Month: November 2019

HOLYOKE — Carlos Santiago, commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, will visit Holyoke Community College (HCC) today, Nov. 5, and lead a discussion with faculty and staff about equity in higher education.

Santiago’s talk will run from 2 to 3 p.m. in the PeoplesBank Conference Room in HCC’s Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development.

“Enrollment, retention, and equity are critical to student success,” said HCC president Christina Royal. “We are very happy that Commissioner Santiago will be joining us to talk about these very important topics, which are critical components of HCC’s strategic plan.”

SOUTH HADLEY — The Massachusetts chapter of Pinups for Pitbulls, an international not-for-profit organization, announced an upcoming fundraising event to be held on Saturday, Dec. 7 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Abandoned Building Brewery in Easthampton.

The “Calendars, Cheers & Beer” party will feature an opportunity for guests to have their 2020 calendar autographed by calendar model and South Hadley native Bryn Nowell. The event will also feature a dogs-and-Santa photo shoot, provided by Julie Ann Blonaisz Photography, along with raffles and merchandise sales.

Pinups for Pitbulls — an organization that aims to do away with breed-specific legislation, among other goals — has published its annual fundraising calendar for the past 15 years. Featuring pinup-style hair, makeup, and clothing and a varying annual theme, calendar models include individuals and dog models who have been selected through an extensive application process. The 2020 calendar’s theme is “Fantastic Time Travel Adventures,” which includes iconic styles from the past and a glimpse into potential future styles.

The calendar release party is free to attend, and guests should be age 21 and older. There is a $10 suggested donation for dog photos with Santa.

NORTHAMPTON — Girls on the Run (GOTR) of Western Massachusetts and presenting sponsor MedExpress Urgent Care will host the annual GOTR 5K celebration on Saturday, Nov. 23 at 10:30 a.m. at Smith College.

The 5K event is open to the public. Event-day registration is available for $30. Approximately 1,600 runners are expected to participate.

The mission of Girls on the Run is to inspire girls to be healthy, joyful, and confident. Girls on the Run is a positive, physical-activity-based, youth-development program that uses fun running games and dynamic discussions to teach life skills to girls in grades 3 to 8. During the 10-week program, girls participate in lessons that foster confidence, build peer connections, and encourage community service while they prepare for an end-of-season celebratory 5K event.

The event begins on the Smith athletic fields and goes through the Smith College campus. The run will begin at 10:30 a.m., but festivities, including a group warmup and games, will begin at 10 a.m. Early arrival is strongly suggested.

Registration is available online at www.girlsontherunwesternma.org. The pre-registration cost is $25 for adults and $10 for children and includes a GOTR 5K event shirt. Registration will also be open the day of the event beginning at 9 a.m. For more information about the event, how to register, and volunteer opportunities, visit www.girlsontherunwesternma.org.

Event supporters include Scout Curated Wears, Cooley Dickinson Medical Group – Women’s Health, Holyoke Gas and Electric, Marisa Labozzetta and Martin Wohl, Mill 180 Park, PeoplesBank, People’s United Bank, River Valley Counseling Center, RunReg, Smith College, and Synergy Physical Therapy.

SPRINGFIELD — Hooplandia, the largest 3-on-3 basketball competition and celebration on the East Coast, will take place on June 26-28, 2020, hosted by Eastern States Exposition and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The event will feature hundreds of games for thousands of players of all ages and playing abilities, with divisions for young girls, boys, women, men, high-school elite, college elite, pro-am, ‘over the hill,’ wheelchair, wounded warrior, Special Olympians, veterans, first responders, and more.

More than 100 outdoor blacktop courts will be placed throughout the roadway and parking-lot network of the Eastern States Exposition fairgrounds in West Springfield. Slam-dunk, 3-point, free-throw, dribble-course, vertical-jump, and full-court-shot skills competitions will be spotlighted. Themed state courts will be mobilized along the Exposition’s famed Avenue of States. Featured ‘showcase games’ will be held on new court surfaces in the historic Eastern States Coliseum and on the Court of Dreams, the center court of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

“Eastern States is proud to co-host this terrific new signature event for all of New England and beyond,” said Eugene Cassidy, president and CEO of the Eastern States Exposition. “We are always looking for paths to reinvent our role in promoting commerce and community and appreciate opportunities to collaborate with other regional icons, like the Basketball Hall of Fame. We are excited to transform our grounds into the magical kingdom of Hooplandia for thousands of visitors next summer.”

