high-school years that will send them off to hopefully four-year degree programs,” Romano said, while helping those who plan to work immediately after high school access gainful employment experiences while they work their way through school.

Even though charter schools operate a bit differently from their traditional public-school counterparts, they serve the community in a similar way. Charter schools were created from federal legislation with the intention of creating innovative schools within the public-school space while providing parents with choices.

Although students do have to apply to Veritas, there is no selection criteria — as long as a student has a mailing address in Springfield, the opportunity to attend is open to them.

“We’re really excited to open a new campus this August … we will have some vacant seats available for other Springfield students to join our inaugural class as well,” Romano said.

Current eighth-graders at Veritas are guaranteed a place in the new high school, and a lottery will be held to fill the remaining spots. The high school will expand by one grade per year up through grade 12.

 

Class Act

When discussing the immense impact Veritas Prep High School will have on the Springfield community, Romano spoke of the unlimited academic and social potential that Springfield students possess.

Given the opportunity, any student can achieve the goals they set their mind to, she insisted. “Veritas scholars will become changemakers who are equipped to choose their path, challenge inequity, and transform the world.”

BayPath WLC Picture Page

By Contributor
Doran addresses the audience
Education Event Galleries

Women’s Leadership Conference

‘Reimagine’ was the theme for the 25th Bay Path University Women’s Leadership Conference on April 1, a day-long event that drew more than 1,300 women and men to the MassMutual Center in downtown Springfield. The conference featured three keynote speakers and a number of educational breakout sessions, as well as networking and a message from Bay Path President Sandra Doran about the university, its 125th anniversary, and its future.

Photos by Leah Martin Photography

 

Mechanic and Girls Auto Clinic founder Patrice Banks takes the stage as the luncheon keynote speaker

Mechanic and Girls Auto Clinic founder Patrice Banks takes the stage as the luncheon keynote speaker

 

Tyra Banks, the closing keynote speaker, answers questions from conference attendees

Tyra Banks, the closing keynote speaker, answers questions from conference attendees

 

author and speaker Christine Cashen kicks off the 2022 conference with laughter and advice as the morning keynote speaker

Doran addresses the audience

Doran addresses the audience

 

Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno welcomes attendees to the city of Springfield

Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno welcomes attendees to the city of Springfield

 

 

Application, Enrollment Numbers Trending Up at Area Colleges

By Contributor
Jonathan Scully
Education Special Coverage

Back to School

Jonathan Scully

Jonathan Scully says Elms College stays engaged with incoming students from acceptance until they arrive on campus.

 

After two years of massive shakeups on college and university campuses — from sending students home in 2020 to building remote and hybrid programs and instituting sweeping safety protocols — admissions officers are seeing an uptick in enthusiasm, and applications, from prospective students, sparking hope that the coming fall will mark a return not only to normalcy, but to healthy enrollment numbers.

By Mark Morris

 

For college enrollment professionals, March and April are the busiest months of the year.

That’s when, after considering thousands of applications, colleges begin reaching out to students who were accepted for the fall semester. April, particularly for four-year institutions, is crunch time, as May 1 is known as National College Decision Day, the deadline for students to submit their acceptance forms and make a deposit.

According to Jonathan Scully, vice president of Enrollment Management and Marketing at Elms College, the job is not done on May 1. He and his staff work with students until they arrive in September.

“When a student has been accepted and they pay their deposit, they’re stoked,” Scully said. “Then they have to wait four months before they come here, so we stay in contact and have events over the summer to make sure that level of engagement stays up.”

There’s plenty of engagement to maintain, as many colleges report that application numbers are hitting new records. In past years, students would typically apply to three or four colleges they hoped to attend. These days, it’s not unusual to see a student apply to 10 or even 15 schools. It’s part of a trend Scully has observed in the last five years.

“With the ability to do everything online, the process has gotten easier,” he said. “As a result, application numbers are hitting astronomical heights.”

He isn’t alone. BusinessWest spoke with several area college-admissions professionals who report that applications are up and admissions are meeting or exceeding expectations. Part of that is a return to some semblance of pre-COVID normalcy. As infection rates have declined, campuses have adopted mask-optional policies, among other shifts, while staying ready to wear them again, if necessary.

Mike Drish

Mike Drish

“They want to live in residence halls, join clubs and organizations in person, eat in dining halls, and cheer on our teams.”

Like every organization, colleges quickly shifted to an online presence early in the pandemic and can now offer courses in person, online, or through a hybrid model, with some coursework offered in person and some online. While remote and virtual options performed well when they were needed, surveys of current and prospective students at UMass Amherst show they still want a residential college experience.

“They want to live in residence halls, join clubs and organizations in person, eat in dining halls, and cheer on our teams,” said Mike Drish, director of First Year Admissions at UMass Amherst.

While students crave the campus experience, they also want more flexibility with the academic part of the experience.

“Students and faculty are looking for more opportunities to blend in-person, online, and hybrid learning,” said Bryan Gross, vice president, Enrollment Management and Marketing at Western New England University (WNE). “They want to know to know more about the technology that exists and how it can enhance learning and outcomes.”

The benefits of this new remote world has brought benefits outside the classroom, said Gina Puc, vice president of Strategic Initiatives at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Now that so many people are comfortable with Zoom, she noted, MCLA’s events can have an impact beyond the campus.

“We’ve been able to host a number of guest speakers and lectures on Zoom and open them to the public,” Puc said. “That has really expanded our audience.”

 

Community Spirit

A common theme admissions professionals discussed with BusinessWest involved “meeting students where they are.” At UMass, Drish said, that can mean expanding access to students from a variety of backgrounds and involving other departments on campus to ensure success for the student.

Meeting students where they are is central to the mission at community colleges. With up to half of their enrollments occurring after July 1, community colleges have a different timetable and different priorities for the application and acceptance process than four-year schools.

Darcey Kemp

Darcey Kemp says STCC has broadened the way it meets student needs over the past two years.

As the pandemic begins to wane, Mark Hudgik, director of Admissions for Holyoke Community College (HCC), said many high-school students graduating in June are fatigued and feeling uncertain about college because of all the disruption in their high-school careers.

“We have conversations with students who question if they are ready for college, if they are prepared enough,” Hudgik said. “Even if they’re not ready to start, we will stay connected with them to help however we can, and when they are ready, we’re here for them.”

Darcey Kemp, vice president of Student Affairs at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), said maintaining “high-touch” connections with students helps keep them on track whether it’s through flexible course offerings or by supporting non-academic needs.

“We provide non-perishable food items for students who have food insecurity,” Kemp said, noting that, before the pandemic, students could stop by Student Affairs and get what they needed, but since the pandemic, STCC has adjusted the program so students can now call or text and receive a package of food or an envelope with a gift card to a grocery store.

“It’s all part of being responsive and providing support based on what students tell us they need,” she added.

Like many organizations, the STCC website has a ‘chat now’ pop-up screen for student questions. Kemp said what was once a rarely used function has turned into a meaningful way to provide additional services to students.

“Before the pandemic, we might see 200 engagements a month,” she noted. “Now, on busy months, we have upwards of 4,000 unique monthly engagements.”

Since the pandemic, more students are seeking courses to gain entry-level jobs in professions that allow them to work while pursuing higher academic credentials, Hudgik explained. For example, a student may sign up for a non-credit certified nurse aide (CNA) course to get their foot in the door in healthcare and, from there, take courses for practical nursing and eventually registered nursing programs.

Community colleges remain a popular way for students to complete the first two years of an undergraduate degree and transfer those credits to a four-year college or university. In addition to providing great value, pursuing an associate degree can change a person’s life.

“We try to reach students who don’t see themselves as learners,” Hudgik said. “When they come to HCC, we will meet them where they are and help them build the skills they need so they can go on to the schools of their choice.”

Since the pandemic, it’s probably not surprising that several colleges are reporting an increase in student enrollment in healthcare majors.

“Our health science major has seen a 35% increase over the last three years,” Puc said. “It’s become an in-demand major as students become more aware of public health, immunology, epidemiology, and similar subjects.”

Gina Puc

Gina Puc says the move to remote learning during the pandemic has brought long-term benefits, with MCLA continuing to expand its geographic reach, and its audience, with its events.

While pharmacy programs at WNE have long been popular, students can now pursue a master’s degree in pharmacogenomics.

“This area of study looks at how a person’s genetic makeup can affect their response to therapeutic drugs,” Gross explained. “Graduates in this degree can go into genetic counseling, traditional pharmacy, as well as areas of research or teaching.”

Another new major influenced by current events involves bachelor’s- and master’s-level courses devoted to construction management. Gross said these offerings are the result of the federal infrastructure bill passed last year.

“We’ve had lots of interest in this subject from freshman on campus, as well as our community-college partners,” he noted. “We’re finding more people want to acquire the necessary skills to be part of the infrastructure movement.”

Gross described WNE as a “new traditional” university that prepares learners and earners for the future of work. “That message has resonated with families, to know we put a lot of value on the traditional campus environment while also focusing on work, jobs, and outcomes.”

“Even if they’re not ready to start, we will stay connected with them to help however we can, and when they are ready, we’re here for them.”

He added that the recent U.S. News and World Report ranking of top colleges showed that WNE graduates had a higher starting salary than 52 of the top 100 universities on the list.

 

Welcome Mat

Colleges have already begun holding events to welcome new students accepted for the fall semester.

“We’re excited that we can now have these events in person,” Puc said. “We usually hold them on Saturdays with faculty there as well. It’s a great way for students to meet other students and become more acquainted with the MCLA community.”

This past fall, when Omicron numbers were trending up, Scully had to cancel the open-house events for prospective students he would normally host. For small colleges like Elms, in-person events are essential.

Mark Hudgik

Mark Hudgik says HCC tries to reach students who don’t see themselves as learners, one of the important qualities community colleges bring to the table.

“On paper, there are so many small liberal-arts colleges, students need a way to find out what makes us different,” he said.

There are occasions when a student will complete the application and acceptance process, send in their deposit, and have their plans change before September. Scully referred to this as the “summer melt.” Drish noted that, even when someone’s plans change, he doesn’t worry. “We have students on the waitlist we can contact who will be excited to say ‘yes.’”

After the pandemic, making a few changes is the easy part. Hudgik discussed what a new normal might look like.

“I’m optimistic that we will emerge to a place where folks understand what it means to plan for the uncertain,” he said, adding that he hopes issues like childcare, remote schooling, and job uncertainty will begin to lessen so students can put a renewed focus on their academic careers.

Gross agrees that COVID has provided a real education. “We’ve learned a lot about collaborating, how to be agile, how to respond to environmental circumstances, as well as responding to the needs of our students,” he said.

For the next several months, admissions professionals will stay plenty busy making sure the next class of students settle into their colleges and universities.

“The day when students return to campus is my favorite day of the year,” Scully said. “I look forward to the fall when students are here because there’s life on campus again.”

While he enjoys stopping to appreciate the fall campus scene, Scully knows there are plenty of new prospective students out there who need to be contacted.

“Once the fall class is settled, then we rinse and repeat. Our staff hits the road, and we start recruiting again.”

College Internships Turn Pandemic into Learning Experience

By Contributor
Education

Remote Possibilities

By Elizabeth Sears

 

Internships have always been known to take different shapes and forms, from a student teacher eagerly helping to prepare classroom activities to the stereotypical unpaid intern making copies and bringing coffee to co-workers while carefully shadowing how the different jobs at their company work.

Now, a new type of internship has been added to the mix: a student sitting at home in front of their laptop. For many students, this has become the new normal.

With the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the leaders of internship programs at universities in Western Mass. feared that students would not be able to have as many internship opportunities. George Layng, an internship coordinator at Westfield State University, recalled feelings of uncertainty when the fall 2020 semester approached.

“School was back in session, but it was all virtual … would internship sites be as receptive to having interns as they were in the past? Usually, we have more places that are willing to have interns than we have interns for, but our fear was that we’d be in the reverse, that we’d have more interns than we have places for,” Layng said.

“I think, actually, students are better able to manage that shift now because their classes are online and they are working more independently.”

