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New UMass Research Could Reduce Home Heating Use

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Education

Sweater Weather

Trisha Andrew (left) and Carolina Aragón (second from right) with their research team members. (Photo by UMass Amherst)

Trisha Andrew (left) and Carolina Aragón (second from right) with their research team members. (Photo by UMass Amherst)

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently unveiled a tool to combat climate change, fossil-fuel dependency, skyrocketing home heating bills, and gentrification all at once — a simple fabric treated with a photothermal dye that, when placed on outside walls, can help keep a home almost 9 degrees warmer over the course of a day.

“Sometimes, a simple solution works best,” said Trisha Andrew, professor of Chemistry at UMass Amherst, and one of the paper’s senior authors, along with Carolina Aragón, associate professor of Landscape Architecture, and Ho-Sung Kim, senior lecturer in Building and Construction Technology.

“When you’re cold, you put on a sweater,” Aragón added, “so we started thinking: what would you do if you’re a building?”

Heating buildings is a huge driver of fossil-fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy insecurity. More than 33 million homeowners in the U.S. report trouble keeping their houses warm, and more than 24 million people — often renters — report skipping food or rationing energy in order to pay for heat. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential and commercial buildings account for 39.1% of the primary energy used in the U.S. Reducing heating costs also translates into an enormous reduction in CO2 emissions.

The typical way to address an inefficient home is to tighten it up: new windows and doors, more and better insulation, etc. But renters don’t necessarily have these options open to them. Worse is the phenomenon of ‘reno-viction,’ where a landlord upgrades a property and then raises rents beyond what’s affordable for current tenants. “Too many people have to choose whether they heat or eat,” Aragón said.

But what if keeping a house snug were as easy and affordable as putting on a sweater?

Andrew, whose specialties include inventing high-tech fabrics that can mimic animals adapted to extreme cold — like polar bears — and Aragón, who has long worked at the community scale to tell the story of climate change, teamed with Kim, who is an expert in modeling architectural designs for energy usage.

The team initially thought of a building blanket, but ultimately what they designed and tested looks much more like jewelry: a series of removable tiles or panels that can be hung on any surface, which not only conduct the sun’s warmth, but insulate the building.

The key is a photothermal dye that Andrew invented. “We can put this dye on anything,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be on an expensive fabric. We chose to test it on umbrella fabric — something that was rugged and robust but still affordable.”

When they modeled their design, the results were eye-popping. “We saw up to a 15% decrease in energy costs for a residential building in a northern climate, like Massachusetts,” Andrew noted, “and up to 23% reduction in a large, 16-story apartment building.”

By comparison, a well-done traditional home renovation might yield a 2% reduction in energy costs.

“When you’re cold, you put on a sweater, so we started thinking: what would you do if you’re a building?”

These panels could even be sold as do-it-yourself projects that any renter could complete. The team imagines a scenario where people head to their local hardware store, buy a roll of the fabric and a few 2x4s, and, in an afternoon, have a cheap and effective way of helping to heat their homes.

“Because the heart of this technology is a dye, we can use it to make panels that are beautiful and blend in with the specific culture and aesthetics of an area,” Aragón said. “It’s important to get the architectural and aesthetic part of this right, in addition to the science.”

But before consumers rush out to ask for the miracle fabric, the team needs to conduct additional, real-world testing. Though they’ve proven the concept in the lab, they need more data and field tests with life-sized prototypes.

“This could have an enormously beneficial societal impact,” Andrew said, and Aragón agreed, noting, “there’s a role for anything that is empowering at the individual scale.”

The research appears in the journal ACS Applied Engineering Materials.

Colleges Face Looming Enrollment Crunch

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Education Special Coverage

Keeping School in Session

When Michael Dodge, provost at American International College (AIC), surveys a higher-education landscape that has seen two Massachusetts institutions, Hampshire College and Anna Maria College, announce their imminent closures in the coming weeks and months, he hears warning bells — and a call to action.

“We are seeing more disruption in the market, including institutional closures, which create both uncertainty for students and instability in regional enrollment patterns,” Dodge said. “When a college closes, it is not just about numbers. It is about students needing continuity, clarity, and trust in where they land next. Institutions that cannot respond quickly and transparently in those moments will struggle.”

American International College Provost Michael Dodge

Michael Dodge says colleges that want to survive and thrive must focus on matching their offerings to workforce needs.

When Hampshire College announced it will shut its doors at the end of 2026, it wasn’t the biggest surprise; the unconventional Amherst institution had been struggling with low enrollment and other challenges for some time.

“We worked aggressively to increase enrollment, refinance existing debt, and realize new revenue via the sale of a portion of our land. We have long known that addressing these issues is essential to establishing a stable financial foundation, supporting long-term operations, and meeting regulatory requirements,” President Jennifer Chrisler and the board of trustees noted in a letter to the Hampshire community. “We are faced with the clear, heartbreaking reality that progress on each of these three key factors has fallen far short of what we had hoped.”

Still, it was a jolt to a college community that has long prided itself as a successful model of an alternative, largely self-guided education that has produced numerous high-profile graduates over the decades, from Ken Burns to Liev Schreiber to Elliott Smith.

“Higher education is entering a period where demographic pressures are real, but they are only part of the story. The more immediate challenge is a shift in how students and families evaluate value. Cost sensitivity, clarity of outcomes, and speed to degree are all under greater scrutiny than they were even a few years ago.”

The Anna Maria announcement may have been more of a jolt, as it is shutting down the Paxton campus this month, following the end of the spring semester, rather than at the end of the year.

“For months, the board of trustees, our leadership team, and the Sisters of Saint Anne walked a distressing road together, examining every option and hoping at each turn that something might change,” President Sean Ryan and the board of trustees wrote, also in a community letter. “The decision reflects years of financial pressure that we were ultimately unable to overcome, and the honest recognition that continuing would not be responsible to the students, faculty, and staff who depend on us. We tried to find a way. We are grateful to everyone who tried alongside us. And we are deeply, genuinely sorry we found no viable path forward.”

The closures are sounding alarm bells because a looming ‘demographic cliff’ already has colleges and universities nationwide concerned. According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, about 60 of the nation’s roughly 4,000 colleges are closing, on average, each year — a number that could double in any given year if the bottom falls out of enrollment, according to a recent analysis in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Selingo.

“If the harm were only to the institutions forced to close because they’re running out of customers, that would be unfortunate, but not tragic. But the causality runs in the other direction too, as students who otherwise would have gone to college find themselves with no viable option in the place where they live,” Selingo wrote.

He explained that American higher education has long consisted of two markets: one where high-achieving, typically affluent students compete for seats at national universities, and one where mostly middle- and lower-income students study closer to home. “Members of the first group will be fine even as college closures accelerate. The second group will suffer. After many decades of democratization, higher education could once again become a luxury good.”

However, Dodge noted that the demographic trends are just one element among numerous looming issues for colleges.

“Higher education is entering a period where demographic pressures are real, but they are only part of the story. The more immediate challenge is a shift in how students and families evaluate value. Cost sensitivity, clarity of outcomes, and speed to degree are all under greater scrutiny than they were even a few years ago,” he explained.

“At the same time, traditional pipelines are evolving. High school populations are changing, adult learners are expecting more flexibility, and employers are placing greater emphasis on skills and credentials that align directly with workforce needs,” he went on. “Institutions that remain overly dependent on a single student population or a static program portfolio will face increasing pressure.”

Return on Investment

Molly Miner, vice president of Enrollment Management and Marketing at Elms College, told BusinessWest that most private colleges, especially in New England, have experienced enrollment challenges, as the demographic cliff has already created increased competition among the shrinking pool of traditional first-time students. Meanwhile, the majority of Elms students come from the New England region, which is among the hardest-hit regions due to these shifting demographics, and its leaders have adjusted their recruitment strategy to broaden our applicant pool.

“The declining international student enrollment at schools nationwide, coupled with the changing domestic demographics, has created challenges for all colleges, particularly small colleges,” Miner noted. “There is a trickle-down effect when the most selective institutions, which have traditionally had large international enrollment, shift their strategy and expand their reach more broadly into the domestic pool, increasing competition for other institutions.

“Another challenge is the broader national conversation around the cost of higher education and student loan debt, which influences how students and their families think about college,” she added. “More than 30% of high school graduates do not enroll in college immediately after graduation, which further compounds the enrollment challenges.”

The cost factor should actually benefit community colleges, especially in Massachusetts, where residents can attend for free, thanks to a two-year-old program called MassEducate, which has resulted in enrollment increases at those institutions across the state.

“We have strong partnerships with employers, both nationally and regionally, to ensure their current and future employees have the education and training needed to succeed in a rapidly changing professional landscape, while also informing program development.”

But four-year, private colleges have to attract a shrinking pool of potential enrollees in different ways. James Birge, who is retiring as president of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, acknowledged the current pressures, but is optimistic.

“The demographic enrollment cliff is here. It’s already hitting small, private colleges hard. Sadly, more will close in the next five years as the recruiting market contracts and institutions struggle to attract students,” he told BusinessWest.

“But public institutions like MCLA are in a genuinely strong spot. We’re affordable. And we’ve spent the last few years making deliberate moves to become a college of choice,” he went on, noting, as examples, that MCLA has added nursing, radiologic technology, and music industry and production because that’s what students are looking for, as well as adding athletic programs in lacrosse and ice hockey.

“We’ve built up endowed scholarship funding so more students can afford to come here,” Birge went on. “We’ve strengthened academic and personal support so students don’t just enroll — they stay and finish. We’ve put smarter investment strategies in place to keep operations funded. And we’ve maintained our accreditation, meeting every standard, including the financial ones.”

Miner points to Elms Promise, an initiative at the Chicopee college that aims to reduce cost as a barrier for students who demonstrate strong academic performance and financial need. She also points to the institution’s strong relationships with community colleges in Massachusetts and beyond, enrolling their graduates into its undergraduate programs through transfer and continuing education pathways.