Added John Doleva, president and CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, “the role of Greater Springfield in the global growth of basketball is undeniable, from Dr. James Naismith to our annual Enshrinement Week at the Hall of Fame and points in between. Hooplandia is a natural extension of this legacy, with a grassroots competition and celebration befitting this area and all of New England. We are thrilled to help launch and build this event, which we hope will inspire hoopsters of all ages from throughout the Northeast.”

A year-long community outreach effort will begin immediately. Registration will open on March 1, 2020. Information and engagement is available now through www.hooplandia.com or on Instagram: @hooplandia.

SPRINGFIELD — Law firm Pullman & Comley, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary of practicing law, recently expanded into Springfield with an office in Tower Square at 1500 Main St.

Pullman & Comley’s new Springfield office is its first in the Bay State, adding to offices in Bridgeport (where the firm was founded 100 years ago), Hartford, Westport, Stamford, and Waterbury, Conn., as well as an office in White Plains, N.Y. With nearly 100 attorneys, Pullman & Comley is one of the area’s largest law firms.

The law firm’s expansion into Massachusetts gives its local clients — whom it has served for years — easy access to their lawyers. The lawyers in the Springfield office currently focus on legal matters relating to property tax and valuation, labor and employment law, and litigation. In addition, the firm’s Springfield location allows Pullman’s real-estate and public-finance attorneys, who often collaborate with the firm’s environmental, land-use, and energy practices, to serve the commercial real-estate industry in Western Mass. and bring their experience to local public and private development projects.

SPRINGFIELD — The Boys and Girls Club Family Center at 100 Acorn St. in Springfield will open its doors to members of the community for its fourth annual Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, Nov. 17 from 2 to 6 p.m.

Many local organizations have joined the effort in support of the Springfield community. American International College has provided several healthy side dishes, and the Assoc. of Black Businesses & Professionals has continued to provide funds for the Boys & Girls Club Family Center to purchase items for the dinner. Many community partners have come together to purchase food and volunteer their time for the event. This list of contributors and volunteers continues to grow.

“Working closely with many of the businesses and organizations in the city, we understand that there are people in our community who struggle to make ends meet, or who live alone and feel they have little to celebrate,” said Boys & Girls Club Family Center Executive Director Keshawn Dodds. “Our neighbors are family, and we need to be present for them. We are grateful for the positive response from the businesses and organizations that have asked to be involved and will be joining us in making this Thanksgiving Dinner special for all in attendance. It is their collective generosity and concern for those who may not have the financial means or emotional support that many of us may take for granted that continue to make this event possible.”

The Boys & Girls Club Family Center anticipates serving approximately 300 guests this year. The event is free and open to the public. No reservations are needed. For more information, call Dodds at (413) 739-4743.

AGAWAM — Glenmeadow will offer an educational program on protecting the planet on Tuesday, Nov. 19 from 10 a.m. to noon at Agawam Public Library, 750 Cooper St., Agawam.

“Environmental Responsibility: Taking Steps to Protect Our Planet” is the third and final program in the fall Glenmeadow Learning series, which provides free educational offerings in the community.

The presentation will be led by Terra Missildine, who will speak about how her mission to protect the planet began and why it’s important for everyone to commit to doing so.

Missildine will also outline what individuals, organizations, and legislators can do to begin to bring about positive change and environmental healing. She will offer samples of earth-friendly products.

Missildine has had a lifelong passion for sustainability. While in an early iteration of a sustainable-living program at UMass Amherst in 2005, she founded Beloved Earth, the first eco-friendly cleaning company in Western Mass. 

Since then, the business has blossomed to support 18 team members and still operates by cooperative principles and the values of the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Missildine also helps to support her sustainability and that of her family through running a small suburban homestead, where they grow a fair amount of their own organic food.

“Environmental Responsibility” is free, but space is limited, and reservations are required. To register, contact Jazlyn Wanzo at [email protected]. For more information, or to register online, visit glenmeadow.org/events.

SPRINGFIELD — American International College (AIC) is announcing a new undergraduate initiative in the School of Business, Arts and Sciences titled Micro-Emerging Markets: Cannabis Certificate Program. Three business courses are offered in rotation beginning with the spring 2020 semester. The first course of the series will run on Wednesdays, 3:50 p.m. to 6:20 p.m., starting Jan. 13, 2020 and continuing through May 5, 2020. There are no prerequisites to enroll other than a high-school diploma or GED equivalency. Non-matriculated students can enter the program at any time in the sequence.

The first course, “Cannabis Entrepreneurship,” will examine customer groups, products, and services in the recreational market. The effect of price, quality, and competitors will be explored relative to competing effectively. This will involve key components of the industry, including legal aspects, business models, financing, and marketing.