However, despite the copious amounts of instability in many areas of academic life brought on by the pandemic, internship programs at colleges in the Western Mass. region have been running strongly with abundant student success. Layng said the number of students participating in his internship program has remained steady over the course of the pandemic, even when compared to pre-pandemic years.

“I think, actually, students are better able to manage that shift now because their classes are online and they are working more independently,” he told BusinessWest. “One of the silver linings is that they are more able and more prepared to work somewhat independently, somewhat virtually, and it not being a big issue.”

A large part of this success was credited to the ability of students, professors, and employers to remain adaptable during the continuously changing protocols throughout the pandemic. The willingness of employers to take on interns remotely and overcome that boundary, along with the determination of students to work through uncertain conditions, has proven to be a winning combination for successfully running internship programs during the pandemic.

 

New Normal

This is not to say internship programs have been running without their fair share of challenges.

Alan Bloomgarden, director of Experiential Learning at Elms College, spoke of how, even though his students have shown remarkable success at obtaining placements at various internship sites, constantly evolving safety concerns impacted some student internships and experiential-learning experiences.

Alan Bloomgarden

Alan Bloomgarden says students have done well with internship placements during the pandemic, but safety concerns have impacted some experiences.

“The employers themselves are, I think, not necessarily prioritizing construction of internships, where their employees are really required to do an additional amount of work to supervise students,” he said. “That is difficult under normal circumstances, and it may be a bridge too far for some employers under the current pressures of staffing and adapting to changing health and safety conditions.”

Bloomgarden noted that students in the social sciences and humanities have been encountering a greater degree of difficulty in internship placements because of changing circumstances. Even though the internship program at large is functioning well, some students have still found themselves in a place where the pandemic caused certain internships to fall short, when they might have been successful in a normal year.

Layng echoed this sentiment, remembering a particular instance with a student seeking an internship that highlights the recent limitations of certain internship placements caused by the pandemic.

“I had a student who I was trying to place at Baystate [Health] in the public relations department, and he had experience in healthcare public relations and marketing,” Layng noted. “He would have been an excellent candidate to take the next step … but the person at Baystate said they were just so busy, there’s so many cases, they just can’t really work with interns in the way that would really help them. That’s one clear way the pandemic lessened the opportunities for interns.”

On the other hand, one perhaps unexpected benefit of the recent shift to online internships has been the newfound ability for students to be placed at sites whose far-away locations would have typically eliminated them from being realistic options. The normalization of remote work has opened up opportunities for students in Western Mass. to intern at businesses in larger cities like Boston and New York without having to spend an entire semester away from their university.

“I have seen students develop some creative adaptations to the circumstances that we’re all facing,” Bloomgarden said. “Just as we’re seeing a changing workplace as a society, we’re seeing changes in the face of what internships look like.”

He spoke of how Elms College’s teacher-licensure students had been conducting their experiential learning in a hybrid format but are now being placed at schools in-person. The students in the college’s social-work program have also found themselves returning to in-person internship sites, Bloomgarden said.

“Just as we’re seeing a changing workplace as a society, we’re seeing changes in the face of what internships look like.”

While most students have been gradually returning to in-person internships, some students have been doing internships in this fashion throughout the course of the pandemic. This has been especially true for students who are looking to enter the medical field.

Bloomgarden described the experiences of students in the nursing program at the Elms, and how they have been continuing with clinical placements even with the pandemic.

“They are, in many ways, frontline workers,” he said. “Our students are conducting experiential learning in the same way that the permanent, full-time employees of the organizations hosting them are asking of their employees.”

Internship programs in Western Mass. colleges and universities have found that both students and employers now expect a conversation about the possibility of a virtually formatted internship. The high level of adaptability shown by employers has positively impacted students by allowing them internship opportunities even during very uncertain times.

“Employers are seeing the value of interns and the value of internships as an education practice,” Bloomgarden said. “Internships help with career readiness… they deepen one’s understanding of one’s discipline, having a chance to apply the methods, whatever the field is.”

 

Community Impact

Whether in-person, hybrid, or fully remote, leaders of internship programs still assert that internships in any format are substantially beneficial to students — and for a variety of reasons. Both Layng and Bloomgarden enthusiastically emphasized the importance of internships and the value they provide for a student’s future career.

“It’s a really good stepping stone to a career,” Layng said. “They are going to prepare you for what it’s like, getting ready for the professional world.”

He added that student feedback has been mostly satisfactory, with students expressing that they feel like they are still getting a quality internship even if a fair percentage of them are partially or completely remote.

“Internships and experiential learning can enable active citizenship and the advancement of social action.”

Bloomgarden spoke of the numerous ways that internships are beneficial not only to the students themselves, but also to the businesses they work at and the communities they are a part of.

“Internships and experiential learning can enable active citizenship and the advancement of social action,” he said. “Our job is to encourage and support the development of those pathways to making positive impact on the world. We want to encourage them in becoming meaningful contributors to their communities.”

Colleges Offer Many Ways to Make a Degree More Affordable

By
Bryan Gross
Education Special Coverage

After the Sticker Shock

Bryan Gross

Bryan Gross says families aren’t always aware how many resources are available to help pay for college.

It’s not exactly news that the cost of college — at least, the published price tag — has consistently risen over the past two decades. But the net cost — what students actually pay — has actually crept down a bit. That’s largely due to the myriad resources families can access to help bring those costs down and reduce the initial sticker shock. Putting the pieces together takes some effort, self-education, and patience, but most families would agree that the end result, a degree, is worth the journey.

 

Fifty thousand. Sixty thousand. Seventy-five thousand.

A generation ago, dollar figures in that range might get a student through college; these days, at many schools, they’re typical price tags for one year.

Good thing no one pays sticker.

“I don’t care if you’re making $5 million a year or no money; there isn’t a single student paying the sticker price,” said Richard O’Connor, director of Financial Aid at American International College (AIC). “There’s a lot of shock when families see the sticker price, but as you take them further through the process, they see what the final bottom line is for them.”

Indeed, according to the College Board, for the 2021-22 year, the average published tuition and fees for full-time students average $10,740 for a public, four-year, in-state college, 1.6% higher than in 2020-21. For public, four-year, out-of-state schools, it’s $27,560, 1.5% higher than in 2020-21. Private, four-year colleges currently average $38,070, 2.1% higher than the year before.

However, the majority of full-time undergraduate students receive grant aid that helps them pay for a good deal of those costs. The average net tuition and fees paid by first-time, full-time, in-state students enrolled in public four-year institutions currently sit at $2,640, a 15-year-low. At private schools, it’s $14,990 — again, a 15-year low.

“Almost all families enrolling in college do not pay that sticker price,” said Bryan Gross, vice president of Enrollment Management and Marketing at Western New England University. “There’s always a combination of merit-based and need-based money that goes into it.”

Kerry Cole, vice president for Admissions at AIC, noted that all colleges offer merit scholarships based on a student’s GPA and other measures of high-school success. “They would receive it for all four years, as long as they’re successful progressing in the program. Every school has different guidelines students need to hit, but it’s usually pretty attainable for most students, in addition to federal or other institutional aid.”

In addition, she noted, “students may find it less expensive to go to private school, because of the aid award, than it is to go to a state school. When I was going through 20-plus years ago, that’s exactly what happened. I was a low-income student, had high academics, and was able to attend a private school and live on campus for the equivalent cost of a state school. A lot of people don’t know that until financial-aid time.”

“Almost all families enrolling in college do not pay that sticker price. There’s always a combination of merit-based and need-based money that goes into it.”

On the admissions side, Gross added, “it’s really important for families to understand that different colleges and universities have different ways they evaluate the family’s financial circumstances.” For example, some schools are ‘need-aware’ in crafting the merit package, incorporating a family’s ability to pay, while others, including AIC, are ‘need-blind’ when they award financial-aid packages.

Merit decisions are based on more than grades, too; schools also consider standardized test scores — although these are starting to recede in importance, and many colleges are even test-optional now — as well as extracurricular activities, volunteerism, letters of recommendation, and more.

And that’s just the start of what families need to know about paying for college — a process that can be confusing and intimidating, but is also rife with opportunities to shave down that sticker price even further.

 

Guiding Lights

Community colleges offer a less-daunting price tag to begin with, but that doesn’t mean the process of seeking aid and paying for school is any less thorny. Darcey Kemp, vice president of Student Affairs at Springfield Technical Community College, said STCC guides entering students and their families through a robust onboarding process.

“We do an initiative called Roadmap to STCC, a series of live webinars with students, parents, and guidance counselors on different topics over the course of the year, depending on the time of year it is,” she explained, noting that topics range from testing and placement to financial-aid deadlines and filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Darcey Kemp

Darcey Kemp says efforts to help students manage college costs begin well before they arrive on campus and continue through their time at STCC.

“We make sure we’re ahead of all that,” Kemp said. “FAFSA can be intimidating, and we always want to make sure they know it’s coming and we’re helping them through the process.

“It’s important to normalize the financial-aid process,” she added. “It can be overwhelming — in particular, for anyone who has not had experience doing it before.”

Cole said colleges offer an online net price calculator, where families can input data on GPA, expected family contribution, and other factors to generate an expected net cost well before submitting FAFSA or getting an offer. “It’s not exact,” she noted, “but it’s pretty darn close.”

In addition, O’Connor noted, Western Mass. is rich with resources to secure outside scholarships, from entities ranging from community banks to Big Y; from the Horace Smith Fund to the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the latter of which provides access to scores of scholarship opportunities with one application.

“The importance of a little effort in writing an essay can yield you thousands of dollars in outside scholarship money,” he added.

And high-school seniors shouldn’t overlook the smaller ones, Cole said. “Make this your part-time job on Sunday afternoon — take an hour or two, look for scholarships, write an essay, and send those out. Even $25, $50, $100, those add up; that’s a textbook.”

Gross refers students to fastweb.com, which he calls “a clearinghouse of lots of external scholarships. A lot of students don’t realize these scholarships often have a lot fewer applicants than you would expect, especially those that require an essay.”

Like Cole, Gross suggested students carve out time on the weekends to make an investment in their finances. “Now, the last thing you want to do is write another essay, but take Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and do some essay prompts; what you find on Fastweb can be reused and apply to a bunch. I’ve seen families surprised they got some of these national and regional scholarships — $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 … every bit helps.”

Meanwhile, he added, parents might reach out to their employers to see if they offer tuition-reimbursement programs they might not have even been aware of.

Once on campus, many students take advantage of federal work-study programs to reduce their tuition bill — and gain valuable work experience to boot.

“It’s a job on campus, but it’s also a learning experience for students,” Cole said. “If they’re going to make mistakes, better to make them here, and be mentored and educated through the process, than make them out in the corporate world. Many of them don’t have office experience; most students wouldn’t at 18 years old. That’s another benefit of work study.”

Gross stressed that jobs on campus are available, but not guaranteed. “You still need to interview for a job, show up, demonstrate skill, or you could lose the job.

“It’s a good opportunity for students,” he added, “but at the same time, with COVID-19 stress and academic demands, you always want to have a family conversation about whether working the first semester makes sense, or if it’s better to adjust to all the academic issues before working.”

 

A Dramatic Shift

A few colleges have made a splash in recent years by eliminating loans from their financial-aid packages and replacing them with grants. Smith College recently announced it would begin doing that starting this fall.

This expansion of the college’s financial-aid program represents a new annual investment of $7 million, which will bring the college’s total aid awarded next year to more than $90 million. All students receiving need-based institutional aid, which represents more than 60% of the student body, will receive an increase in their grant funding from the college.

Kerry Cole and Richard O’Connor

Kerry Cole and Richard O’Connor say students shouldn’t be hesitant to reach out if they run into difficulties with college costs during their time at AIC.

“Eliminating loans from financial-aid packages will enable Smith to recruit and enroll the best students, regardless of family resources, and enable future alums to begin their careers or continue their studies with their debts greatly reduced or eliminated,” President Kathleen McCartney wrote in a letter to the campus body last fall. Reducing college debt, she added, “will be life-changing for students, families, and future alums.”