“At Elms, we are able to leverage our small size to remain nimble and responsive in the face of these challenges,” she said, noting that its undergraduate curriculum combines a strong liberal arts foundation with real-world learning opportunities.

“Experiential learning is a core component of the student experience. Nearly 100% of Elms undergraduate students participate in experiential learning, including internships, clinical placements, research, service learning, and creative scholarship. Students engage in real-world learning from day one,” she added, noting that these efforts begin in the first semester with something called the Innovation Challenge, which encourages students to work together to find solutions to real-world problems.

“These initiatives lead to strong outcomes,” Miner said. “Ninety-seven percent of students who completed our most recent graduation survey reported that they are employed or enrolled in a graduate program after leaving Elms.”

Even at the graduate and continuing education levels, she noted, academic programs are tailored to meet the needs of the evolving workforce.

“We have strong partnerships with employers, both nationally and regionally, to ensure their current and future employees have the education and training needed to succeed in a rapidly changing professional landscape, while also informing program development,” Miner said, citing as examples recently added programs like graduate degrees in social work and applied behavior analysis, as well as an online bachelor of social work degree. “These programs are intentionally designed to align with workforce demand and address critical shortages of care providers throughout Massachusetts and New England.”

At Springfield-based AIC, Dodge agreed that colleges that want to survive and thrive must focus on matching their offerings to workforce needs.

“Maintaining an edge comes down to alignment. We are continuing to align our academic programs with workforce demand, particularly in high-need areas such as health sciences, public service, and emerging fields like data analytics. We are also expanding flexible delivery models, including online and accelerated formats, to meet students where they are.

“Equally important is strengthening our pipeline,” he added. “Partnerships with schools, transfer pathways, and employer-aligned programs are helping us reach students earlier and support them more effectively throughout their journey. Finally, we are focused on clarity. Students want to understand where a program leads and how quickly they can get there.”

Focus on the Future

Both the Hampshire College and Anna Maria College announcement letters noted that, for students unable to complete their degrees, transfer agreements with partner institutions are being created; indeed, AIC, Elms, and MCLA all announced such partnerships and outlined ways to smoothly transfer displaced students to their own communities.

“We planned and prepared for this by adding programs students want and employers need, building endowed scholarship funding, strengthening support, and making smart financial moves to keep us on solid ground.”

“At AIC, the focus is on being both responsive and intentional,” Dodge said. “In the immediate term, that has meant acting quickly to support students … by creating clear, student-centered pathways that allow them to continue their education with minimal disruption. The priority has been reducing uncertainty and providing stability during a challenging moment.”

Added Miner, “at Elms College, we have the resources and support systems in place to provide a seamless transition so students can stay focused on achieving their academic and professional goals within a caring and supportive environment.”

In the meantime, Birge said MCLA will take the appropriate lessons from the closings and continue to focus on ways to move forward as the demographic landscape continues to evolve.

“We planned and prepared for this by adding programs students want and employers need, building endowed scholarship funding, strengthening support, and making smart financial moves to keep us on solid ground,” he added. “Challenges ahead? Of course. But I like where we stand.” 

STCC Launches Workforce Readiness Academy

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Katherine Ortiz (left), an education and career advisor, seen here assisting a student in a workforce development class, will oversee college and career workshops as part of the Workforce Readiness Academy at STCC.
Education

Tools to Succeed

Katherine Ortiz (left), an education and career advisor, seen here assisting a student in a workforce development class, will oversee college and career workshops as part of the Workforce Readiness Academy at STCC.

Katherine Ortiz (left), an education and career advisor, seen here assisting a student in a workforce development class, will oversee college and career workshops as part of the Workforce Readiness Academy at STCC.

 

Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) is now enrolling for the Workforce Readiness Academy, a free, 20-hour-per-week program designed to help prospective students build the digital, academic, and career skills needed to thrive in today’s job market and succeed in college.

The Workforce Readiness Academy offers a hands-on, personalized learning experience that equips participants with essential digital literacy skills, industry-recognized certifications, and strengthened college and career readiness competencies. Whether students are entering the workforce, changing careers, or preparing for further education, the Academy provides the foundation they need to move forward with confidence, Assistant Vice President of Workforce Development Gladys Franco said.

“This program is an incredible opportunity for anyone looking to gain confidence, earn meaningful credentials, and take their next step toward a rewarding career or higher education,” Franco noted. “The Workforce Readiness Academy was intentionally designed to remove barriers and meet students where they are. Our goal is to ensure every participant leaves with the skills, support, and resources they need to succeed.”

“This program is an incredible opportunity for anyone looking to gain confidence, earn meaningful credentials, and take their next step toward a rewarding career or higher education. The Workforce Readiness Academy was intentionally designed to remove barriers and meet students where they are. Our goal is to ensure every participant leaves with the skills, support, and resources they need to succeed.”

The Academy is supported by the state Gaming Commission’s Community Mitigation Fund. The program is offered in two sessions. The first runs Jan. 26 to April 9, while the second runs April 13 to June 25. Both run Monday to Thursday. Enrollees can choose day (9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) or evening (5-9 p.m.) options.

Each participant is paired with a dedicated college and career advisor for individualized support throughout the program.

The Academy offers the opportunity to develop computer competency and workforce readiness skills every employer expects. Students will work toward industry-recognized certifications, including ServeSafe and OSHA 10, while also engaging with local employers through networking and career connection opportunities.

To learn more or register, visit stcc.io/wra or call the Workforce Development Center at (413) 755-4225. To enroll in person, stop by Building 27 at STCC.

Colleges Help Students Overcome Barriers to Staying in School

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Renee Tastad says HCC’s vision centers around helping students overcome barriers to success.
Education Special Coverage

More Than Food for Thought

Renee Tastad says HCC’s vision centers around helping students overcome barriers to success.

Renee Tastad says HCC’s vision centers around helping students overcome barriers to success.

 

Renee Tastad says Holyoke Community College (HCC) takes it seriously when a student withdraws from classes, whether for a semester or permanently.

But the conversations that followed those withdrawals, over the years, have helped many more students avoid that path.

“I think it comes down to our vision, which is to be a college of academic excellence known for helping students overcome barriers to success,” said Tastad, assistant vice president of Student Affairs and dean of Enrollment Management at HCC. “So we’ve called those students to find out, ‘what prevented you from being successful? And how can we get you back on track?’

“Primarily, their concerns were childcare, transportation, cost of living expenses — ‘I had to take on extra hours at work that prevented me from committing all of my time to my studies,’” she went on. “With the help of the HCC Foundation, which has been really tremendous, we’ve been able to say, ‘OK, what can we assist with? What are things that we can reasonably do to help lessen the burden on the student to have to work those extra hours, which takes them away from their studies?’”

What has emerged from those conversations is an evolving array of student supports at HCC, from the Thrive Center food pantry to the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch service to the President’s Student Emergency Fund, which helps students with unexpected expenses.

“We’ve called those students to find out, ‘what prevented you from being successful? And how can we get you back on track?’”

“If a student’s car breaks down, that expense could derail them — they have to determine, ‘am I going to put the rent money that I had set aside toward this car repair so I can get to class? Then I’m going to be behind on rent,’” Tastad said. “So the emergency fund is one of those ways to bridge that gap for these unexpected situations that could derail their progress in school.”

American International College (AIC) in Springfield also maintains an emergency fund for students to access in times of unexpected need.

Melisa Loa says AIC leaders don’t want students going to class hungry and unable to focus on learning.

Melisa Loa says AIC leaders don’t want students going to class hungry and unable to focus on learning.

“Students may request funds for emergency situations or unanticipated circumstances that make it difficult to continue in school,” said Melisa Loa, dean of students and director of Residence Life. “They’re able to request anywhere from $100 to $1,000, depending on need. We just ask that they’re currently enrolled as a full-time undergraduate student. We review those on an ongoing basis, and we’re able to help students through that fund.”

AIC maintains numerous other non-academic student supports, from its recently opened Buzz Stop food pantry to a program called the CARE Team (the acronym stands for Concerns, Assessment, Referral, and Education) that reviews concerns around mental health and helps students struggling with such issues to access the help they need to address them.

“It’s a robust team that does a lot of great work,” Loa said. “We’re following up with students to make sure they have appropriate resources, both on and off campus. We work really hard to make sure students’ mental health concerns are addressed in a timely manner.”

Just down the road, the Center for Access Services (CAS) at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) provides students with a broad range of non-academic supports, helping them overcome barriers that stand in the way of self-sufficiency, allowing them to succeed and stay in school.

Specifically, the CAS office houses a variety of services and initiatives, including free school supplies and the RAM Mini Mart, which provides groceries and meals to students facing food insecurity. CAS staff also connect students to on-campus resources and provides referrals to community agencies that assist with financial challenges, food insecurity, homelessness, substance abuse, and various state and federal benefits.

“STCC is a contemporary community college in that there are so many non-academic supports that we provide students,” the college notes. “These range from an on-campus food pantry and food lockers to housing agreements with Elms College and AIC, a mental health counseling partnership with Uwill, and a long-standing, federally funded TRIO program investing in first-generation college students.”

“We’re following up with students to make sure they have appropriate resources, both on and off campus. We work really hard to make sure students’ mental health concerns are addressed in a timely manner.”

In short, colleges are invested in student success, and that begins with making sure they stay in school, and have the resources they need to do just that.

 

Hunger to Learn

At a time when food insecurity has been in the news, the food pantries available on area campuses take on greater importance. HCC and AIC both have partnerships with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, which provides many staples. HCC’s Thrive pantry also receives funding from Stop & Shop for food and personal care items, and the campus community has been generous in donating as well, Tastad said.

“We give out thousands of pounds of food every month to any students, faculty, or staff who has a food need. You don’t have to demonstrate your need; you just have to say, ‘I need some food today.’ And we got an earmark in last year’s budget to purchase refrigerated lockers outside Thrive, for non-perishable food. That’s really helpful because a student or anybody can put their order in, and our pantry staff will fill the order and put it in the refrigerated locker, and they can pick it up anytime the building is open, not just during the hours the pantry is open. That’s been really fabulous.”