In “Cannabis Business Operations,” students will analyze the evolving cannabis marketplace and investigate the complexities and challenges of this sector. This course will conduct an in-depth look at the key components of different business types, how the sector is evolving, starting and operating a cannabis business, in addition to financial constraints, investments, and strategic marketing in the industry.

The final course, “The Law and Ethics of Cannabis,” will examine the legalization of cannabis. Discussion around the legal and ethical implications of cannabis use, its legalization, criminal activity, and marketing will be explored in addition to perspectives of law enforcement, business owners, and recreational uses.

According to Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Mika Nash, “the college is pleased to be able to introduce a new program that provides courses in a developing field. The certificate itself is a business-based offering that is essentially a focused way of looking at one product in a micro-emerging market.”

For more information about the Micro-Emerging Market: Cannabis Certificate Program, visit aic.edu/mem.

AMHERST — The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Five College Consortium $800,000 to reimagine the way museum collaborations can share their online collections with each other and the world.

The current shared collections database at Five Colleges was developed more than 20 years ago, and this commitment to a consortial database has enriched collaboration across the Five Colleges and opened up discovery and access to museum collections for students, faculty, staff, and the public. It remains one of the few collections databases in the country that is shared among several museums, but with advancements in technology and new accessibility needs on the part of the user, this database has revealed its age and limitations. These facts, combined with Five Colleges’ long history of collaboration, was what originally led the Mellon Foundation to request a grant proposal from the consortium.

“We’re honored to receive this generous grant from the Mellon Foundation,” said Sarah Pfatteicher, executive director of Five Colleges, who led the grant-application effort. “This is a groundbreaking model for how a variety of museums can work together to connect, leverage, and facilitate access to collections data.”

The museums that are a part of the current collections database are the Hampshire College Art Gallery, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst, and Historic Deerfield, an independent museum that works closely with the campuses.

The award from the Mellon Foundation’s Arts and Cultural Heritage program is a 30-month planning grant that will be used to assess the museums’ collections-management needs within the broader landscape of research collections within the Five College campuses. With a focus on the needs of users, the planning project seeks to identify the requirements for a next-generation collections-management system that will allow the integration of museum data with library discovery systems. This project supports the long-term priority of making it easier for students, faculty, scholars, and the general public to find and access the extraordinary cultural-heritage collections distributed across the Five College campuses and Historic Deerfield.

“This planning grant will help our institutions lay the groundwork for developing what could be a truly transformative cross-collection network of knowledge and discovery,” said Jessica Nicoll, director of the Smith College Museum of Art and lead author of the grant proposal.

SPRINGFIELD — Best Lawyers, in partnership with U.S. News and World Report, has included Bulkley Richardson in its 2020 list of “Best Law Firms,” ranking the firm in the top tier for the most practice areas of any Springfield law firm.

The 2020 “Best Law Firms” list ranks Bulkley Richardson in the following 11 practice areas: bankruptcy and creditor debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law, bet-the-company litigation, commercial litigation, corporate law, criminal defense: general practice, criminal defense: white-collar, litigation – labor and employment, medical malpractice law – defendants, personal injury litigation – defendants, tax law, and trusts and estates law.

To be eligible for a ranking, a law firm must have at least one lawyer included in Best Lawyers. Bulkley Richardson has 12 of its lawyers included on the 2020 Best Lawyers list, the most from any Springfield law firm. Three of the firm’s partners were also named 2020 Springfield Lawyer of the Year: Michael Burke, David Parke, and John Pucci. The rankings are based on a rigorous evaluation process that includes the collection of client and lawyer evaluations and peer reviews from leading attorneys in their field.

NORTHAMPTON — For the fourth year in a row, Webber and Grinnell Insurance received a Super 60 award from the Springfield Regional Chamber.

Webber and Grinnell was recognized as one of the fastest-growing privately owned businesses in the region. Webber and Grinnell has seen growth as a company this past year by opening an office in Holyoke. The company also contributes to the community on an economic and philanthropic level by supporting a variety of events and organizations, such as Santa’s Trains at Look Park, the Hot Chocolate Run for Safe Passages, the Cancer Connection, Friends of the Homeless, and the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

“We are so happy to receive another Super 60 award because it acknowledges our growth as a small business serving the Pioneer Valley, but more importantly it recognizes my staff and sales team’s hard work by going above and beyond to provide the absolute best service to our customers,” said Webber & Grinnell President William Grinnell.

This is the 30th year the Springfield Regional Chamber has given Super 60 awards, which were presented by Health New England and sponsored by People’s United Bank, MassHire Hampden County Workforce Board, Wells Fargo Bank, the Republican, 22News, and Zasco Productions.