In addition to providing financial aid, Smith will award one-time ‘startup grants’ of $1,000 to entering students with an expected family contribution of less than $7,000. And to seniors graduating in 2022 with need-based institutional grants, Smith will offer one-time ‘launch grants’ of $2,000 to help with the cost of transitioning to life after college. All these new initiatives will be funded through gifts to the college and recent endowment gains.

That’s a turn for the better for many students at the Northampton institution. But circumstances can turn for the worse, too, on any campus. A job loss or death in the family can suddenly put a student in financial distress, O’Connor noted. “There are some resources we use at AIC to try to help students who are enrolled and on their path, but face some financial hurdles, which pop up all the time for families.”

Sometimes the hurdle is too much to overcome, but he stressed the importance of contacting the Financial Aid office sooner than later. “My advice is, if you know you’re having some financial issues, reach out and start those conversations.”

Sometimes AIC isn’t the right school for a prospective student right now, but it could be in the future, Cole said. In that case, a transfer path from a community college may be the best option. “The important thing is to keep the same timeline. If you want to graduate in four years as a history major, go get yourself a solid liberal-arts foundation at a community college.

“We can talk about all your options early on,” she added. “Our goal is to have students finish.”

Kemp said families should learn about the Commonwealth Commitment program, which aims to significantly reduce college costs by having students do just that — spend two years at a community college followed by two years at a four-year institution. “We always want to make sure, especially in such challenging times, that we’re as proactive and sharing as much information as possible with the student.”

“It’s important to normalize the financial-aid process. It can be overwhelming — in particular, for anyone who has not had experience doing it before.”

Gross noted that the federal government has a process called professional judgment in the case of changing financial circumstances for students already enrolled at WNE or any other college. “We take families through the professional-judgment process, the government re-looks at the FAFSA information, and can adjust families’ expected contribution, which would potentially qualify them for more federal or state funding.”

In addition, “most schools have some emergency funding, which is limited,” he said, as colleges can’t hand out money to everyone.

 

Toward the Finish Line

At STCC, the importance of understanding the financial process, and laying down a foundation for success after college, doesn’t end with enrollment. A counselor is on campus twice a week, working with students individually with financial-aid questions.

In addition, the Center for Access Services provides a broad range of non-academic supports, including assistance with food and basic supplies in the event of financial hardship.

“There are some resources we use at AIC to try to help students who are enrolled and on their path, but face some financial hurdles, which pop up all the time for families.”

“During COVID in particular, we’ve seen an increase in students encountering short-term financial emergences that prevent them from continuing their education goal, so we help them overcome those short-term emergencies and successfully complete their coursework,” Kemp explained.

There’s a curricular focus on financial literacy as well, including a personal-finance course, she noted. “Everyone has different needs when it comes to personal finances. We’re really trying to provide as many supports as possible but educate students from a financial-literacy perspective as well.”

The bottom line? Colleges want students to succeed — when they’re on campus, to be sure, but also when they’re still pondering whether they can afford to enroll at all.

“The average school may discount tuition by 40% or 50%,” Gross said. “So definitely look beyond the sticker price.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Community Colleges Face Falling Enrollment, Questions About the Future

By
Springfield Technical Community College President John Cook
Education Special Coverage

A Stern Test Continues

Springfield Technical Community College President John Cook

Springfield Technical Community College President John Cook

 

For the area community’s colleges, the enrollment numbers continue to fall, with annual declines recently in the double digits. There are many reasons for these declines, which actually started well before COVID but were greatly exacerbated by the pandemic. With many students and potential students now in a state of what one college president called “paralysis,” there are hard-to-answer questions about what ‘normal’ will be like moving forward.

 

It’s been a while since anyone has talked about parking at Springfield Technical Community College — or the lack thereof.

John Cook, the school’s president, sometimes yearns for the days when they did.

And that was most days. Indeed, going back decades, parking was a problem at this urban campus that sits on the site of the Springfield Armory, despite numerous efforts to add more. By the time Cook arrived in 2017, the school was still parking cars on the commons (the old parade grounds converted by the school into athletic fields) the first few days of classes to make sure all students had a space. That practice was no longer necessary after a new lot was built near the Pearl Street entrance in 2019.

These days, there’s plenty of space in that lot and all the others as enrollment at the school continues a downward trajectory, a pattern seen at the other community colleges in the area — one that is defying many of the patterns concerning these schools and the economy, but one that was already in evidence before the pandemic and only accelerated by it.

“People are in a state of paralysis. And that fear, uncertainty, and the unknown is a driving factor for a lot of people; they feel stuck, they feel lost, and they don’t have a sense of even what they should be preparing for.”

Indeed, since STCC saw enrollment hit its high-water mark just after the Great Recession of 2008, roughly 7,000 students, the numbers have been declining steadily to the present 4,000 or so.

“We were down 16 or 17% last year, and this fall, we were down another 10%,” said Cook, adding that this pattern has been seen at other schools as well, with COVID-19 adding an exclamation point to the problem. At Holyoke Community College, for example, enrollment saw another double-digit decline in 2021, and President Christina Royal said that, with just six weeks to the start of the spring semester, the numbers are down another 7% or so from this time last year.

While most all colleges are seeing enrollment declines at this time, community colleges are being especially hard-hit, in large part because the students who attend these schools, especially older, non-traditional students, are those most impacted by the pandemic and its many side effects, from unemployment to issues with childcare to overall problems balancing life, work, and school.

Christina Royal

Christina Royal says some students and potential students are stuck in state of what she called ‘paralysis,’ not knowing exactly what kind of career to prepare for.

While many have returned to the classroom, others have remained on the sidelines, and they are in a state of what Royal likened to paralysis, not knowing exactly what to do with their lives or even what course of study to embark upon. And this distinguishes what’s happening now in the economy from almost anything that has happened before.

“A recession, as difficult as it is, is a predictable circumstance — and it has been up to this point,” she noted. “People are familiar with the ebbs and flows of the economy. What we’re dealing with now is fear, uncertainty, and the unknown.

“Now people are in a state of paralysis,” she went on. “And that fear, uncertainty, and the unknown is a driving factor for a lot of people; they feel stuck, they feel lost, and they don’t have a sense of even what they should be preparing for.”

She said these factors help explain why enrollment continues to decline at a time when logic says they should be rising based on previous performance. Indeed, community-college enrollment would normally rise when the country is in recession or something close to it, when unemployment is still higher than average, and, especially, when businesses in every sector, from manufacturing to IT to healthcare, are facing a workforce crisis unlike anything seen before. And it would also be expected to rise when the cost of four-year schools continue to soar and many parents are looking to community colleges as a sound alternative for those first two years.

“A two-year college is just as good as a four-year school, and it can potentially be a feeder to the four-year college, where they will do even better because they have the foundation from us.”

Michelle Coach, campus CEO at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, agreed. She said enrollment at ACC (one of 12 schools currently being merged into something called the Connecticut State Community College), which hit its peak of just under 1,000 a few years ago, is now in the mid-700s for full-time equivalents, up from a low of 650. The numbers are down for several reasons, including restrictions due to COVID that kept inmates from four prisons within just a few miles of the school from attending.

Even enrollment in the school’s popular manufacturing program, which has been supplying graduates to area plants in desperate need of workers, is down, she said, adding that many who would be applying are cautious and hesitant for all those reasons mentioned above.

Overall, many factors are contributing to the falling numbers, from COVID to smaller high-school graduating classes. The ongoing challenge for schools, Coach said, is to tap into new pools of students and consistently stress the value — in the many ways it can be defined — of a community-college education.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with area community-college leaders about the present and, to the extent they can project, the future as well. In short, these administrators don’t know when, or to what to extent, things will return to normal.

 

Unsteady Course

As she talked about enrollment and the state of community colleges today, Royal, like the others we spoke with, reiterated that the declines in the numbers started well before COVID.

Indeed, if one were to chart the numbers from the past 15 years or so, she explained, there would be a bell curve, or something approximating it, with the numbers slowly rising until they hit their peak just after the Great Recession and then beginning a gradual tumble after that.

“When I came in in 2017, we had already seen seven consecutive years of declining enrollment — this is certainly a long-term trend,” she said, adding that she believes there is some artificiality in comparing today’s numbers to the high-water marks of a decade or so ago. “If you take out the effect of the recession, both the ramp-up and the decline afterwards, it doesn’t look as extreme and bumpy.” 

Michelle Coach says there is general optimism

Michelle Coach says there is general optimism that enrollment numbers at ACC and elsewhere in Connecticut will start to move higher, especially with the many incentives being offered.

But ‘gradual’ turned into something much more pronounced during the pandemic, said those we spoke with, noting that enrollment is off 20% or more from a few years ago, and for a host of reasons.

The declines have become the most pressing topic — after ever-changing COVID protocols — at the regular meetings of the state’s 15 community-college presidents, said Cook, adding that, collectively, the schools are looking for answers, a path forward, and perhaps an understanding of what ‘normal’ will look like in the short and long term.

The answers won’t come easily because COVID has created a situation without precedent, and the current trends, as noted earlier, defy historical patterns, he explained, adding that the overarching question now is “where are the people who would be our students? What are they doing?”

And at the moment, many of them are still trying to simply cope with the pandemic.
“They’re still trying to figure out childcare in many cases,” he went on. “Or they may be reconsidering what their own career process might be. And there’s a lot of people who are standing pat and taking stock of what’s important.”

Cook said there has been growth in some numbers, especially those involving students of color and especially the Hispanic population, and there has been growth in some individual programs, such as health science, which the school didn’t have four years ago.

But numbers are down in many areas, including nursing — at least from a retention standpoint — at a time when demand for people in that profession has perhaps never been greater. It’s another sign that these are certainly not normal times.

Royal agreed. “When we have a typical recession, people don’t like the fact that they can’t find jobs or that they’re laid off,” she noted. “But they know that they have to retool, they go back to college, so that they can be prepared for when the jobs come back and the wages start to go up. Now, people are stuck.

“When you have such a global event as COVID-19 has been for our world, then it has put a lot of people in this state of ‘I don’t even know what a couple of months is going to look like — I might not even know what next week is going to look like. How can I think about going to college and starting a future when I’m not even sure what we’re here for anymore, what my purpose is, and what I want to do?’ All of this is causing people to stay still.”

And it’s prompting those running community colleges to do what they can to get them moving again, understanding this may be difficult given those factors that Royal described and fresh uncertainty in the wake of the Omicron variant and rising COVID cases as the winter months approach.

Indeed, most of the colleges are doing some targeted marketing and putting some of the federal-assistance funds to work helping students with the financial aspects of a community-college education.

“We certainly have used every tool available to us to help us with recruitment and retention,” Cook explained, adding that STCC has issued checks of up to $1,500 to help them defray the costs of their education.

“These are not loans … it’s $1,500 to use as you as you decide,” he said. “We’ve done things like that, and we’ve done it for three semesters. This is a real shot in the arm for people.”

Some are taking advantage of the unique opportunity, but many others remain on the sidelines because of COVID-related issues such as childcare, matters that $1,500 checks cannot fix.

At Asnuntuck, the school is being equally aggressive, especially when it comes to recruiting students from the Bay State. Through its Dare to Cross the Line program, Massachusetts residents can attend ACC for the same price as those in Connecticut.

“Currently, 10% of our students are from Massachusetts, and that has stayed fairly consistent,” Coach explained, adding that many enroll in the manufacturing program and a good number in cosmetology, but there is interest across the board. “We’re trying to get the word out, and we’ve done some additional outreach to Massachusetts high-school students.”

Meanwhile, thanks to a grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, ACC was able to place ‘smart classrooms’ in each of the nearby prisons to allow inmates to take classes, bringing enrollment numbers up somewhat.

Moving forward, with high-school graduating classes getting consistently smaller, there will be greater outreach to non-traditional students, but also a focus on high-school and even middle-school students — and their parents — with the goal of stressing the many advantages presented by the two-year schools.

“For the high schools, we’re trying to change the perception of community colleges,” Coach explained. “In the past, they’ve always said, ‘this is how many students are going to a four-year university.’ Well, a two-year college is just as good as a four-year school, and it can potentially be a feeder to the four-year college, where they will do even better because they have the foundation from us.”