At AIC, the Buzz Stop also provides perishable and non-perishable food as well as self-care items, which can be accessed outside normal pantry hours, Loa explained. “If a student needs an item in the middle of the night, they can contact the campus police, and the police will open it for them.”

“Their primary identifier is not necessarily a student — they’re a parent, they’re an employee, or they’re a caregiver, something other than a student. So we want to make sure that we’re respecting the time that they have here on campus.”

Like HCC, supplies from the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts have been supplemented by numerous monetary donations at AIC. “That’s really helpful to keep the pantry going, especially for items we’re not able to get from the Food Bank.”

Loa emphasized the importance of this simple service.

“We don’t want students going to class thinking about where their next meal is coming from, whether they’re residential or commuter. We want students to be happy, healthy, and fed, and able to focus on their academics. We want their basic needs to be met. That’s what these resources are for — to meet those needs so they can come to school and focus on their academics.”

Many students have become regular users of the Buzz Stop, she added, and many off-campus students who are food-insecure have said other community pantries don’t always offer the same amount of food.

“In the last couple of months, with things happening with SNAP, we’ve been very thankful that we’re able to provide food, and they’re really thankful and appreciative that this is a resource on campus.”

At HCC, the Thrive Center also helps students access housing in the area, Tastad told BusinessWest, partnering with AIC and Elms College to have students live on those campuses, and maintaining housing agreements with the Holyoke Housing Authority, with vouchers reserved just for HCC students to access Section 8 housing, among other options, including housing available through Gándara Center and at Westfield State University under a state homeless youth initiative.

Meanwhile, HCC recently expanded its Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center, doubling its capacity. The center is a free, drop-in service for student parents who need short-term child care while they attend classes, study, or meet with tutors and advisers. It opened as a pilot program in fall 2022 after a $100,000 state allocation, and expanded with the help of a $600,000 grant from the Davis Foundation in late 2023.

The Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center is now located next to the HCC Parent Learning Center, a study lounge and play area for parents and their children, and the Marieb Adult Learner Success Center, a support program for student parents and students ages 24 and older.

“So the students, when they’re in class, can drop their kids off at the child watch, but when they’re not in class, they sometimes go over to the Parent Learning Center because they can be in that space with their kids,” Tastad explained.

 

Springboard to Success

The throughline in all these efforts, again, is identifying what might derail a student from completing their degree, and then filling those gaps, Tastad said, all with the understanding that many students aren’t traditional, full-time attendees, but older part-time students with families, jobs, and other responsibilities to juggle.

“Their primary identifier is not necessarily a student — they’re a parent, they’re an employee, or they’re a caregiver, something other than a student. So we want to make sure that we’re respecting the time that they have here on campus.”

And make sure their studies continue — which not only helps the college and the student, but a regional economy that, in many cases, is struggling to recruit skilled talent in many fields.

“We take it seriously,” Tastad said. “We are a part of the Greater Holyoke community, and everything we can do to support the students and create that network is going to help everyone prosper. Student success is built into our strategic plan. We’ve put it out there that this is what we are known for, and it’s true.”

Exploding Black Hole Could Reveal Foundations of Universe

By Contributor
Education

Challenging the Assumptions

Physicists have long believed that black holes explode at the end of their lives, and that such explosions happen — at most — only once every 100,000 years. But new research published in Physical Review Letters by physicists at UMass Amherst has found a more than 90% probability that one of these black hole explosions might be seen within the decade, and that, if we are prepared, our current fleet of space and earthbound telescopes could witness the event.

Such an explosion would be strong evidence of a theorized but never observed kind of black hole, called a ‘primordial black hole,’ that could have formed less than a second after the Big Bang occurred, 13.8 billion years ago. Furthermore, the explosion would provide a definitive catalog of all the subatomic particles in existence, including the ones science has observed, such as electrons, quarks, and Higgs bosons; the ones so far only hypothesized, like dark matter particles; as well as everything else that is, so far, entirely unknown to science.

Andrea Thamm

Andrea Thamm

“The lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be, and the more particles it will emit. As PBHs evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It’s that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect.”

This catalog would finally answer one of humankind’s oldest questions: from where did everything in existence come?

Science knows that black holes exist and has a good understanding of their life cycle: an old, large star runs out of fuel, implodes in a massively powerful supernova, and leaves behind an area of spacetime with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. These black holes are incredibly heavy and essentially stable.

But, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in 1970, another kind of black hole — a primordial black hole (PBH), could be created not by the collapse of a star, but from the universe’s primordial conditions shortly after the Big Bang.

PBHs, like the standard black holes, are so massively dense that almost nothing can escape them — which is what makes them ‘black.’ However, despite their density, PBHs could be much lighter than the black holes so far observed. Furthermore, Hawking also showed that black holes have a temperature and could, in theory, slowly emit particles via what is now known as ‘Hawking radiation’ if they got hot enough.

“The lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be, and the more particles it will emit. As PBHs evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It’s that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect,” said Andrea Thamm, co-author and assistant professor of Physics at UMass Amherst.

Yet, while we should be able to, no one has ever directly observed a PBH.

“We know how to observe this Hawking radiation,” said Joaquim Iguaz Juan, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at UMass Amherst. “We can see it with our current crop of telescopes, and because the only black holes that can explode today or in the near future are these PBHs, we know that, if we see Hawking radiation, we are seeing an exploding PBH.”

 

Asking the Right Questions

Though physicists since Hawking’s time have thought that the chances of seeing an exploding PBH are infinitesimally slight, Iguaz Juan noted that “our job as physicists is to question the received assumptions, to ask better questions, and come up with more precise hypotheses.”

The team’s new hypothesis? Get ready now to see the explosion. “We believe that there is up to a 90% chance of witnessing an exploding PBH in the next 10 years,” says Aidan Symons, one of the paper’s co-authors and a graduate student in physics at UMass Amherst.

In its work, the team explores a ‘dark-QED toy model.’ This is essentially a copy of the usual electric force as known, but which includes a very heavy, hypothesized version of the electron, which the team calls a ‘dark electron.’

The team then reconsidered long-held assumptions about the electrical charge of black holes. Standard black holes have no charge, and it was assumed that PBHs are likewise electrically neutral.

“We make a different assumption,” said Michael Baker, co-author and an assistant professor of Physics at UMass Amherst. “We show that, if a primordial black hole is formed with a small, dark electric charge, then the toy model predicts that it should be temporarily stabilized before finally exploding.”

Taking all known experimental data into account, the team found that a PBH explosion could potentially be observed not once every 100,000 years, as previously thought, but once every 10 years.

“We’re not claiming that it’s absolutely going to happen this decade, but there could be a 90% chance that it does,” Baker said. “Since we already have the technology to observe these explosions, we should be ready.”

Added Iguaz Juan, “this would be the first-ever direct observation of both Hawking radiation and a PBH. We would also get a definitive record of every particle that makes up everything in the universe. It would completely revolutionize physics and help us rewrite the history of the universe.”

Partnerships Like Early College Make Higher Education More Accessible

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American International College Provost Michael Dodge
Education Special Coverage

Moving On Up

American International College Provost Michael Dodge

American International College Provost Michael Dodge

 

When Michael Dodge thinks about the 227 students from Duggan Academy in Springfield currently taking classes at American International College (AIC), he understands who benefits the most — and it’s not necessarily the academic high achievers who already have their eyes on college.

“We’re reaching the ones saying, ‘college isn’t for me,’ or ‘I’m not smart enough,’ or ‘no one in my family has gone to college.’ And we’re saying, ‘this program is for you.’ We’re helping students that might not have thought of college as an option — helping it become an option for them.”

Dodge, AIC’s provost, was describing the college’s relationship with Duggan, which began three years ago with high-schoolers taking classes for college credit, and has now become much more robust with AIC being designated as a Massachusetts Early College Program by the state’s joint Early College Committee.

AIC, in partnership with the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership (SEZP), is one of 18 new Early College programs announced this year by the Healey-Driscoll administration, and the only private college west of Worcester to receive this designation.

“Those students are taking a total of 900 credits,” Dodge said. “Given our successful pass rates with Duggan, that’s bringing in a significant number of students who are picking up a lot of college coursework that they now have under their belts as they think about where they want to go after high school.”

Notably, the program is a ‘wall-to-wall’ model in which every Duggan student participates. Students have the opportunity to earn up to 60 college credits — at no cost — before graduating from high school. Courses focus on high-growth, high-wage fields including allied health, education, and criminal justice.

“We’re reaching the ones saying, ‘college isn’t for me,’ or ‘I’m not smart enough,’ or ‘no one in my family has gone to college.’ And we’re saying, ‘this program is for you.’”

“We wanted to focus on fields that are in demand and lead to well-paying jobs,” Dodge said. “This puts them on a path to pursue an associate degree either at AIC or a community college or another four-year institution.”

The model ramps up the college coursework as they advance, he explained. Freshman year orients them to the expectations of a college class, and what follows is coursework in general education classes that are easily transferable, regardless of institution.

“Those include things like English composition, analytical writing — things that can help them be better writers and critical thinkers, which sets them up for success when they get to their junior year and senior year,” Dodge noted.

In those final two years of high school, students are blending college-credit courses at Duggan with classes they actually take on the AIC campus, he explained. “We want you to come to AIC, but regardless of where you go, you’re setting up a strong foundation to help you be able to keep pace with the academic rigor that exists at a college.”

While Duggan students have already been earning AIC college credits, the new designation is designed to build on that success and help even more students access college by removing common barriers.

Key program features include personalized support, including small cohorts, academic coaching, and dedicated advisors for multilingual and exceptional learners; advising to promote college readiness; culturally responsive teaching and staffing to reflect and support the student population; and universal access, with 100% of Duggan students participating regardless of prior academic performance.