 

Learning Curves

Overall, Royal and others said it’s clear that community colleges will have to make continual adjustments to bring more people to their schools and see them through to completion of their program. Changes and priorities will likely include everything from a greater emphasis on early college — enabling high-school students to earn credits for college in hopes that this might change their overall career trajectory — to greater flexibility with semester schedules and length of same, to efforts to address the many work/life/school issues challenging students, especially older, non-traditional students.

Royal noted that those who will graduate next spring will have spent their entire time at HCC coping with a global pandemic and everything that has come with it.

These students hung in and persevered, received their degrees, and, in many cases, will be moving on to a four-year school. 

“These are the students that have embraced that uncertainty, and say, ‘I’m going to do something with my life; we don’t know what’s going to happen in the world, but I’m going to further myself and be prepared for when we get to the other side of that.’ That’s who you’re going to see in our graduating class.”

What you won’t see are those who became stuck, as she called it, those who didn’t have the inclination or the ability to plow forward during the pandemic.

Just when people can and will move out of this state of paralysis is still a question mark. Until then, parking will remain a non-issue at STCC — and other schools as well — and the region’s community colleges will remain tested by a situation that is defying trends and their own history.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Janis Santos Reflects on 50 Years in Early-childhood Education

By
Janis Santos, seen here with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy
Education

A Class Act

Janis Santos

Janis Santos has spent nearly a half-century as an administrator, but she never lost her enthusiasm for being in the classroom and reading to children.

During the early, and darkest, days of the pandemic, Janis Santos recalls, she considered it vitally important to remain positive and find ways to permit her positive attitude to trickle down to every employee and every facet of the Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start operation.

And so, in her daily communications with staff, she would include quotes designed to inspire and uplift others at a time of unprecedented challenge. She borrowed quotes from many, but leaned heavily on Fred Rogers (better known to most as Mister Rogers) — whom she described as a hero for the way he forcefully drove home the message about how very young children learn through play — and also the poet Maya Angelou.

From the latter, there was one passage she remembers using more than a few times: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

But as powerful and effectual as those words were, it was probably some from Santos herself that helped propel her staff through those tumultuous times. 

When asked to recall and paraphrase, she said, “everyone needed to hear that we’ve been through things before, maybe not as bad as this … but we do this for children. Why are we here? What is our purpose? We’re committed and dedicated to America’s most vulnerable children. We have a big challenge to face — we need to keep the children safe and their families safe — so let’s do it together.”

Those comments are quite poignant because they sum up not only what Santos was saying at the height of the pandemic, but what she’s been saying — and doing — during a remarkable, nearly half-century-long career in Head Start that will come to a close — officially, but not in reality — on Dec. 31.

Indeed, from the time she opened a Head Start facility in the basement of the Boys & Girls Club in Ludlow in 1973, she has been dedicated to the country’s, and this region’s, most vulnerable children. But just as important, she’s been dedicated to those who work with and on behalf of those children, working tirelessly to stress the importance of early-childhood education and lobby for appropriate wages for those at the front of the classrooms.

“I will stay connected to Head Start; I’ve devoted my life to advocating for America’s most vulnerable children, and I will continue to do that.”

And, in what could only be considered irony, the pandemic that tested her mettle as no other challenge during her long career has helped reinforce that message and bring it home in ways that seem destined to bring real change to the landscape.

“During COVID, when there was a lack of childcare and no place for parents to leave their children when they went to work, it became a point of focus,” she explained. “The public finally saw that this is important; they saw how important these facilities are to parents, employers, and the economy.”

But while COVID-19 enlightened many on this topic, it also brought attention to another aspect of this profession that has been a career-long priority for Santos — the need to raise the salary levels for preschool educators.

Indeed, at a time when employers in every sector of the economy are struggling to retain workers being tempted by higher wages and better benefits elsewhere, the problem is especially acute in early-childhood education.

“This year, I’ve lost 15 Head Start teachers to public schools,” she noted, adding that, while it has always been a challenge to recruit people to this profession and retain them, at this critical juncture, it is even more so.

As noted, Santos will be retiring at the end of the year, but not leaving the scene when it comes to advocating for early-childhood education and those who provide it.

“I will stay connected to Head Start; I’ve devoted my life to advocating for America’s most vulnerable children, and I will continue to do that,” she said, adding that, while continuing those lobbying efforts, she plans to write a history of Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start.

It’s a rich history, obviously, and Santos, named a Woman of Impact by BusinessWest in 2018, had a hand in most of it. For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Santos about her career, the changes that have come to early-childhood education, and the changes she believes still need to come.

 

School of Thought

By now, most people in the region know at least some of what we’ll call the Janis Santos story. Most versions begin when she was a mother of three enrolled in night classes at Holyoke Community College, with the dream of being a preschool teacher.

It was there, and then, that a young man in her class who was from Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start encouraged her to start a facility in Ludlow. She did, eventually opening the Parkside Learning Center in that aforementioned basement of the Boys & Girls Club, in 1973. But as she would eventually learn, nothing about getting that facility off the ground — from securing the space to securing the funding — was going to be easy.

Janis Santos, seen here with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy

Janis Santos, seen here with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, has spent a lifetime preaching the importance of early-childhood education.

She recalls that Head Start was struggling financially as an organization and was not able to actually pay her a salary.

“They offered me $18 a week in Commonwealth Corp. money, and I took it,” she recalled. “I had no benefits, no nothing, and I took that for about three years until my site started to generate some income.”

But what she also learned, rather quickly and much to her dismay, was that there wasn’t much respect within the community, and within the broad realm of education, for what she was doing with her life and her career.

“The perception was that we were babysitters out there, and I felt that people just don’t understand that these are critical learning years for children,” she said. “And the other piece is that children in that age group learn through play; some of my friends would visit and say, ‘why don’t you become a real teacher and go teach kindergarten?’”

Instead of listening to that advice, she spent a lifetime convincing others that she was a real teacher and that early education was vital to young people, their families, and society in general.

“The perception was that we were babysitters out there, and I felt that people just don’t understand that these are critical learning years for children, Some of my friends would visit and say, ‘why don’t you become a real teacher and go teach kindergarten?’”

“I was determined to change those perceptions,” she said. “I wanted people, and educators, and the community to know the importance of those years.”

She would become the director of Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start in 1979 and also go on to serve on the National Head Start Board of Directors for 14 years, which gave her the opportunity to not only advocate for the nation’s most vulnerable children, but make the case for early-childhood education.

Over the years, she would meet three American presidents and lobby countless elected officials on the importance of pre-K and the need to improve the wages of those in that profession. She has pictures of herself with then-U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, several governors, and many other elected leaders.

But as important as her time with those elected leaders has been — and it has been vitally important to moving the needle on early-childhood education — Santos said the most valuable time she spent was with children in the classroom and with teachers and other staff members as a mentor.

She has taken on that role with countless individuals over the years, including the woman chosen in a national search to be her successor at HCS Head Start, Nicole Blais.

To say these two go way back is an understatement. Indeed, Santos was Blais’s preschool teacher in Ludlow in the ’70s.

Santos said she has been working with Blais during the transition, and has some pointed advice for her based on nearly 45 years of being in that job — and also advice provided by those who mentored her.

“One of them told me, ‘you have to take a bold, respectful approach,’ and I’ve never forgotten that,” she told BusinessWest.

She has some other advice for as well — to follow her lead when it comes to taking risks, something one needs to do to succeed as a leader.

“I’m a risk taker,” she told BusinessWest, referring to everything from that first gambit in Ludlow, the one that paid her $18 a week, to her partnership with MGM Springfield on a new facility in Springfield, to her involvement in the new Educare program that opened in 2019. “You can’t sit back; you have to go out there and take risks, and that’s what I tell those that I mentor. I tell them, ‘if you don’t take risks, you will not succeed.’”

 

Learning Experiences

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.  But for children, play is serious learning.”

That’s one of those quotes from Mister Rogers that Santos used to help encourage and inspire staff during the darkest times of the pandemic.

It’s more than that, though. It’s one of the pillars on which early-childhood education is built and one of the critical points Santos has spent a career trying to drive home to a wide range of constituencies.

With a little help from COVID, there is a now a better understanding of the importance of early-childhood education and perhaps better odds for universal pre-K to become policy in this country.

In the meantime, most have stopped referring to early-childhood educators as babysitters. And at a time when Santos is being honored by a number of groups for her many accomplishments, that is probably the biggest.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Colleges Welcome Students Back with an Abundance of Caution

By
Matthew Scott says the double protection of vaccines and masks
Education Special Coverage

Continuing Education

Matthew Scott says the double protection of vaccines and masks

Matthew Scott says the double protection of vaccines and masks are a good start to keeping AIC’s campus safe.

 

After a year when colleges offered a wide variety of learning options during the pandemic, from in-person to remote to a blend of both, the vast majority have opened their classrooms, residence halls, and athletic fields for a true on-campus experience this fall. But they’re doing so with caution, both internally — in the form of vaccine requirements — and backed by municipalities that are issuing broad mask mandates. The bottom line through all the changes? The idea that young people need the full college experience, and no one wants to risk a disheartening retreat to Zoom.

 

Everyone is tired of pivoting, Matthew Scott said. But, by now, they’re good at it, too.

“We’ve learned that our students are adaptable. They don’t always want to be, but they’ll go with the flow and make it happen. And our staff members have just rolled up their sleeves and said, ‘what needs to be done?’”

As vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students at American International College (AIC) in Springfield, Scott is just one of countless higher-education administrators who have spent the past 18 months adapting to one unexpected development after another when it came to COVID-19 and how students could best learn and interact during the pandemic.

“You want to plan in times when you aren’t in the middle of a crisis, so that you’re ready to use that plan when a crisis occurs,” he said. “But when you’re thinking through your crisis-planning process, you’re thinking of things like a fire or a hurricane coming through. Nobody planned for a pandemic. We had protocols for a specific outbreak, but not something like this.”

The lesson? “We learned that we need to be agile. You might spend weeks planning something, and then one order comes through from the local or state government, and you need to pivot.”

The latest pivot for AIC, one similar to what most colleges and universities are doing, involves students living and learning on campus, with residence halls open and clubs and sports in full swing. But a facemask requirement is back, too, at least indoors. And AIC is also requiring students and employees to be vaccinated against COVID.

“We learned that we need to be agile. You might spend weeks planning something, and then one order comes through from the local or state government, and you need to pivot.”

“At last count, we were at 98%, which is a phenomenal number to get to,” Scott said, noting that religious and medical exemptions are being given, but those people are required to be tested weekly, and their quarantine and isolation protocols in the case of infection differ from those of a vaccinated individual. “So far, the vaccination rate has been helping us quite a bit.”

Elms College in Chicopee has also mandated both masks indoors and vaccination for everyone (students, faculty, and staff) without a legitimate exemption.

“Last year, masks were required everywhere. Now, they are not required outdoors if you don’t have anyone within six feet of you,” President Harry Dumay said. “We don’t have distancing in the clasrooms like last year. But we’ll be functioning with a campus that is fully vaccinated.”

While students could choose to take classes in person or remotely last year, Dumay said the college is asking all undergraduates to be in classrooms this year, although remote capabilities are in place in case someone needs to quarantine.

President Harry Dumay says Elms College not only has a plan

President Harry Dumay says Elms College not only has a plan for this fall, but “a backup to the plan and a backup to the backup.”

“We thought this year would be completely free of all these things, but what we’re seeing in the region and on campus are a lot of breakthrough cases, and Delta is more contagious than the original virus,” Dumay said.

When asked about pushback from students on the vaccine mandate, he said he wouldn’t use that word, exactly. “We certainly had quite a few inquiries from parents, saying, ‘is that necessary?’ Or from staff or employees asking, ‘so what does that mean if I don’t do it?’ I don’t know if anyone resigned on our campus or decided not to come because of the vaccination. There might be one or two cases, but I haven’t heard that.”

Scott said students tend to understand that vaccines not only prevent COVID in many cases, but reduce its severity in others.

At the same time, however, “college-age people are not particularly concerned about hospitalization or death because, for the vast majority of them, they’re able to weather the storm and get through it. But part of the education process is making sure they understand it’s not just about them, it’s about the people around them who might have underlying conditions they might not know about.”

If there has been any pushback, he noted, it has taken the form of questions about why both vaccines and masks are necessary.

“We thought this year would be completely free of all these things, but what we’re seeing in the region and on campus are a lot of breakthrough cases, and Delta is more contagious than the original virus.”

“We’d say, ‘yes, you’re vaccinated, and yes, that probably means there’s a lower likelihood of you contracting COVID, but if you do, you might not know you have it, and you might pass it on to somebody else — maybe a child who can’t get a vaccine, or maybe someone who’s immunocompromised,’” he explained. “For the most part, people get it. More than 1,000 U.S. colleges are requiring vaccines, so we’re among many at this point.”

 

Taking Their Shot

Holyoke Community College President Christina Royal said HCC balanced the desire among many students to get back to in-person learning with the constantly changing health metrics around the Delta variant. “So we decided to open with about a third of classes in person, face to face; a third online; and another third blended of some sort.”

The original plan earlier this summer called for about 25% of classes in person, she explained, “but as those classes were filling up, we heard students wanted more of them, so we added some additional sections. Then we increased class sizes, which were lowered during the pandemic.”

Now 15 students are allowed in a class, still small enough to allow for social distancing, Royal said.

At the same time, “we were also hearing from other students who were not comfortable coming back in, given the conditions in the world. So that’s where we are this semester — we wanted to have a range of options for students so we can match whatever their comfort level is.”

HCC has had a mask mandate on campus since the start of the pandemic and has never lifted it. The college also modified its ventilation systems. “We have several classrooms that don’t have windows, and we wanted to make sure people felt comfortable in the learning spaces.”

In addition, the campus added protective barriers in many places and signage reminding students about masks, social distancing, and hand washing, as well as the need to get vaccinated.

Holyoke Community College President Christina Royal

Holyoke Community College President Christina Royal says the state’s community-college presidents are unified in their support of a vaccine mandate.

That is more than a nudge now, as all 15 community colleges in Massachusetts instituted a vaccine mandate last week for all students, faculty, and staff, which must be fully met by January.

“During the last 18 months, the Massachusetts community colleges have prioritized the health and safety of our communities while also recognizing that many of our students have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the presidents said in a statement shared with their campuses. “While a significant number of students, faculty, and staff are already vaccinated or are in the process of becoming vaccinated, the 15 colleges are seeking to increase the health and safety of the learning and working environment in light of the ongoing public health concerns and current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

In her own message to the HCC community, Royal noted that, “while there is no ironclad defense against coronavirus, extensive public-health research has shown that vaccination greatly reduces the risk of hospitalization and death.”

While the UMass system has not yet instituted a vaccine mandate, UMass Amherst is strongly advising shots for all students and employees. “The science is clear that vaccination is the best way to stop COVID-19 from spreading, and our best way to continue protecting each other’s well-being,” an official statement reads.

In the meantime, individuals who are not vaccinated are required to participate in the university’s asymptomatic testing program.

UMass Amherst is also back to in-person learning, but is following public-health guidelines for wearing masks indoors and distancing where possible.

“If we need to do more education and bring some public-health experts in to reduce misinformation and allow for people to get the facts, then we’ll certainly do that as part of our strategy.”

“The use of indoor masks, required on campus and in the town of Amherst … reduce the spread of infection, said Ann Becker, Public Health director, and Jeffrey Hescock, executive director of Environmental Health and Safety, in the campus’ Public Health Promotion Center, in a statement. But they also laid out the stark facts when it comes to vaccination.

“Our data shows that, among our vaccinated population, only 1.7% have tested positive. Among the approximately 500 individuals who have received religious or medical exemptions from vaccination, 10.05% have tested positive. We urge those not yet vaccinated to consider doing so.”

They noted, however, that positive cases have been predominately among undergraduate off-campus students connected to unmasked social activities. “We have not seen any spread in academic settings. Most cases continue to be of short duration, resulting in mild to moderate illness.”

UMass makes vaccine clinics readily availabe on campus, as do the 15 community colleges. HCC offers free COVID-19 vaccinations for four hours every Tuesday, as well as COVID-19 testing six days a week on campus through the Holyoke Board of Health.

Royal was adamant that a vaccine mandate was the right call.

“I think this is in our collective best interest, for our community colleges and for our region as well,” she told BusinessWest. “At this point, the vaccines have been shown to be effective when we’re talking about preventing disease or reducing hospitalizations and deaths.”

She recognizes that people have many different perspectives that should be respected, but that the college has a duty to combat misinformation.

“If we need to do more education and bring some public-health experts in to reduce misinformation and allow for people to get the facts, then we’ll certainly do that as part of our strategy.”

 

Life of the Campus

In some ways, it has been a frustrating start to the semester, Dumay said, noting that the general feeling earlier in the summer was that masks would be optional, let alone vaccines, as COVID gradually retreated. While it hasn’t, he noted that it’s important for students to safety enjoy the full Elms experience.

“One of the distinctive features of an Elms College education … is that it offers a vibrant and nurturing environment, and not just with the instruction that happens in the classroom,” he said. “It’s all the interactions and how people behave with one another.”

College leaders believe important personal growth occurs through that interaction, he added.

“You can’t really do that with an online model. You can approximate it, but it’s not ideal. So to the extent we can, we’ll take the steps that are necessary so we’re safe and have an on-campus education, particularly for young people who are at that stage in their life where they’re forming their character.”

Like Scott, Dumay said the key lesson from the pandemic has been that it’s good to have a plan, but one thet can be modified at any given time. “We have a backup to the plan and a backup to the backup. We’re prepared to shift as the environment changes.”

The second lesson is the importance of transparent communication, he noted, because without it, people tend to fill the gaps with misinformation.

“We’re not pretending the pandemic is over by any means,” AIC’s Scott said. “We’re complying with the Springfield mask mandate right now and requiring masks indoors and outdoors when you can’t maintain the six feet. But we still have a tent set up outside; we’re trying to drive people outside as much as possible, just as an extra layer of protection.

“But the 98% vaccination rate, along with masking — I don’t want to give people a false sense of security where you don’t have to be vigilant, but we’re feeling pretty confident that we’re doing what we need to do to keep people safe.”

If a pocket of infection arises, the campus is ready to bring in more testing supplies and trigger quarantine protocols, but Scott feels like the double protection offered by vaccines and masks are the best way to keep that possibility at bay.

“There’s no one to be mad at,” he added. “I’m not mad at the mayor for putting in a mask mandate; he’s doing what needs to be done to keep the people in the community safe. But is it frustrating when you think you have a plan and the pandemic doesn’t cooperate? Of course, but a virus doesn’t cooperate.”

What makes all the planning and inconveniences worthwhile, he said, was seeing the energy of the students as they moved back onto campus a month ago.

“It was kind of a heartwarming moment seeing some of these returners … they left in March of 2020, and they didn’t come back until the beginning of this September. So when they see each other in person for the very first time in a long while, you can see it, you can feel it. They want to be with each other.

“We believe in the on-campus experience,” he added. “They’re coming here for all these things — to participate in athletics, to live in the residence halls, to eat in the dining commons. We’re on an online campus in this moment.”

Dumay saw the same energy at the Elms — and doesn’t want to do anything that might threaten to snuff it out.

“The first week, seeing students back on campus, was fantastic,” he said. “They’re happy to be here. They don’t want to be sent back to Zoom. They’re happy to be with each other. And we’re happy to see them.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Mannings’ Gift of $50 Million Is Largest in UMass History

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Education

Access and Opportunity

 

The University of Massachusetts recently announced it will receive a cash gift of $50 million from Robert and Donna Manning. The gift, the largest of any kind in the university’s history, is aimed at increasing access and opportunity across the five-campus university system.

The first distribution of the $50 million will be $15 million to endow the UMass Boston Nursing program, which will become the Robert and Donna Manning College of Nursing and Health Sciences. The funds will be focused on supporting student diversity and ensuring that the new cohort of nursing professionals are champions of equitable patient care.

Donna Manning’s 35-year career as an oncology nurse at Boston Medical Center inspired the decision to focus the gift on nursing at UMass Boston. Known for her dedication to patients, Manning donated her salary to the hospital each year.

“For the majority of my career in Boston, I was struck by the fact that most of the nurses looked like me, while most of the patients didn’t,” she said. “UMass Boston plays a critical role in supporting diversity in Boston, and I have seen firsthand how diversity in the nursing workforce can improve patient care and address health inequities. We look forward to actively working with the college on these important goals.”

The College of Nursing and Health Sciences is the fastest-growing college at UMass Boston and offers the only four-year public programs in nursing and exercise and health sciences in the Greater Boston area. The undergraduate and graduate population of approximately 2,100 students in the college is 19% black, 12% Latinx, and 11% Asian-American/Pacific islander.

“This transformational gift from Rob and Donna comes at the right time and the right place and for a beautiful cause: to foster a culture of healing and health equity in Boston and beyond. It will enable UMass Boston to take the education of the next generation of nurses nobly serving as caregivers to the next level of excellence and engagement,” UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco said. “Amidst a pandemic, rampant medical disinformation, nursing shortages, and the heroism of healthcare workers, we at UMass Boston are more committed than ever to cultivating extraordinary nursing talent. The Mannings’ historic gift will be put to use to nurture the next generation of health and wellness scientific expertise, but also the humane heart, the empathy and cultural awareness that define caregiving in its truest sense.”

In the coming months, the Mannings plan to announce distributions from the overall gift to improve access and opportunity on the other UMass campuses in Amherst, Dartmouth, Lowell, and Worcester.

“Donna and I are at a point in our lives where we want to make a real difference, and this was the best way to do that because we know what UMass does for students — it transforms lives,” said Robert Manning, who is chairman of MFS Investment Management and the long-time chair of the UMass board of trustees. “We firmly believe that UMass is the most important asset in the Commonwealth and that the greatest thing we can do to support the Commonwealth is to support the UMass campuses and UMass students.”

The $50 million gift from the Mannings is a transformational moment for the UMass system and would represent the largest-ever commitment received by the university even if it were not an upfront, cash gift.

“The significance of this gift cannot be overstated,” UMass President Marty Meehan said. “Rob and Donna are two of our own. As first-generation college graduates, they experienced the transformational impact UMass has on students’ lives. Rob and Donna have always led by example in their philanthropy, and this remarkable gift is a call to action to the philanthropic community. It says that UMass is a good investment and an opportunity to have direct and immediate impact on the future of the Commonwealth. On behalf of the five campuses, we thank the Mannings for their incredible generosity and commitment to students.”

The Mannings are Methuen natives and were high-school sweethearts. They both commuted to UMass Lowell, with Robert receiving a degree in information systems management from UMass Lowell in 1984 and Donna receiving a nursing degree in 1985 and an MBA from UMass Lowell in 1991. They each received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from UMass Lowell in 2011.

Immediately after graduating from UMass Lowell, Robert Manning began working at MFS Investment Management as a research analyst in its high-yield bond group, and credits his UMass education with giving him a competitive edge. Over his career at MFS, he rose to become president, CEO, and then chair. Under his leadership, MFS has grown to manage more than $670 billion in assets annually. He will retire this year. Donna Manning retired from Boston Medical Center in 2018. The couple plans to be heavily engaged in the UMass programs their gifts will support.

The Mannings were already among UMass’ greatest supporters, having committed more than $11 million to UMass Lowell, where the Manning School of Business bears their name. On the Lowell campus, they have endowed several faculty chairs, sponsored a nursing-simulation lab, and established the Robert and Donna Manning Endowed Scholarship Fund. The Manning Prize for Excellence in Teaching is awarded to faculty on all five UMass campuses for high-impact teaching.

Square One Aims to Make an Impact with Financial-literacy Program

By Contributor
Education

Dollars and Sense

By Mark Morris

From left: Square One’s Dawn DiStefano, Melissa Blissett, and Kristine Allard; and FP Investment Group’s Flavia McCaughey, Flavia Cote, and Peter Cote.

Given the scope of Square One’s work for children and families, it’s not unusual for the organization to receive contributions to support its efforts.

But recently, FR Investment Group offered a donation that goes far beyond writing a check.