Tricia Canavan

Tricia Canavan

“Tech Foundry’s senior team has been collaborating with various members of UMass leadership in a variety of ways over the last couple of years. Our partnership has evolved to include working with the IT staff on workforce priorities and employment opportunities.”

“All students deserve opportunities to succeed,” Dodge said. “Early College is about more than earning credits — it’s about building the skills, confidence, and support networks students need for college and life.”

 

Priming the Pump

Early College is just one way the state has been trying to draw more students into the college pipeline. The most notable ones, of course, have been MassReconnect, which made community college free for Massachusetts residents age 25 or older, and, more recently, MassEducate, which extended that tuition- and fee-free model to any resident, regardless of age, who has not yet earned a bachelor’s degree.

Beyond that, many of the state’s community colleges have forged articulation agreements with four-year institutions, under which students who satisfactorily complete an associate degree program are guaranteed admission into a bachelor’s degree program at the four-year school.

One of these partnerships, between Elms College and both Holyoke Community College (HCC) and Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), deepened recently by allowing students of those two community colleges to reside in residence halls at Elms.

STCC and HCC are commuter colleges and do not provide on-campus housing, so the agreement benefits STCC and HCC students who have housing needs, while creating the kind of familiarity with the Elms campus and culture that makes it more likely they’ll pursue a baccalaureate degree there.

“Elms College, for nearly 100 years, has prided itself on promoting educational opportunities to those who would otherwise not have access, and being a collaborative partner with our neighboring colleges. This agreement accomplishes these goals and expands our strong partnerships with HCC and STCC,” Elms President Harry Dumay said. “Our campus has always been a welcoming, inclusive community, where we work hard to ensure that everyone feels like they belong in the spirit of our founding mission. HCC and STCC students now get to discover that aspect of the Elms experience.”

Other regional partnerships target an older demographic — people who either never attended college or started but didn’t finish.

Elms College President Harry Dumay recently announced that the college expanded its articulation agreement with HCC and STCC to allow students at those colleges to live on the Elms campus.

Elms College President Harry Dumay recently announced that the college expanded its articulation agreement with HCC and STCC to allow students at those colleges to live on the Elms campus.

One recently announced collaboration between UMass Amherst and the Tech Foundry — the Springfield-based workforce development nonprofit that trains local residents for IT careers — enables Tech Foundry staff and community members to complete their undergraduate degrees through the university’s flexible, customizable online program.

Specifically, Tech Foundry members can take classes, receive academic counseling, and map their educational pathway through UMass Amherst’s University Without Walls Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (UWW-IS).

Current UWW-IS admission requires 12 transferrable college credits and a 2.0 GPA for adults who did not previously attend UMass Amherst. As part of its program, however, UWW-IS offers credit for prior learning or life experience. Under the new agreement, students who are accepted into UWW-IS and have completed Tech Foundry’s 18-week immersive hybrid training program will receive 15 credits via special transcript, which is equivalent to a full semester courseload. The collaboration builds on earlier programs in which UMass Amherst IT provided internships for Tech Foundry trainees.

“Tech Foundry’s senior team has been collaborating with various members of UMass leadership in a variety of ways over the last couple of years. Our partnership has evolved to include working with the IT staff on workforce priorities and employment opportunities,” said Tricia Canavan, CEO of Tech Foundry, who called the new collaboration an important expansion of opportunity for Tech Foundry students.

“We’re really centering equity efforts. We don’t always want to polish just the shiniest of apples, but we’re making sure we’re reaching out to that student who may not have thought of college as an option — but help them do it in ways that make sense.”

UWW-IS Department Administrator Siobhan Henderson said the collaboration also enhances University Without Walls’ longtime relationship with Springfield residents. “We are committed to meeting learners where they are — professionally, academically, and geographically. This collaboration aligns with our UWW-IS mission that was founded more than 50 years ago: to open doors to adults who thought achieving a bachelor’s degree was unattainable.”

 

Opportunity Knocks

Gov. Maura Healey has called Early College programs a central element of her administration’s Reimagining High School initiative to prepare students for college or careers and expand access for those historically underrepresented in higher education — at a time when higher education is already facing demographic headwinds in the form of fewer high school graduates.

“Early college is an important and effective tool for making higher education more accessible and affordable for every Massachusetts student,” she said earlier this year. “These new partnerships give more young people the opportunity to earn college credit at no cost while still in high school, setting them on a path to success and helping to close opportunity gaps.”

Dodge sees such efforts as steps in the right direction, and considers the college campus immersion element an important part of the process.

“The intent, in senior year, is to have students be on our campus taking college-level courses, similar to the models for dual enrollment in the past,” he explained. “Students can take 12 to 15 credits over the course of senior year — typically four to five classes — develop some affiliation with the institution, and be able to take some independent coursework and things very specific to their planned major, so it’s not just, ‘oh, I come to campus for one class and then leave. Instead, they’re thinking about being on campus most of the day for Tuesday and Thursday, or Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”

He also appreciates the Healey administration’s focus on equity and helping close performance gaps.

“That’s one of the reasons why we applied for this designation with SEZP and the Department of Higher Education. We’re really centering equity efforts. We don’t always want to polish just the shiniest of apples, but we’re making sure we’re reaching out to that student who may not have thought of college as an option — but help them do it in ways that make sense. That’s why we start small, one or two courses freshman year, then building up intentionally and bringing them into the fold in college.

“We’re really thankful for the support from SEZP and the Department of Higher Education, and we value the partnership we have with Duggan and the Springfield Public Schools,” Dodge went on. “We think it’s a partnership that makes sense in this current environment, this academic cliff where fewer 18-year-olds are going to college. It seems like what the future of higher education needs to be.”

Pilot Program Expands Access to AI Opportunities in Classrooms

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Educators gather at the professional development kickoff at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative campus in Westborough.
Education

Leading the Way

Educators gather at the professional development kickoff at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative campus in Westborough.

Educators gather at the professional development kickoff at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative campus in Westborough.

The Healey-Driscoll administration recently partnered with Project Lead The Way (PLTW) to launch Future Ready: AI in the Classroom. Through a $135,000 investment, this professional development pilot will support teachers in 45 classrooms, estimating to reach more than 1,600 students, and is designed to provide high school educators with the tools, knowledge, network to bring artificial intelligence (AI) into their classrooms.

This experience is jointly funded through the administration’s STEM Advisory Council and the Massachusetts AI Hub and will be administered by PLTW. Organizers say this pilot marks an important step in expanding access to AI learning opportunities for students and educators across the state.

“Massachusetts has long been a global leader in both technological innovation and education,” Gov. Maura Healey said. “With this pilot, we are building on that success, providing our teachers with the skills and tools so they can support the next generation and ensure Massachusetts remains a global leader in applied AI.”

Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll added that “our administration knows AI is a transformative technology that is already reshaping how we live and learn. Through this pilot, we’re giving educators the foundation they need to navigate this new era with confidence, fueling workforce readiness and expanding opportunity for students.”

This year-long, 50-hour professional development experience kicked off at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative campus in Westborough, where participants engaged in curriculum design workshops, peer collaboration sessions, and targeted mini-trainings. This first experience aimed to create a professional learning community that fosters innovation and shared best practices. The program introduced educators to the fundamentals of AI, explored ethical and responsible classroom applications, and facilitated ongoing collaboration with industry experts and peers throughout the academic year.

“As a former teacher, I know how important professional development is, especially in an ever-changing world. This pilot helps turn possibility into practice,” Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler said. “By investing in our educators and grounding their work in ethical, real-world AI applications, we’re making sure our students are not just consumers of technology, but future leaders in it.”

Interim Secretary of Economic Development Ashley Stolba added that “Massachusetts is uniquely positioned to lead in the responsible and innovative use of artificial intelligence. This pilot reflects our forward-looking approach, aligned with the vision of the Massachusetts AI Hub. By investing in educators today, we ensure our students are prepared to shape the innovations of tomorrow. Supporting this kind of early, hands-on learning helps build the talent pipeline that will drive our future economy.”

Technology Services and Security Secretary Jason Snyder related how, as a young student interested in computer science, having passionate and experienced teachers as mentors was transformational. “This pilot helps ensure that our next generation of students in Massachusetts learn the fundamentals of data and AI literacy, and that our educators are empowered to lead with confidence and instill emerging technology proactively, in classrooms all over the state.”

“Through this pilot, we’re giving educators the foundation they need to navigate this new era with confidence, fueling workforce readiness and expanding opportunity for students.”

The pilot is a cornerstone of the Massachusetts AI Hub’s mission to position the state as a global leader in applied and ethical AI. Future Ready: AI in the Classroom is the first in a series of educator-focused initiatives aligned with the Hub’s education and workforce development strategy, ensuring that students across Massachusetts are not only prepared for the future of innovation, but are actively shaping it. The pilot program also advances the goals of the Massachusetts STEM Advisory Council by strengthening STEM education and supporting educators with a network of STEM resources.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to expand access to information and unlock new learning opportunities for students across Massachusetts,” Massachusetts AI Hub Executive Director Sabrina Mansur said. “With this pilot program, our state will be able to empower teachers to incorporate the benefits of AI in student education. Ultimately, our goal is to create a strong pipeline of talent who understand how to use AI to build a stronger economy.”

David Dimmett, president and CEO of PLTW, noted that “we believe in empowering students to become the innovators and problem solvers of tomorrow. This partnership with Massachusetts represents exactly the kind of forward-thinking approach we need to prepare educators and students for an AI-driven future. By providing teachers with hands-on, project-based AI learning experiences, we’re ensuring that students don’t just understand artificial intelligence — they learn to harness it as a tool for creativity and innovation. This pilot will serve as a model for how we can scale AI literacy across the U.S.”