“Instead of making a monetary donation, we’ve chosen to do something harder,” said Peter Cote, president of FP Investment Group. “We’re giving our time and services to help Square One clients and staff improve their financial literacy.”

Dawn DiStefano, Square One’s executive director, had seen similar attempts at financial education fizzle out, despite good intentions. This latest proposal was different.

“The FR group wanted to understand who we are and what we want for our clients and staff,” she said. “They were curious, inquisitive, and showed us they valued our expertise as well.”

The Empower Financial Literacy program is now a monthly offering at Square One. Flavia Cote, executive vice president of FR Investment and Peter’s wife, runs the session each month with FR staff, including her daughter, Flavia McCaughey, a vice president with FR.

McCaughey presented the idea to her parents that working with families at the lowest income levels to help them understand the basics of finance could have a huge impact on those families — and also on the community at large. The Cotes supported the idea but also offered some sage advice.

“My parents told me to be prepared that maybe only one person would show up to the meeting,” McCaughey said. “I discussed that possibility with the team, and we decided if the program makes a difference in even one person’s life, it’s worth it.”

Instead, 14 people have signed up for the program, with eight or nine regularly attending the monthly sessions.

“Given that we’re still dealing with COVID and that everyone has busy lives, I’m excited about 14 sign-ups,” DiStefano said. “The program will be here when they’re ready. It’s not a one-and-done.”

“Instead of making a monetary donation, we’ve chosen to do something harder.”

Far from it. Peter has committed his firm to running the financial-literacy program for the next 30 to 50 years.

“That’s how long it’s going to take to make real change in the financial well-being of our community,” he said. “You have to be on the ground and commit to the long term.”

 

Changing the Narrative

This kind of commitment is necessary to break what DiStefano called a self-fulfilling prophecy of bad outcomes.

“Those who grew up in a family where they worried about how they were going to eat and get to school often end up creating that same unstable environment for themselves when they are adults,” she said. “They’re not surprised when they lose an apartment or don’t care about their credit score because they feel they couldn’t buy a car anyway.”

Just like savings, tough situations also have a way of compounding and growing. DiStefano gave an example of someone who lost a job, and in order to receive housing assistance, they had to be in arrears on their rent, which would then negatively affect their credit score. “This is what people are dealing with,” she said.

Melissa Blissett, vice president of Family Support Services at Square One, asks people what’s going on that prohibits them from living a better life and uses a tool called the family-goal plan to help them.

Flavia McCaughey leads a financial-literacy session at Square One.

Flavia McCaughey leads a financial-literacy session at Square One.

“The FR folks speak the same language we use with our families, and we both use the SMART goal approach,” Blissett said. SMART, a popular goal-setting technique, is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.

Flavia Cote said her team encourages people to set a goal such as buying a reliable car, and the FR staff breaks it down to the actions needed to eventually reach the goal.

“We encourage people to try to save at least $10 a month,” she said. “Even if they can’t save $10 next month, they have started to think about saving.”

To prevent being overwhelmed by a large goal, Peter suggests taking it one step at a time. “I don’t want people to think about years from now — just think about the next 24 hours. When you bring it down to 24 hours, you help people see an attainable goal.”

In their monthly sessions, the FR staff help people with figuring the numbers and, more importantly, understanding the emotions that come with handling finances.

“If someone can’t save for one month, we encourage them to set the goal for next month,” Flavia said. “We want to bring hope and make finance simple enough for people to achieve some sort of financial independence.”

Like dedicated saving, positive actions can also have a compounding effect. Recently, a class-action case involving overdraft fees at a regional bank reached a settlement for several million dollars. Once all the claimants received their share, $23,000 remained. This final amount is usually provided to a nonprofit program in alignment with the core theme of the case and is known as a ‘cy pres,’ from a French phrase meaning ‘as near as possible.’

The plaintiff’s counsel, Angela Edwards, learned about the Square One program from Flavia Cote and thought it sounded perfect. “I recommended the cy pres for Square One, the defense counsel agreed, and the judge approved it.”

 

Making Progress

Peter Cote sees his main job not as a financial person, but as a champion for others. “We’re dealing with people who have a variety of financial challenges, and we are their champions to let them know it will be OK.”

When people attend the sessions at Square One, Flavia said, they show they are ready to make progress with their lives. “We try to help people understand their situation is not permanent and there is a way to change it.”

While a term like financial literacy might sound academic, Peter offered a few different terms that might better describe the course.

“You could call it financial well-being, or Life 101,” he said. “Maybe Figuring It Out 101.”

WSU’s New Leader Brings Experience in Education, Public Policy

By
Linda Thompson, the 21st president of Westfield State University.
Education Special Coverage

Challenge Accepted

Linda Thompson, the 21st president of Westfield State University.

Linda Thompson had never applied for a college presidency position before a recruiter called and invited her to pursue that post at Westfield State University. She listened, and agreed it was time to take a 40-year-career in healthcare, public policy, and healthcare education to a new and much higher plane. She becomes WSU’s 21st president at a challenging time, especially as schools large and small return to something approaching normal after 16 months of life in a pandemic. But with her diverse background, she believes she’s ready for that challenge.

 

Linda Thompson remembers not only the call from the headhunter, made to gauge her interest in applying for the president’s position at Westfield State University, but the words of encouragement that accompanied it.

“She said, ‘Linda, I think you’re ready to think about being a president,’” said Thompson, who at the time was dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at UMass Boston and hadn’t pursued a president’s position before. “She said, ‘you’re a dean now … look at the work deans do; they raise money, they create new programs, they create partnerships, they work with the board. The things you do as a dean are the things you’ll do as a president.”

More important than the recruiter thinking she was ready for the post at WSU, Thompson knew she was ready, even if she needed a little convincing.

“I thought I had the right background at this point in time to make a difference at this specific university,” she said, adding that it’s much more than the 35 years in higher education in various positions within nursing and health-sciences programs that gave her the confidence to enter and then prevail in the nationwide search for the school’s 21st president. It was also experience in public policy, working with a host of elected leaders to address a wide range of health and public-safety issues and, essentially, problem-solve.

“Education, to me, is a ticket out of poverty; it’s a ticket for creating wonderful solutions for society and for people.”

“Most of my career, I’ve worked with children and youth, trying to develop programs and policies to promote healthy outcomes for children, youth, and families,” she explained. “I started out, like most people in nursing, in a hospital and moved to community and public-health work. I really became interested in high-risk children just based on my work in public health, seeing how children who grew up in poverty, children who grew up in less-than-fortunate environments, were impacted by those circumstances.”

She points to her own family as an example, and noted that her two older sisters both died young, one from a gunshot wound at age 21 and the other from complications from diabetes during her second pregnancy as a teen.

“I always thought that the reason I thrived was education,” she told BusinessWest. “Education, to me, is a ticket out of poverty; it’s a ticket for creating wonderful solutions for society and for people. I’ve been blessed; I’ve not only had the opportunity to work as a nurse, I’ve also had the opportunity to work to develop programs for children who were in the justice system, people who were in state custody. I did work all over the country looking at ways we can promote good outcomes for people who had the misfortune to be engaged in the criminal-justice system.

Linda Thompson says Westfield State University learned a number of lessons during the pandemic

Linda Thompson says Westfield State University learned a number of lessons during the pandemic, and it will apply them as the school, its students, faculty, and staff return to something approaching normal this fall.

“I worked for the governor of Maryland for five years and developed programs and policies for children and youth statewide,” she went on. “We looked at how we could develop inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary programs, starting with education, all the way to how we need to work with housing and economic development to create good outcomes for families and for children.”

Thompson arrives at the rural WSU campus at an intriguing time for all those in higher education. Smaller high-school graduating classes have contributed to enrollment challenges at many institutions, and even some closures of smaller schools, and the soaring cost of a college education has brought ever-more attention to the value of such an education and how schools provide it.

Meanwhile, institutions will be returning to something approaching normal this fall after enduring two and a half semesters of life in a global pandemic, an experience that tested all schools in every way imaginable and also provided learning experiences and opportunities to do things in a different, and sometimes better, way.

Thompson acknowledged these developments and said they will be among the challenges and opportunities awaiting her as she takes the helm at the 182-year-old institution, founded by Horace Mann, whose pioneering efforts in education — and inclusion — are certainly a source of inspiration for her.

“He wanted to look at how education is important to a new society — a society that was going to be self-governed and where people needed to understand how to engage in civil society. I was very intrigued with this history, the inclusive nature of his approach to higher education, and how he looked back at some of the historical development of what I will call democracies in ancient Greece and the importance of an educated community to support democracies and health societies.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Thompson about Horace Mann, the challenges facing those in higher education, and why she believes WSU is well-positioned to meet them head-on.

 

Grade Expectations

As noted earlier, Thompson brings a diverse portfolio of experience to her latest challenge.

Our story begins in 1979, when she began her career as a clinical nurse specialist in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Soon thereafter, she would begin interspersing jobs in education with those in the public sector.

Linda Thompson says the timing was right for her to pursue a college presidency, and Westfield State University was the ideal fit.

Linda Thompson says the timing was right for her to pursue a college presidency, and Westfield State University was the ideal fit.

In 1987, she became assistant dean at the School of Nursing at Coppin State College in Baltimore, and two years later took a job as director of the Office of Occupational Medicine and Safety in Baltimore. In 1993, she joined the school of Nursing at the University of Maryland, where she would hold a variety of positions between 1993 and 2003, with a four-year diversion in the middle to serve as special secretary for Children, Youth & Families in the Maryland Governor’s Office.

In 2003, she became dean of Nursing at Oakland University in Troy, Mich., and later returned to the East Coast, where she would join the staff at North Carolina A&T State University, first as provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs, then as associate vice chancellor for Outreach, Professional Development & Distance Education.

“I see myself as a servant leader, a person who tries to see how I can help another person maximize their opportunity to dig deep inside themselves, and identify their strengths and bring those strengths out.”

In 2013, she became dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and a professor of Nursing at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and in 2017, she came to UMass Boston, serving as dean of the College of Nursing and Health Services.

Slicing through all that, she said she’s had decades of experience working collaboratively with others to achieve progress in areas ranging from student success to diversity with staff and faculty; from forging partnerships with private-sector institutions to creating strategic plans; from creating new academic programs to securing new philanthropic revenue streams for faculty research.

And she intends to tap into all that experience as she leads WSU out of the pandemic and into the next chapter in its history.

As she does so, she intends to lean heavily on Horace Mann, considered by many to be the father of public education, for both inspiration and direction. In many respects, they share common viewpoints about the importance of education and inclusion.

“This whole idea of looking at healthy communities and using education to strengthen communities resonated with me,” Thompson explained. “And it resonated with me given some of the things we’re starting to see with our divided country; how do we get people educated so that they’re able to know how to be critical thinkers, how to separate fact from fiction, and how to begin looking at the importance of creating communities where everyone is healthy? To me, healthy is more than physical health — it’s emotional and social and environmental, this whole way that we look at values that really enable people to thrive and survive in society.”

Looking forward, she said she has many goals and ambitions for the school, with greater diversity and inclusion at the top of the list. She pointed to UMass Boston, which she described as one of the most diverse schools in the country, as both a model and a true reflection of the demographic changes that have taken place in the U.S.

“Those diverse populations are the future of higher education in this country,” she told BusinessWest. “We are becoming a majority minority population, and there are opportunities to reach out to communities of color and stress the importance of education to be part of a lifestyle where we’re constantly looking at ways to engage with people and give them tools to thrive.”

 

Course of Action

Thompson arrived at the WSU campus at the start of this month. She will use the two months before the fall semester begins to make connections — both on campus and within the community.

She said the calendar was quickly filling up with appointments with area civic, business, and education leaders, at which she will gauge needs, come to fully understand how the university partners with others to meet those needs, and discuss ways to broaden WSU’s impact and become even more of a difference maker in the community.
The discussions with business leaders will focus on the needs of the workforce and how to make graduates more workforce-ready, she said, adding that the school has been a reliable supplier of qualified workers to sectors ranging from education to healthcare to criminal justice.

Meanwhile, the meetings with those in education focus on widening and strengthening a pipeline of students through K-12 and into higher education, and also on finding paths for those who can’t, for various reasons, take such a direct path.

“For those who are not able to go to college right after high school, how do make it easy for these adults to come back to school?” she asked, adding that she will work with others to answer that question.

And some of the answers may have been found during the pandemic, she went on, noting that, out of necessity, educators used technology to find new and different ways to teach and engage students. And this imagination and persistence — not to mention the direct lessons learned about how to do things, especially with regard to remote learning — will carry on into this fall, when the campus returns to ‘normal’ and well beyond.

“For us, moving forward, I’ll think we’ll never go back to the way we educated people before,” she told BusinessWest, “because people have learned to do this work in a different kind of way, and the public has learned that this is an option moving forward to give people an opportunity to return to college.”

When asked about what she brings to her latest challenge, Thompson reiterated that it’s more than her work in higher education, as significant as that is. It’s also her work in public policy, and, more specifically, working in partnership with others to address global issues.

She counts among her mentors David Mathews, former president of the University of Alabama and secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Ford. She worked with him when he was leading the Kettering Foundation.

“I spent time with him learning about the way he approached leadership and the way he approached democracy,” she noted. “I’ve been a dean, and I’ve had experience as a provost; overall, I believe I have the right set of skills to use the lessons I’ve learned to help develop the next set of community leaders in all fields.

“We need to look at a way that we can create curriculum and graduate people who are innovative, who are critical thinkers, who know how to research on their own, who know to look at problems and how to work in teams with other people in order to create solutions,” she went on. “These are things I’ve learned in my life, and those are things I want to impart to the students who come to this campus.”

As for her leadership style, Thompson described it this way: “I look at creating a vision and an idea and working with and through people — people who are above me, people who work alongside me, people who are younger — and learning from people at all levels and ages and stages of their development.

“I tend to see myself as someone who is transformational,” she went on. “I see myself as a servant leader, a person who tries to see how I can help another person maximize their opportunity to dig deep inside themselves, and identify their strengths and bring those strengths out.”

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Isenberg Turns the Pandemic into a Learning Experience

By
Anne Massey
Education

Maintaining Momentum

Anne Massey

Anne Massey says that early on, she told faculty and staff at Isenberg that the pandemic was not to be looked at as “a short-term problem we’re just trying to solve.” Instead, it has been a learning experience on many levels.

 

When Anne Massey arrived at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in the late summer of 2019, she came with a lengthy set of plans, goals, and ambitions for an institution that was steadily moving up in the ranks of the nation’s business schools and determined to further enhance its reputation.

The overarching plan was to decide what was being done right, what could be done better, and how the school could continue and even accelerate its ascendency with those rankings.

Massey was already making considerable headway with such initiatives when COVID-19 arrived just eight months later and turned normalcy on its ear. But she was determined not to let the pandemic create a loss of focus or momentum.

And almost 16 months after students went home for a spring break from which they would not return, she can say with a great deal of confidence that she has succeeded with that broad mission.

In fact, the pandemic may in some ways have even created more momentum for Isenberg, which is now the top-ranked public business school in the Northeast.

Indeed, those at the school have used the past 15 months as a valuable learning experience, said Massey, who was most recently the chair of the Wisconsin School of Business. She stressed repeatedly that this was a time, as challenging as it was, not to simply get through or survive, and as a homework assignment for her staff, she strongly recommended Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle Is the Way — The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph.

“I said early on that we’re not going to be looking at this pandemic, and all the things that it wrought for us in terms of remote teaching, remote learning, and remote work, as a short-term problem that we’re just trying to solve,” she explained. “I said that we’re going to learn things, and we’re going to carry them over to when we came back and be better than we were in March of 2020.”

She believes the school will be better because of how it has learned to use technology to do things differently and in some ways better than before, but also because of the many experiences working together as a team to address challenges and find solutions.

“I said early on that we’re not going to be looking at this pandemic, and all the things that it wrought for us in terms of remote teaching, remote learning, and remote work, as a short-term problem that we’re just trying to solve. I said that we’re going to learn things, and we’re going to carry them over to when we came back and be better than we were in March of 2020.”

Moving forward, Massey said those at Isenberg, whether they’ve read Holiday’s book or not, are responding well to the notion of looking at obstacles as opportunities and not letting challenges, even global pandemics, stand in the way of achieving goals and improving continuously.

As she noted, this mindset will serve the institution well in the future as it and all of its many competitors prepare to return to normal, but not a world exactly like the one that existed 16 months ago.

“It was also obvious to me in March and April of 2020 that everyone was going to be forced to be remote, at least for some period of time,” she said. “We’d been in the online space for 20 years, so we were ahead of the game. But now, suddenly, everyone was going to be playing the game. They weren’t all going to be good at it; some of them still aren’t good at it, but think they are.

“But now, there are going to be more people joining this competitive space,” she went on. “And some of them have more resources than we do. So we needed to say, ‘we’re just going to keep plowing forward. We need to be better than they were because that’s the only way we’re going to maintain our competitive position.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Massey about her challenging and, in many ways, intriguing first two years at the helm at Isenberg, and especially about how the school will take the experiences from the pandemic and use them to make the school, as she said, better than it was before anyone heard of COVID-19.

 

Getting Down to Business

The lawn signs were first introduced a year or so ago.

They say ‘Destination Isenberg,’ and were intended to be placed on the front lawns of the homes of students bound for the school — enrollment in which is increasingly becoming a point of pride.

While those first signs to be issued were technically accurate, many of the students didn’t have the Amherst campus as their actual destination because of COVID, said Massey, adding that that the latest signs — they’re at the printer now and will be distributed soon — speak the full truth: students will be back in the fall.

There will be a party in August to welcome them to campus, and planning continues for an orientation that will feature programs and events not only for freshmen but also the sophomores who couldn’t enjoy such an experience last fall because of the pandemic. As part of those celebrations, there will be recognition of the national-champion UMass hockey team, which included 15 players who are enrolled at Isenberg.

The students will be coming back to the ultra-modern, $62 million Isenberg Innovation Hub, which opened in January 2019 and sat mostly quiet for the bulk of the pandemic. They’ll be coming back to a school now ranked 53rd in the country by U.S. News & World Report when it comes to undergraduate programs (34th among public schools).

The ‘Destination Isenberg’ signs soon to grace lawns

The ‘Destination Isenberg’ signs soon to grace lawns across the country will have real meaning this year, with the school back to fully in-person learning this fall.

They’ll be returning to a school where enrollment continues to grow even as competition increases and high-school graduating classes shrink. “We have the largest incoming class ever,” Massey said. “We have more than we probably should have, but we’ll deal with it.”

But they won’t be returning to the same school. Indeed, as she noted, they’ll be coming back to, or joining, an Isenberg that used the pandemic as a learning laboratory of sorts, one that will stand the school in good stead as it continues its quest for continuous improvement and movement up the rankings in an even more competitive environment.

She said this work actually started before the pandemic, soon after she arrived on the campus. She started with a survey that went out to faculty and staff that included three key questions:

• ‘What unexploited opportunities do you see for Isenberg?’

• ‘What’s standing in our way of those opportunities?’ and

• ‘Given what you know, what do you think Anne Masse should focus on for the next year?’

She received a 95% response rate to that survey, and the answers provided considerable fodder for discussion at what would eventually be more than 30 meetings with various groups within the school, including faculty and staff.

She then developed five key priorities for maintaining and enhancing the school’s reputation for excellence and went “on the road,” as she put it, visiting alumni in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and other cities. These visits continued until the pandemic arrived, she said, adding that, while the road trips have to come to a halt, the work of developing these priorities, identifying areas in which the school needs to invest, and shaping all this into a strategic plan have continued unabated.

Getting back to the pandemic, Massey actually had considerable experience on her résumé in the realm of research regarding virtual teams and how they function. And that work came in handy during the pandemic, especially as it related to communication, coordination, and relationships among individuals in those teams.

“We have the tools and technology that support communication and that support collaboration and coordination of our work,” she explained. “But the relationship building and maintaining relationships is something that people often don’t pay attention to. They get wrapped up in the work, and not the nature of the team and the relationships amongst the team members.”

Flashing back to March 2020, when students, faculty, and staff were sent home for spring break, Massey said she knew they wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon and that all operations, from teaching to recruiting to development, would have to go remote.

“I knew that we had the tools, but what we really needed to focus on were the connections,” she told BusinessWest, adding that she soon launched what became knowns as the Dean’s Briefing, which, as that name suggests, was a briefing sent out to faculty and staff almost weekly.

“Sometimes it was a pat on the back, sometimes it was ‘I know how hard it is,’ sometimes it was personal, sometimes it was about what was going on at the university and what we thought the summer was going to look like and what the fall would look like; it was always about trying to keep people in the loop,” she said, adding that she encouraged the associate deans, the department, and others to do the same with their own group. “They needed to maintain communication that was positive and supportive.”

 

Driving Forces

At the same time, Massey emphasized the importance of the faculty engaging with students and helping them through a difficult and unprecedented time.

Because not all faculty members had taught online, or certainly to that extent, the school named five Isenberg teaching fellows, all of them experts in remote learning, who are assigned to one or a few departments and a cohort of faculty.

“They took the ball and ran with it,” Massey said, adding quickly that she wasn’t sure at first how this initiative would go over. “They had workshops, they had brown-bag lunches, they used Zoom, they coached people, they surfaced new best practices, they shared ideas … they even wrote a few research papers that have been published. They were phenomenal.”

Lessons learned from the pandemic and these teaching fellows will carry over into ‘normal’ times, she said, adding that she’s expecting to get back on the road in the fall and continue to push the five priorities for the school as it works to sustain and enhance its overall reputation for excellence, a key driver of those all-important rankings.

“They’re all about reputation in various ways,” Massey said of the rankings, of which there are many across several categories, from undergraduate offerings to part-time MBA programs. “The question that I asked over a year ago, and that I always ask, is ‘how might we sustain or advance our reputation for excellence in all we do? And excellence in terms of students and our quality of students, the quality of our faculty and their research, the placement of our students, what the recruiters think, and companies once students are working for them and they’re out a few years. Do they deliver the goods? All of that.”

Listing those priorities, which all intersect, she started with attracting exceptional students, which means more than those with the top GPAs. It also means achieving diversity and attracting students with a commitment to their communities, she said, adding that another priority is sustaining faculty excellence, especially at a time when business schools, and higher education in general, is facing what Massey described as a “looming retirement problem.”

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to attract and retain faculty; we’re not producing Ph.D.s at the rate that we probably need to,” she explained. “So I’m always thinking about how we can make this a good place for prospective faculty, and then, when we get them, how do we keep them? And how do we support them in their research efforts, and how do we support them becoming better teachers?”

Another priority is what Massey called “enabling career success,” which involves both current students and alumni, many of whom were impacted by the pandemic and the toll it took on employers in many sectors. To address this matter, she created an Office of Career Success and integrated the Chase Career Center with the school’s Business and Professional Communications faculty in an effort to expand services to alumni as well as current students.

Still other priorities include “creating global citizens and inclusive leaders” and “inspiring innovation in teaching and learning,” Massey said, adding that she wants Isenberg to be a significant player in business education, especially when it comes to advances in teaching and the use of emerging technology.

“How do we use 3D? What about augmented reality?” she asked, adding that these are just some of the questions she and others at the school are addressing. “One of our initiatives when it comes to inspiring innovation in teaching and learning is the creation of a ‘technology sandbox,’ a dedicated space where new and emerging technologies will be available for our faculty to play with and our staff to play with — because you can’t provide support for something if you don’t know how to use it — and for our students to play with.”

 

Positive Signs

Getting back to those lawn signs, Massey, who has one in her yard (her son attends the school), said they’re great exposure for Isenberg, especially outside of Massachusetts, where the name is somewhat less-known, but becoming better-known.

“It’s good to have them all over the country, and the students love them,” she said, adding that these are literal signs of growth and progress at Isenberg, but there are many others, from the record class for the fall of 2020 to its longstanding home at to the top of the rankings of public business schools in the Northeast — it’s been there since 2015.

There were signs of progress during the pandemic as well, she said, even if they’re harder to see. The school was determined not to lose momentum during that challenging time and to turn that obstacle into an opportunity.