The launch of the pilot reflects a broader, coordinated effort across Massachusetts state government to harness AI’s potential in a way that is forward-thinking, inclusive, and impactful. It follows the work of the Massachusetts AI Strategic Task Force, established by Healey in 2024 to chart a path for AI adoption, talent development, and economic growth. The task force’s recommendations directly informed the creation of the AI Hub and highlighted the need for strong partnerships between government, industry, and academia. The administration also invested $100 million through the Mass Leads Act to support AI innovation at scale and strengthen Massachusetts’ global leadership in AI.

In K-12 education specifically, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is also leading efforts to support educators as access to AI increases. Through a partnership with the International Society for Technology in Education and the Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development, DESE convened a K-12 AI task force focused on developing recommendations to support school communities in their use of AI. This task force produced a multi-year AI roadmap focused on AI literacy, student data privacy, and educator preparation.

Project Will Restore WMA Chapel, Make It a Gathering Place

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The historic chapel, seen above in an archival photo, will be restored to its former glory and given a new role as a dining facility, as seen in the architect’s rendering below.
Education

Turning Back the Clock

 

The historic chapel, seen above in an archival photo, will be restored to its former glory and given a new role as a dining facility, as seen in the architect’s rendering below.

The historic chapel, seen above in an archival photo, will be restored to its former glory and given a new role as a dining facility, as seen in the architect’s rendering below.

architect’s rendering

Brian Easler calls it “an inflection point … a seismic shift in the academy’s upward trajectory.”

He was referring to a $20 million project to create a new kitchen and servery at Wilbraham & Monson Academy (WMA) and convert its historic chapel into a dining commons.

Those phrases ‘inflection point’ and ‘seismic shift’ refer to several aspects of this project and cover a lot of ground. Indeed, they reference everything from the magnitude of the upgrade in dining facilities — from fairly nondescript quarters to the fully restored chapel, with its vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows, what students are calling the ‘Harry Potter dining hall’ — to the way this project will shift still more of the activity at WMA to the east side of Main Street, thus reducing traffic crossing the busy street.

“This will move the center of the campus from the west side of Main Street to the east side,” said Easler. “And that will generate a 70% reduction in student Main Street crossings, which is just one big impact.”

Meanwhile ‘inflection point’ also refers to the way this project galvanized the WMA community and especially its alumni base, from which the vast majority of the funds for the project were raised.

“This was not one of those fund-raising efforts where you put the ask out to everyone in the community … 7,000 alumni and everyone chips in,” Easler explained. “This was a handful of donors already close to the school, already close to me.

“We went out to them with personal appeals from the school to see if they were interested in the project,” he went on. “We were fortunate in that they were all interested in the project, and they were almost all able to help us with it; that’s how we were able to make it happen relatively quicky.”

“This space will serve as a unifying gathering place for our community. The dining commons will become the heart and soul of our campus, and a central part of the student experience.”

Elaborating, he said there were two lead gifts — from donors he was not ready to name — that generated much-needed momentum for the initiative, one for $7 million, the other for $5 million. “Several other people picked up on that momentum, and that enabled us to get to $20 million.”

Groundbreaking ceremonies were staged on April 25. Work is slated to commence soon, and the plan is to have the facility ready for the start of the 2026-27 school year.

Easler said the initiative represents the next phase in the school’s master plan for its campus, one with several components, including the construction of a new athenaeum, completed in 2020, which is connected to the chapel and will be connected to the new kitchen and server area, with the current dining hall to be converted to a state-of-the-art large-capacity theater and performance and meeting space.

The past and present will come together — literally, and in powerful ways, said Easler, noting that the rough-hewn brownstone exterior chapel will become the servery’s interior wall.

“During the day, the skylights will illuminate the servery with natural light,” said Easler, “highlighting the beauty of the original brownstone exterior and creating a stunning backdrop for a modern country-kitchen style.”

But while the project has many aspects to it, in many respects, the chapel is the primary focus. Completed in 1870, it has been used sparingly in recent years — for school meetings once a week, said Easler. It’s transformation into a dining hall will make it a much larger part of the school’s identity and its daily activity.

“This space will serve as a unifying gathering place for our community,” said Easler. “The dining commons will become the heart and soul of our campus, and a central part of the student experience.”

And the project will turn back the clock and restore the chapel to its original elegance and architectural allure.

“We have photos of the chapel when it was first constructed; it was magnificent on the inside, with exposed beams and stained-glass dormers,” said Easler. All of that is still up there, but it was covered with sheet rock somewhere along the line, probably to minimize the cubic yards that had to be cooled or heated. We have other ways to mitigate that now, so we’ll be opening it back up to its original beauty, and it will be a stunning dining room.”

Dave Fontaine Jr., CEO with Fontaine Bros., the general contractor for the project, as well as the athenaeum, agreed, noting that this project falls into several categories, everything from new construction to what would be considered historic renovation.

“It’s a very cool project,” he told BusinessWest. “There’s a lot of history in the chapel, it’s a really cool building, and I think this will be a gem of a project when it’s completed.”

— George O’Brien

Link to Libraries Creates Fund to Honor Steve, Sue Kaplan

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Steve and Sue Kaplan, left, with Laurie Flynn, executive director of Link to Libraries, and John Doleva, president and CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame, a strong supporter of the agency.
Education

Recognizing a Legacy of Giving Back

Steve and Sue Kaplan, left, with Laurie Flynn, executive director of Link to Libraries, and John Doleva, president and CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame, a strong supporter of the agency.

Steve and Sue Kaplan, left, with Laurie Flynn, executive director of Link to Libraries, and John Doleva, president and CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame, a strong supporter of the agency.

 

As she talked about Steve Kaplan and his many contributions to the nonprofit Link to Libraries, Laurie Flynn, the agency’s executive director, didn’t start with his service on the board, his lengthy stint as treasurer, or even his role as quiet, behind-the-scenes co-founder with his wife, Susan Jaye Kaplan.

No, she started by talking about the manner in which Kaplan, who passed away in January after a lengthy battle with brain cancer, adopted, for lack of a better word, the Kensington International School in Springfield — because, in many ways, that says even more about him.

“He started off as a volunteer reader,” she recalled, noting that the nonprofit helps place such readers in schools across the region to help encourage young people to read. “And he turned it into so much more; it became near and dear to him. He tutored there, he did all kinds of things, and he did it without asking for a spotlight … he just quietly gave and gave and gave.

“He always joked that he was “Mr. Susan Jaye Kaplan,” Flynn went on. “But he was a force in his own right; it was just different energy.”

It was that above-and-beyond approach at the Kensington School, and the varying forms of energy displayed by both Kaplans that helped inspire Flynn to create a legacy fund in both their names to help continue and even expand LTL’s service to the young people in the region.

Susan Jaye Kaplan, as most now know, co-founded not only LTL but also the nonprofit GoFIT. She was honored for her work with BusinessWest’s Difference Maker award in 2009.

“When Steve passed in January, I thought it was an important time to honor his work and Sue’s work, and their work as a couple in Western Mass.”

“When Steve passed in January, I thought it was an important time to honor his work and Sue’s work, and their work as a couple in Western Mass.,” she told BusinessWest. “They’ve done so much, not just for Link to Libraries, but we’re a huge piece of their legacy. It seemed to me that … when you look at the two of them, and how much they gave, not just through the schools, but through community partnerships, it seems like a great opportunity, a great way to honor their legacy, to have something that is permanently part of Link to Libraries, that is dedicated to doing more than we’re doing now.”

Elaborating, Flynn said the Stephen Kaplan & Susan Jaye Kaplan Community Legacy Fund, which was formally announced at LTL’s biennial fund-raising ball at the Basketball Hall of Fame, will enable the nonprofit to extend its reach, and impact.

“While most of Link to Libraries’ work is done through underserved elementary schools, we frequently receive requests from other local nonprofits for book donations to support their own work with children and families in need,” she explained. “We do our very best to say ‘yes’ to every book request we get, but we have limited funds, limited ability to do that.

“By creating this fund and having this cache of money set aside to support our community partners, who are serving the same kids and families that we are, that will enable our reach to expand,” she went on, adding that that the legacy fund will be a permanent fixture at LTL.

Flynn said there is no specific goal for the fund, adding that whatever is raised — and she is expecting support from individuals and businesses alike — will enable LTL to support more groups serving children and families, such as the Salvation Army, the Springfield Museums, and countless others.

“Steve’s passing was a terrible loss to our Link to Libraries family, to the Western Massachusetts community, and to all who knew and loved him,” said Flynn. “We hope that this tribute will be a living reminder of Sue and Steve’s tireless work and passion for improving the lives of others.”

For more information on the legacy fund, visit linktolibraries.org.

— George O’Brien

Outgoing WNE President Talks About ‘Getting to the Other Side’ of Current Challenges

By
Education Special Coverage

School of Thought

Western New England University President Robert Johnson

 

 

“A shift in the market.”

That’s how Robert Johnson, president of Western New England University, chose to describe the current state of higher education, knowing this is a huge understatement.

Indeed, colleges and universities were already under great amounts of stress due to declining enrollments, rising costs, weaker bottom lines, and mounting questions about the cost and value of a college education. And that was before the Trump administration started what the Boston Globe and others are calling a ‘reign of terror,’ pressuring institutions on matters such as DEI policies and efforts to curb antisemitism with threats involving everything from the cancelation of grants to removal of schools’ tax-exempt status.

“It was already a fairly rapid pace of change, and what’s going on at the federal level is merely accelerating the pace of change, creating high levels of anxiety,” said Johnson. “I don’t think higher ed has ever been through this — I’ve been in higher ed 35 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

But, at the end of the day, and in his opinion, this is just … a shift in the market, or another shift, one of many that higher education institutions have faced over the years, decades, or centuries, depending on how long they’ve been around, said Johnson, who referred early and often to the proverbial ‘other side’ of this current shift.

“I don’t want to call it a ‘new normal,’ because I think we’re creating ‘normal,’ and it’s going to be different,” he said. “What that ‘different’ is … who knows? But I think we must remain agile enough to change with the times. My perspective is simple; when it comes right down to it, places like Western New England University — we started as a branch campus for Northeastern University — are at a place where we’ve come through world wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow, the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession … and now this. And we’ll figure this out.

“I don’t want to call it a ‘new normal,’ because I think we’re creating ‘normal,’ and it’s going to be different. What that ‘different’ is … who knows? But I think we must remain agile enough to change with the times.”

“Anyone who says they have a crystal ball and understands what it’s going to look like on the other side is fool’s gold,” he went on. “The best that we can do is be agile and try and manage as best we can given the resources that we have to emerge from this. It’s not going to be fun — this is not the golden age of higher education post World War II — it is a shift in the market, and that has to be our view, and there will be winners and losers.”

These were just some of the thoughts from Johnson in a wide-ranging interview with Johnson that turned out to be an exit interview, if you will. Indeed, he announced, just a few days after he talked with BusinessWest, that he will be stepping down from the university in August.

As he talked about the current landscape, he came back repeatedly to his contention that, to survive this latest shift in the market, schools will have to be agile and proactive in response to the factors that created this paradigm. And WNE is doing exactly that, he said, noting that, through several new strategic initiatives, it has improved its position.

Indeed, the school enrolled the largest entering class in its history in the fall of 2024, just two years after it recorded one if its lowest figures in a quarter century, he said. “Three years ago, we had just over 6,700 applications for our entering class. This year, we’re right on the cusp of 13,000 applications.”

This was accomplished, he said, by stressing brand value and return on investment — “including a 94% job-placement rate, starting salaries higher than 52 of the top-100 universities in the country — 36% higher than any of the other schools in this region.

Robert Johnson says that, through aggressive, targeted marketing, WNE entered its largest class ever in 2024, and is on pace to do the same this September.

Robert Johnson says that, through aggressive, targeted marketing, WNE entered its largest class ever in 2024, and is on pace to do the same this September.

“That’s the message that we keep driving home,” he went on. “And it’s showing up in our applications, deposits, campus visits … that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

Beyond marketing, these increases in applications and enrollment are due to new programs designed to provide a bridge to the workforce, he said, citing the school’s new master’s degree program in Biopharmaceutical Technology, due to launch in September, as just one example.

If current trends continue, the school could exceed 1,050 students, and perhaps more, for the class entering this September, said Johnson, adding that this would be the largest class yet again.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with Johnson about the current state of higher education and the many factors that will determine how and to what extent schools can ride out this storm.

 

Course of Action

Johnson, who arrived at WNE just as COVID did, noted that the pandemic represented a stern test for all institutions of higher education, one that forced them to rethink what they were doing and how, and make often dramatic changes to carry on and continue their missions.

This latest shift, one marked by demographic changes and governmental changes alike, and where 40% of private schools in New England are under some form of financial distress, is similar in many ways, but also fundamentally different.

“With COVID, there was a predictability to it — you knew that if you did certain things you would get through it,” he said. “Right now, in this environment we’re in right now, there’s no predictability; that’s what creates the high levels of anxiety we’re seeing right now.”

And this brings him back to that notion that schools will “figure this out.” Or not.

‘There’s something about the human spirit that says, ‘no matter what we’re going through, we’ll come out on the other side,’ and oftentimes, it really does come down to sheer determination with a plan of action that has the ability to pivot as you get different information or new information along the way that enables you to move forward.

“The indelible human spirt says that when a group of people work together toward a common goal, and they’re all rowing in the same direction, you can’t find a time in human history where they did not come out on the other side. And that’s going to be the difference — the institutions that can pull together and have that indelible human spirit that says ‘yes, I can.’ It’s possibility thinking and operating from a perspective of assets and not deficits — ‘I’m not going to focus on what I don’t have and therefore what I can’t do, but what I do have and what we can do with that.”

Elaborating, he said WNE’s success with growing its numbers for applications, deposits, and enrollment, comes down to one word — marketing.

“We’ve been really focused on telling our story,” he explained. “Because if families are going to make the investment, they want to know if I can get a job, a good job. It’s about outcomes, outcomes, outcomes.”

This marketing involves traditional vehicles, but especially social media and digital marketing, he said, but it also involves getting students on the campus.

“Getting them on our campus matters; there’s a higher probability of enrolling a student if they’ve been to the campus,” he said, adding that the school succeeds at being welcoming.

“This is place where, no matter who you are, where you’re from, or what you look like, you’re welcome. “It doesn’t matter what your political persuasion may be. And we don’t engage in highly politicized debate that’s happening in the external world; our heads are down, this is where you come to go to school, where you come to get a job — you don’t have all the drama about what’s going on in the world.”

When asked about how schools will emerge on the other side, and the factors that will determine what will look like when they do, Johnson said financial models and roadmaps that will provide long-term sustainability and growth, where revenues align with expenses, are obviously a key. But the bigger factor will the level to which institutions can focus on academic programs that can provide real jobs, “not just education for the sake of education.”

He mentioned examples at WNE including the new Biopharmaceutical Technology degree program, the Center for Advanced Manufacturing, FinTech program, and the recently opened XR/VR Lab, which provides students with hands-on access to cutting-edge virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality technologies.

“With COVID, there was a predictability to it — you knew that if you did certain things you would get through it. Right now, in this environment we’re in right now, there’s no predictability; that’s what creates the high levels of anxiety we’re seeing right now.”

“Those are the kinds of things that will matter moving forward,” he said. “Part of what will make a winner is programs that are relevant, that enable students to get real jobs … that have innovative and entrepreneurial components in place that become creative in nature and allow students to have hands-on experience and take that experience and go out into the world of work.”

“At the end of the day, each institution will have to decide what’s best for them, and position themselves accordingly,” he went on. ‘For many of them, probably most of them, elements of their plan will work, and for some of them, their plans will not work, and it will be to their own demise.”

 

Bottom Line

Johnson stressed that neither he, nor anyone else, really, knows just what ‘different will, indeed, look like.

But in these unprecedented times, when there is, as he said earlier, no predictability, schools must be creative and diligent if they are going to get to the other side.

“One of the outcomes of what we’re seeing now is that you’ll see some of the institutions come out of this and evolve and thrive, and there will be others that will contract and perhaps go out of business,” he continued. “I go back to the Great Depression, when the economy was rough, to say the least — which is what we’re starting to potentially see as an outcome of tariffs and uncertainty in the marketplace — some of the greatest companies in the world were started or evolved during that time. And that’s what we’re going to see on the other side of this with higher education — there will be institutions that will be reborn in a different way that will evolve and thrive in an environment in whatever ‘different’ will look like.”

New Center on HCC Campus Caters to Adult Learners, Parents

By
Amy Woody
Education

Balancing School and Life

 

Amy Woody

Amy Woody stands in the new Marieb Adult Learner Success Center.

 

Amy Woody knows something about adult learners — students who enroll in college later in life than the typical 18-year-old high-school graduate — because she was one.

When she started at Holyoke Community College in her 20s, she had a 1-year-old son, so she also knows what it’s like to be a student and parent at the same time. So it’s been personally gratifying for her to see the development of a new support program for adult learners and student parents at HCC, which opened last month.

The Marieb Adult Learner Success Center and the Parent Learning Center are funded through a $1 million gift from the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Foundation, established by the late Elaine Marieb, an HCC alum and long-time member of its biology faculty who went on to become a bestselling author of anatomy and physiology textbooks.

“In her generosity and love of lifelong learning, she earmarked this money for the adult-learner and student-parent community,” said Anne Medina, HCC’s associate director of Enrollment and Recruitment. “She herself was an adult learner and understood the unique challenges adult learners face as older students. She firmly believed that they needed dedicated programs and spaces on campus to be successful in their studies.”

Woody agrees. As coordinator of the Marieb Adult Learner Success Center, she told BusinessWest that, as the college began to see an influx of adult learners coming in from MassReconnect — a state program launched in 2023 offering free community-college tuition to students over age 25 — one of the things it was missing was a space where students could be on campus with their children. The Parent Learning Center fills that need.

“She herself was an adult learner and understood the unique challenges adult learners face as older students. She firmly believed that they needed dedicated programs and spaces on campus to be successful in their studies.”

“We were finding they had gaps in their schedules, and they just wanted some place where they could go be with their kids and study,” Woody said. “So we realized this could be a valuable place for students to be on campus, include their children in a family-oriented space, and not feel as though they’re distracting others, or that their kids don’t have a place here. We really believe that education is a family affair, so we’re trying to create spaces and programming that bring the whole family in and not just the student.”

Meanwhile, the Marieb Adult Learner Success Center is for older students in general, not just parents, she added. It’s a more quiet space where students can study, have coffee and snacks in the kitchen, but also access academic advising and workshops to support both academic and life skills.

“It’s not just about turning your work in on time, but how do you manage that with your entire life, your kids and your family and your cooking and your cleaning and all of that fun stuff?” Woody said. “So we try to do programming that honors the adult learner as an entire person and not just a student.”

The Marieb Adult Learner Success Center is a small lounge and study area with adjoining staff offices, while the Parent Learning Center, just across the hall, is a much larger space that contains a desk with a secure play or napping area for small children, as well as a pack and play, changing station, large-screen TV, conference table, art easel, and learning corner with children’s books and toys.

grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Dec. 11.

HCC President George Timmons (third from left) helps celebrate the grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Dec. 11.

“The Parent Learning Center is a workspace where students can bring their laptops, sit and work on group projects, or just kick back and relax for a while, where they can have their kids with them and feel safe and welcome,” Medina said.

 

Evolving Effort

Before the Marieb Adult Learning Success Center, HCC housed a program in that space called New Directions for Adult Learners, as well as its Pathways program, which is a transfer program mostly focused on adult women learners.

“The New Directions program was relatively small — it was just one academic advisor who was really running that whole program,” Woody said. “Now we have three full-time staff members, and we’ve been able to scale up the program significantly. When the New Directions program ended, there were between 60 and 80 students, and now, in our first year, we have about 200 enrolled in this program.”