Time will tell just how successful that mission was, but Massey already considers it a triumph for all those at the school.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

The Region’s Colleges Are Moving Closer to That Goal

By
Education Special Coverage

Back to Normal?

It’s hard to gauge what ‘normal’ looks like during the era of COVID-19, when normalcy is a moving target. For area colleges and universities, though, getting back to normal means one thing: bringing as many students back to dorms and classrooms as possible. Make no mistake, campus life this fall will still be different from the pre-pandemic college experience, but just opening those classroom and residence-hall doors is a big step — the result of many lessons learned during the most unusual academic year in memory.

Normalcy.

It’s an attractive concept these days, if an elusive one. Just ask the folks planning for the fall 2021 semester at the region’s colleges and universities.

“This fall, we’ll go back to some normalcy, with classes back in person full-time, students in the residence halls, and athletes on the fields,” said Jonathan Scully, vice president of Enrollment Management and Marketing at Elms College. “That’s the plan right now.”

Scully said Elms has long maintained a COVID-19 task force that meets every week to discuss public-health data, on-campus health metrics, current recommendations of the CDC and the state Department of Public Health, and, importantly, how faculty and staff feel about a full return. “That all played a part in making decisions for the fall.”

He noted that students seem excited about coming back to Springfield Street in Chicopee, even though the college’s ElmsFlex hybrid plan, by which students could learn on campus, remotely, or with a combination of both, has been well-received.

“We’re not fully remote; we had that ElmsFlex option, because some students learn better in person, and some did better virtually, and they had the ability to move between the two freely,” Scully said. “But everyone is looking forward to a return to normalcy.”

Western New England University (WNEU) was among just 27% of U.S. colleges and universities that opened to mainly in-person learning and residential living last fall and remained open through the 2020-21 year, having delivered about 75% of courses on campus and the rest through online and hybrid formats, said Bryan Gross, vice president of Enrollment Management and Marketing.

Jonathan Scully

Jonathan Scully

“Because some students learn better in person, and some did better virtually, and they had the ability to move between the two freely. But everyone is looking forward to a return to normalcy.”

Two factors played into that success, he said: a culture of small class sizes (the average student-teacher ratio is 12:1) and plenty of space that made social distancing much easier to implement, and a commitment — a compact, really, among students, faculty, and staff — to make sure the campus could stay open.

“They adhered to that social distancing, we put up tons of signage, we brought in extra cleaning staff, we had plexiglass throughout … all those things contributed to the plan for the past year,” Gross told BusinessWest.

He noted that colleges and universities don’t have the luxury of making their fall opening plans in July or August; the shift on the fly to remote learning that happened last spring is not the preferred model for campus planning. So, while the course of the pandemic might still alter the plans before September, those plans still need to be made and set in motion.

At WNEU, that will mean all courses normally taught on campus will be, indeed, taught in person, with three-foot distancing in place and masks required, at least according to current guidance. While some hybrid options may be available, Gross said, “we feel Western New England is best with face-to-face classwork, and that’s what we’re moving forward with.”

American International College (AIC) is moving in that direction as well, said Matt Scott, vice president for Student Affairs.

For the current year, he explained, residence halls are open, and students are allowed to live on campus, but most classes are remote, and athletics have continued as normal. Surveillance testing for COVID is widespread, and other safety and sanitization protocols are a regular part of life.

For the fall, Scott said, the current plan is to go back to “whatever the new normal will look like,” but the goal being full residence halls and in-person instruction.

“We’re still waiting to see some state guidance — there’s K-12 guidance that came out in terms of desk distancing in classrooms and things of that nature, but they have not come out with specific guidance for colleges yet,” he added. “But that’s the plan.”

Chet Jordan

Chet Jordan

“Safety on our campus is paramount; one of the biggest considerations in our return to campus is how to utilize our space safely.”

The plan at most campuses, it turns out, is for normalcy, or, as Gross noted, whatever that term might mean come September. But optimism is high that college life will finally begin to look like it used to.

 

Safety First

Community colleges, for the most part, were more fully remote than most schools, and are being more cautious with their return to normalcy. For example, Greenfield Community College (GCC) will offer classes in a face-to-face or hybrid format, meeting at least once a week on campus with some possible online instruction as well.

“Safety on our campus is paramount; one of the biggest considerations in our return to campus is how to utilize our space safely,” said Chet Jordan, dean of Social Sciences and Professional Studies at GCC. “Our faculty and staff have been almost entirely remote for the past year, so their input in how we can phase in a slow reopening of the campus was essential to us.”

GCC brought together a group of faculty, staff, and administrators to talk through the complexities of a reopening, eventually crafting a hybrid model. “We want to make sure our faculty and staff feel safe when they return to campus,” Jordan added. “The situation is constantly changing, but we addressed the key questions as best we could.”

Students in GCC’s health-career programs will meet on campus in hands-on courses to best prepare them for essential jobs in the growing healthcare industry. Those in other professional programs, such as business and education, will also have on-campus options. In most programs, students will complete some of their coursework online and will participate in weekly experiential learning opportunities, including lab activities and field trips.

GCC will follow state guidelines on occupancy rates in classrooms and offices, mask requirements, and health screenings, as well as maintaining scrupulous air-quality practices and a thorough sanitizing schedule.

The class schedule is roughly 55% online and 45% in person, Jordan said, which allows time to space out the classes between sections to avoid a bottleneck of students entering and exiting, while maintaining appropriate distancing.

“It gives students who want to be on campus that in-person experience, but also flexibility the rest of the week to finish online,” he said, adding that the library will be available for students to access a virtual class between in-person sessions on any given day. “So they won’t have to jump between campus and home, we’re giving them space to do a remote class and then go to their next class on campus.”

Bryan Gross

Bryan Gross

“The long and short of it is, we’re hopeful to have a more normal, on-the-ground campus experience for our students and families.”

UMass Amherst also expects campus life to return to normal operations in fall 2021. That means an emphasis on face-to-face instruction, full residence halls — an expected 13,000 students will live on campus — and a complement of student events and activities.

Planning for summer orientation is well underway, as new students will be invited to participate in a series of synchronous and asynchronous orientation programs over the summer before they arrive for in-person welcome sessions at the end of August.

This past fall, many first-year students who would have experienced on-campus housing for the first time did not get that opportunity. So, in an effort to support these students, freshmen and sophomores will receive priority consideration to select on-campus spaces this fall. Still, based on current interest, UMass expects to be able to meet all housing requests, including all interested juniors and seniors.

Finally, UMass announced that its renovated Student Union is now open, offering space for events, student organizations, student businesses, and a ballroom.

The campus experience is more than academics, WNEU’s Gross said, noting that the university creative in finding ways to bring students together for small-group activities in the campus center. This fall, he expects larger outdoor activities, including intramural sports, to return, as well as indoor events as long as safety protocols are followed.

“The long and short of it is, we’re hopeful to have a more normal, on-the-ground campus experience for our students and families,” he said, including a big homecoming event inviting back the 2020 graduates, who were unable to have a traditional commencement experience.

 

Learning by Doing

In his first year working at GCC, Jordan said he has been “incredibly warmed and inspired by the creativity of the faculty, who do anything they can do make sure students have the best experience.”

For example, science classes have included more outdoor, experiential learning. Meanwhile, students in the health sciences have been on campus throughout the pandemic, due to the unique, hands-on needs of their training. “They paved the way,” he said. “They’re the ones who figured out how to open as safely as we possibly can.”

At AIC, students in those fields have been diligent about safety protocols and personal protective equipment, Scott said. “Because they’re health-science students, they tend to take it a little further than some of our other students. If they’re getting up close and personal, they’re wearing face shields and masks and such.”

Particularly during the 2020, he noted, constant pivoting was the order of the day for college faculty and administrators, who had to constantly monitor the development of the pandemic and guide a testing and safety plan for their campuses.

“But I think, overall, our plan stayed the same,” he added. “We thought it was safest this year to keep as many students remote as possible and have some in-person experiences that are kind of controlled for the pandemic-related protocols we had in place. That all stayed the same throughout the year, but the way we approached them adjusted as we needed to.”

Some of the lessons learned led to positive developments, said Kerry Cole, vice president for Admissions at AIC. For example, the college used to deliver its certificate of advanced graduate study (CAGS) programs for teachers at 11 physical sites. Once the program was forced online by COVID, administrators began to hear from the grad students that they loved it.

“So, beginning in the fall, we’re moving to a virtual format throughout the state, where we’re able to deliver licensing programs in a virtual format for all the programs we offer,” Cole said. “That came directly from students. They wanted virtual — not online, but virtual, synchronous, so they can communicate with each other.

“We’re very, very excited about it,” she went on. “Our teachers now need more flexibility than ever. They’re rock stars, and we need to be able to support them.”

Scott agreed, noting that there were many instances where he and others said, “wow, we didn’t realize this would work, that students would enjoy this.” One example is online counseling services, which are now much more accessible to commuter students.

That doesn’t mean students don’t want to return to in-person learning, of course; for the most part, they certainly do. But they’ve handled an unusual year well, he said.

“I am amazed every day how well our students are doing with these protocols. You’ll always have the occasional mask below the nose, and that’s going to happen, usually because they have a mask that doesn’t fit them well. But we have not really had any issues with students giving people a hard time when they’re entering the dining commons to get food. We planned for that; we asked, ‘how are we going to deal with the student who shows up and flat-out refuses to wear a mask?’ But we have not had that happen.”

In fact, the worst incidents have been the occasional group of students who head to the mall and don’t wear masks in the car.

“They’re not supposed to do it, but there are far worse things they could be doing and far worse ways they could be violating our protocols,” Scott said. “We try not to have a heavy hand; we try to take an educational approach and make sure they understand the potential impact, the ripple effect those actions can have on the community. But we’ve been very impressed with the way our students have responded this year.”

 

Waiting for the Return

Enrollment dipped last year at many colleges due to uncertainty about what the academic experience and college life would entail, but most area institutions see the application and enrollment numbers on the rise in 2021.

“Along with the rest of the community-college sector, we saw a decline over the past year, but that was an anomaly,” Jordan said. “In most recessions, community colleges do really well, but this was the reverse; this sector was the hardest-hit. The reason is that low-income students and students of color have been unprecedentedly hit by this pandemic, and those are our students.”

It’s especially important, then, for community colleges to offer a flexible model during these times, and that’s what GCC is aiming for, he added.

“We want to be sure we’re reaching students at home with kids, so those students can take classes online, and also opening the campus in such a way that students who need to be on campus will get that in-person instruction. Having more flexible classroom options will invite more people back.”

Cole said AIC successfully implemented the plan it thought best for 2020-21, and will now expand upon that.

“We’re very excited about it,” she said, noting that campus tours have begun again, and the campus hosted its first in-person admissions event of the school year in mid-April. “Graduate students love virtual info sessions and open houses. Undergrads are a mixed bag, but graduate students will take it all day. So we’ll likely keep some of that.”

Scully said nothing is set in stone when it comes to pandemic planning; the past 13 months at the Elms have been proof of that.

“We’re monitoring everything very closely, and our first priority is the safety of students and staff,” he said. “We know things could change on a dime.”

Elms, like many colleges, already offered some programs online before the pandemic, and has since bolstered the technology to conduct those, having purchased new cameras, microphones, and other equipment. “But, like everyone else, we’re looking forward to getting back to normal.”

And doing so safely, Gross said.

“I’ve never been so proud to be part of an organization as I’ve been of our students, faculty, and staff over the last year and a half,” he said. “I can’t stress how many extra hours our faculty and staff put into adjusting curriculum, adjusting extracurriculars, and changing everything we do, from open houses to the way we engage with current students, prospective students, and alumni. It was a group effort in flexibility, agility, determination, and energy.

That said, “the community is tired,” he went on. “We’ve been going non-stop; I can’t tell you how many faculty and staff have told me about the extra hours they’ve put in over the weekends. We’ve all been chipping in to do whatever it takes to keep things safe and enjoyable for students.”

But there’s no time to take a break. Not with the fall semester right around the corner.

“Things are constantly changing,” Gross said. “We’re all learning as we go. But we are a learning organization, after all.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

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