More students have expressed interest as well, she added. “so we were able to take a model that was working — offering this extra, holistic support to adult learners — but scale that up to a much bigger level so that we can serve more students.”

Woody feels that having such a resource could encourage adult students to enroll while helping them stay successful on their academic journey.

“That’s one of the big things — can we make it any easier for them? We recognize that they’re sacrificing a lot of time away from their families, so that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to give back with these spaces where the whole family can be involved.

“A big part of our program is recognizing that being an adult learner is just one aspect of their identity, and there are so many other things going on in their lives,” she added. “So offering programming in the evenings, or by Zoom, or just doing little things that make us more accessible to them in their busy lives, is really helpful. So is that holistic advising piece, having a person you can call up with whatever issue you’re having, and they can help you troubleshoot and walk you through it and just remind you that you belong here at HCC, no matter what’s going on.”

 

Generational Impact

The ceremonial check from Elaine Marieb still hangs in the center named after her, for two reasons, Woody said.

“First of all, her generosity is what made all of this possible, and I think that’s amazing. But also, she’s a wonderful example of an adult learner, somebody who came to HCC as an adult, pursuing a nursing career.”

She noted that about 70% of students in HCC’s nursing program would be classified as adult learners, so that demographic is helping to fill persistent shortages of talent in the field, which lends another layer of importance to efforts to support them on their academic journey.

“And I was an adult learner here at HCC,” said Woody, who used her associate degree there as a springboard to a bachelor’s degree at Westfield State University. Meanwhile, her son is now 18; he’ll graduate from high school this spring and just completed his first psychology class at HCC.

“So, when I say it’s a family thing, I really believe that,” she went on. “I think seeing me here was a big push for him to say, ‘I can do this.’ It’s made a big impact on how he approaches his education.”

 

LightHouse Holyoke Expands Its Space — and Its Innovative Vision

By
Executive Director Catherine Gobron
Education Special Coverage

Learning Process

Executive Director Catherine Gobron

Executive Director Catherine Gobron

July 18 to Sept. 3. That’s 47 days. Not quite seven weeks.

That’s how much time LightHouse Holyoke, a non-traditional middle and high school celebrating its 10th year in operation, had between its purchase of the Gateway City Arts property on Race Street and the start of classes for the 2024-25 year.

Executive Director Catherine Gobron called that whirlwind of activity “amazing” as she gave BusinessWest a tour of the facility during the recent holiday break and reflected on the past few months; the school’s impact on students, many of whom thrive there more than they would a traditional public school; and how the new location opens up more educational programs — and potential career paths — for these teens.

Take, for example, a production academy integrated into two existing performance spaces, a small theater and a larger concert venue that has hosted national touring acts through the years; together, they will allow for training and internship opportunities for young people to learn the many skills associated with the entertainment and event-production industry, from lighting and sound to artist management and beyond. Isaac Eddy, a 12-year veteran of the Blue Man Group, is developing the theater program.

“Our expenses have gone up quite a bit, and we’re still really figuring out how that’s all going to work. But we’ve got a vision to grow it, and I can see it.”

“Different aspects of the work appeal to different students — some kids are really lit up by how to use the lighting board, and other kids are interested in learning sound. Some of these young people, we predict, will go on to careers in the music industry or in the production industry,” Gobron explained, adding that LightHouse is also developing partnerships with the Fine Arts Center at UMass Amherst and a local theatrical stage union, “so hopefully we can feed young people into the union. which would be a win-win.”

Similarly, the complex’s café will reopen to the public, with integrated courses and internships in all aspects of running a café, leading to paid work and future career opportunities. The complex also hosts an 8,000-square-foot community maker space, complete with a woodshop and ceramic studio, hosting classes and workspaces both for LightHouse students and accessible to the wider community.

LightHouse bought the Gateway City Arts complex

LightHouse bought the Gateway City Arts complex on July 18 and started classes on Sept. 3 — a whirlwind of activity Catherine Gobron calls “amazing.”

Gobron is also excited that the just-opened kitchen space will serve both the café and student lunches, meaning the school no longer has to rely on one of the large, national lunch suppliers.

“It’s really exciting that we’re going to have a real lunch program, and we’re going to eat together in the dining room every day,” she said. “Many of our young people are not arriving with strong skills or awareness or resources around healthy food choices, and that can have dire consequences.”

So there’s plenty of excitement at LightHouse — which currently enrolls about 75 students and could double that with more buildout — but also a sense of challenge.

Through what Gobron has called “a steady stream of community-supported miracles,” the school raised $1.5 million toward purchasing and renovating the 40,000-square-foot property, and borrowed another $2.5 million in partnership with Greenfield Northampton Cooperative Bank and MassDevelopment. Collaborators on the project included HAI Architects, Houle Builders, and Sarah Reid at Small Victories Interior Design. A second capital campaign aims to raise another $1.5 million; that’s on top of an annual budget that relies partly on tuition, but with philanthropy covering about one-third of the total.

“A lot of times, if a young person isn’t thriving in school, we think that’s the young person’s fault: they have ADHD, they have whatever. We often don’t talk about it as a systemic problem. Here, we don’t try to blame the kid.”

But the school’s mission is important, Gobron said, which is why these efforts are not just challenging, but gratifying. “Our expenses have gone up quite a bit, and we’re still really figuring out how that’s all going to work. But we’ve got a vision to grow it, and I can see it.”

 

Impactful Journey

Gobron’s life experiences led her to a non-traditional path in the world of education, and eventually to the launch of LightHouse in 2015 along with then-business partner Josiah Litant.

“High school was terrible for me, and I ended up leaving during my senior year. I was a strong student academically, but it was a really negative space for me in other ways,” she recalled. She started her career in alternative education at a Montessori school and eventually made her way to North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens in Sunderland, where she stayed for 12 years.

While program director there, she dreamed of opening a school in Holyoke focused on self-directed learning that would serve a more urban, diverse population. She and Litant, an education consultant who had worked at Hampshire College, found a home in the Sustainability Technology Entrepreneurship Art Media (STEAM) building on Race Street, which, like Gateway City Arts, was owned by Vitek Kruta and Lori Divine.

Catherine Gobron stands in the school’s dining area, where students will benefit from a just-launched in-house kitchen.

Catherine Gobron stands in the school’s dining area, where students will benefit from a just-launched in-house kitchen.

Gobron said the model isn’t as radical as it sounds, as college students typically craft their own degree track within certain parameters. “But we typically don’t recognize the value in that when it’s teenagers.”

Especially those, like herself, who don’t feel they fit into a traditional high-school structure.

“A lot of times, if a young person isn’t thriving in school, we think that’s the young person’s fault: they have ADHD, they have whatever. We often don’t talk about it as a systemic problem. Here, we don’t try to blame the kid,” she said, noting that LightHouse’s opening coincided with Holyoke Public Schools entering state receivership (which was lifted in 2024). “There were so many kids struggling, we couldn’t blame them anymore. The system had to ask, ‘OK, what are we doing?’ And there was a window of openness to other possibilities that might have otherwise seemed kind of crazy.”

LightHouse actually has partnerships with the public school systems in Holyoke and other communities, taking in a handful of students who are technically enrolled with the city, but do their learning at LightHouse.

“The students they’re sending us are typically disengaged,” Gobron said. “A lot of times, we hear from parents, ‘I used to have a curious and excited kid, and somewhere, that went away.’ And now we have this child who’s kind of shut down and disengaged, thinks that they hate learning, or have any number of challenges.”

“A lot of times, we hear from parents, ‘I used to have a curious and excited kid, and somewhere, that went away.’ And now we have this child who’s kind of shut down and disengaged, thinks that they hate learning, or have any number of challenges.”

Each student has an advisor that becomes their point person, she explained, both for the student and their family — with ‘family’ being an adaptable term. “Some students have two parents; some students have four parents; some students have a grandmother, a social worker, and a probation officer. And the advisor creates a team of support around the student.”

Students are encouraged to pursue their own interests — sometimes with immediate, real-world applications, as with the burgeoning event-production and culinary programs — but still need to achieve the same graduation requirements, in terms of credits and testing, as public-school students in Massachusetts.

“We believe that young people can and should be supported to be the leaders of their own lives,” the school’s website states. “We know that learning is most successful when it is actively chosen and personally meaningful. For us, the purpose of education is to collaborate with young people to cultivate the skills, confidence, and vision to co-create the future.”

 

Success Stories

Incoming students tend to fall into one of several categories, Gobron noted: young people with passions and interests who seek more time, support, and flexibility to pursue them; those who come from negative schooling experiences, may learn differently, or be anxious, depressed, bullied, ostracized, struggling academically, or managing other challenges; and teens somewhere in the middle, who are open to the possibility of being inspired, but aren’t there yet.

One senior student recently wrote an essay on her experiences, and how she always liked learning, but faced a combination of bullying in middle school and struggles at home.

The stage where many locals have enjoyed concerts over the years will now showcase a blend of student training and community events.

The stage where many locals have enjoyed concerts over the years will now showcase a blend of student training and community events.

“I went from being an honor-roll student to skipping classes and not learning a single thing,” she wrote. “I was so consumed by depression and anxiety that I felt suffocated. I understand that it was a tough time for everyone when COVID hit, and school became completely different, but I’d never done worse in my life in terms of grades. COVID was my excuse. I hid all the parts of me that I deemed weak behind my face mask. I was at an all-time low, and I accepted it.”

Until she found LightHouse — very near her home, actually — and began to reclaim her passion for learning.

“LightHouse was very supportive of me. I’d been used to being treated in a lot of ways. I knew when I was being brushed off, neglected, or taken advantage of, so this feeling was very odd.”

“LightHouse was very supportive of me. I’d been used to being treated in a lot of ways. I knew when I was being brushed off, neglected, or taken advantage of, so this feeling was very odd,” she wrote, later adding, “I’ve been doing all kinds of things, and I’ve honestly never been more motivated in my life. I went from declaring that I was going to drop out to applying for college. That’s what LightHouse has done for me. I couldn’t be more grateful.”

Kruta and Divine are also grateful they were able to sell the Gateway City Arts complex — long a hive of arts, learning, performance, and community connection — to an equally mission-driven entity, and one with which they were already familiar.

“We couldn’t be happier to have LightHouse move into the space that we spent 12 years creating,” Divine said last year. “Our mission was always to create a space for education, community, creativity, and inspiration. This was carried out in our classes, meetings, theater, food, music, and gatherings. LightHouse Holyoke shares so many of our values. When it was clear that Gateway City Arts had to close, our hope was to find a buyer that would continue our vision merged with their own. We applaud what LightHouse brings to the lives of its students and their families and friends. We created a space for learning and sharing — LightHouse will continue that.”

AIC Announces Detailed Strategy to Guide Next Several Years

By
AIC interim President Nicolle Cestero
Education Special Coverage

It Starts with a Plan

AIC interim President Nicolle Cestero

AIC interim President Nicolle Cestero

Amid a shifting landscape for higher education, Nicolle Cestero says, colleges that are unwilling to change will be left behind.

That’s the idea behind a new, expansive organizational business plan at American International College, announced last month, that will guide the college over the next several years, said Cestero, AIC’s interim president.

Dubbed Pathway to Progress, the document presents an array of changes to AIC’s operational model, including revising the academic portfolio, expanding degree options, launching new enrollment strategies, and streamlining athletic programming, including cutting programs and moving the men’s hockey team from Division I to Division II in the NCAA.

“There have been many changes in higher education over the course of the past 20 years, and even over the course of the past three to five years. And if institutions aren’t changing and being nimble, then they are finding themselves merging or closing,” Cestero told BusinessWest in a wide-ranging interview regarding the plan.

“This institution, in the opinion of myself and others — senior management, faculty, staff, board of trustees — believe that we are really important to the students that we serve and to this community, and we want to make sure that AIC is here for the long term,” she added. “So we had to look at ourselves and say, ‘what we’re doing right now isn’t sustainable. So what do we need to do in order to make sure that AIC is here three, five, 10 years from now?’ That’s where Pathway to Progress comes in.”

“There have been many changes in higher education over the course of the past 20 years, and even over the course of the past three to five years. And if institutions aren’t changing and being nimble, then they are finding themselves merging or closing.”

Among the shifts in the higher-education landscape, according to the plan’s designers, are disruptions caused by the launch of a new federal financial-aid model, changes in demographics across the Northeast, and the nationwide conversation around the value of a college degree.

“We can’t continue to do the same things that we’ve always done and expect the same results,” Cestero added. “So we needed to say, ‘what are we good at? What’s making us money? What’s not?’ — and then make the tough decisions to say, ‘we’re going to cut here, and we’re going to grow here in order to maintain the institution.’”

To get to those decisions, AIC contracted with a consulting company for a market analysis, financial analysis, and program analysis for athletics and academics. Then Cestero and Michael Dodge, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, put together a steering committee, including representatives from various constituencies.

After months of work, “it got to the point where it was pretty clear the direction the institution should go, and then Michael and I made those final decisions, obviously with the support of the board of trustees — and the board had responsibility for making a few of those decisions, too,” she added. “Then we rolled it out.”

Michael Dodge

Michael Dodge says AIC leadership engaged with faculty in determining where to build on areas of strength.

For this issue’s focus on education, we break down the three main pillars of AIC’s new organizational plan and how its leaders feel the college will benefit from each.

 

Academic Changes

First of all, AIC, is changing its degree offerings, embarking on a multi-year plan to launch new programs based on industry demand and market research, while discontinuing some undergraduate and graduate programs as well. Faculty positions will not be affected.

Following the previously announced launch of seven new online degree completion programs, the college plans to expand the number of program offerings beginning in the fall of 2025.

“I think, being a small institution, we can maybe run faster than some bigger schools or state institutions might be able to.”

“We looked at what makes sense for us to expand on, as opposed to just adding a program. What are we good at?” Cestero said. “But at the same time, we’re sunsetting programs. We’re saying, ‘OK, if we’re going to do all of this, we don’t have the resources to do all of this as well. So, unfortunately, this is going to have to go away. Those are hard decisions to make … but you have to recognize that those things need to happen in order for these other things to grow.”

For students who wish to earn an undergraduate degree more quickly, AIC will also begin offering three-year, 120-credit options for a variety of undergraduate programs, which make use of less expensive summer sessions, to provide time and financial savings to students (see related story on page 29). It will also launch a comprehensive re-enrollment campaign to engage and recruit former students to return to AIC and complete their degrees.

Thinking about how to refocus the academic program didn’t start only with Pathway to Progress, Dodge told BusinessWest.

“We’ve spent the last three years figuring out where are those areas where we can be really good, where we have some skills,” he said. “In the last couple of years, we’ve built a fully online master’s in criminal justice program. We’re getting into the degree-completion space, where students who’ve earned an associate degree at one of the amazing community colleges in the Commonwealth can come to AIC and have a seamless transition and convert that right over into their bachelor’s degree.

“We’ve also really tried to engage the faculty and build in the things that they are good at and that we can lean into,” Dodge added, as well as spaces AIC had not previously competed in, like computer science and data analytics, where market demand for talent is high — while also continuing to strengthen core areas where the college already excels.

Pathway to Progress includes launching a re-enrollment campaign to engage and recruit former students to return to AIC and complete their degrees.

Pathway to Progress includes launching a re-enrollment campaign to engage and recruit former students to return to AIC and complete their degrees.

“We’re really good at the health sciences, education, criminal justice. We have a number of our students in our business programs, so we always want to continue to improve those. But then, we also want to think about what else is out there, what’s the next thing. And I think, being a small institution, we can maybe run faster than some bigger schools or state institutions might be able to.”

Cestero said everyone impacted by decisions on academic programs was informed personally before the plan was announced, and then a town-hall event was held on campus for all parties — students, faculty, employees, vendors, and partners — to discuss them further.

“Any student that is in an academic program that is going away, we are teaching out those programs,” she explained. “All we’re doing is not bringing new students in, and they will have the same faculty. The faculty aren’t going away, either.”

 

Impacts on Athletics and Faculty

The big news in AIC athletics is the return of men’s ice hockey to Division II after the 2024-25 season, following 27 years in Division I. In recent years, the team has recorded significant success, earning national rankings from 2018 to 2021 and winning the Atlantic Hockey America conference regular-season title in 2019.

According to a press release on the Plan for Progress, the decision was made to position the program alongside the majority of AIC’s varsity programs in Division II, and that “this transition will provide a more equitable distribution of resources among all athletic programs and will allow ice hockey’s legacy to continue within the AIC Athletics portfolio.” All scholarships for affected athletes will be honored.

“When put it in the perspective of ‘what does this institution need to do to stabilize itself?’ I think it becomes a simpler decision,” Cestero said. “If this is siphoning off money that is leading to the institution not being stable financially and you want the institution here, it makes the decision easier than just ‘should we take it from DI to DII?’ I think the harder part is that the students have found a place here, and they are happy here, and knowing that you’re disrupting it, that’s the really hard part.”

“Because there were so many changes coming forward, we felt as though, if we aren’t clear about what the whole plan is up front all at once, then you’ve got a culture of fear, and that’s not good for anybody.”

It’s also tough for athletes in AIC’s women’s tennis and wrestling programs, which are being ended “to better meet industry demand and provide additional resources to other varsity sports,” the release notes. Again, all scholarships for affected athletes will be honored, though some may choose to use their remaining eligibility elsewhere.

“A freshman wrestler may want to go somewhere else because they have so much eligibility left, whereas a junior tennis player, if they were to transfer, they could lose out on transfer credits and things of that nature,” Cestero said. “Plus, you have your home here, right? You’ve got your circle of friends, you’ve got your major, you’ve got your faculty, your mentors, etc.”

Meanwhile, the Plan for Progress impacts faculty as well. To support the ongoing growth of AIC’s academic portfolio, the college will expand faculty options by introducing multi-year contracts, including a new ‘professor of practice’ role alongside the existing tenure-track pathway and adjunct/part-time faculty roles.

A professor of practice is a faculty member who typically has a non-academic background, but is successful and knowledgeable in their field, enabling them to improve students’ knowledge by providing a practical perspective, along with the theoretical perspective provided by an academic professor.

“We’re bringing these real-world experiences into the classroom, but these individuals that are going to become these teachers don’t necessarily have a doctorate, nor do they necessarily want one,” Cestero said. “But we’re allowing them a pathway to be a professor in higher education without needing to have that terminal degree. And it benefits the students at the end of the day.”

In addition, most full-time faculty will shift to a 5/5 teaching load, meaning five courses per semester instead of four, to better meet academic demands. In return, some tasks will move to staff advisors.

“We still have work to do. I mean, this is only a piece of what we need to do from a long-term perspective, but these are the things that we need to do now in order to become stable and then be able to grow.”

“Right now they teach 4/4, but then they have these other responsibilities for scholarship and community service and registering students for classes and things of that nature,” she explained. “And we said, ‘OK, they’re spread in many different ways. What if we were to take this responsibility and shift it over here? That would give them more time to focus on the actual teaching.’”

 

A Transparent Process

AIC has been out front with its plan, publicly detailing its various elements, including in this article. Cestero said there are three reasons for that.

“The first is, I’ve heard for years and years that people in leadership aren’t transparent, and specifically at AIC, that’s been said a lot. Secondly, you have to get everybody on board when you’re trying to do something this major, and if you’re not very open and direct and clear about what that is, then you’re not going to be able to get everybody on board.

“Three, when you’re not transparent, you create a culture of fear. Because there were so many changes coming forward, we felt as though, if we aren’t clear about what the whole plan is up front all at once, then you’ve got a culture of fear, and that’s not good for anybody.”

As a small, private college, AIC has challenges that differ from public universities and private colleges with much larger endowments. Cestero noted. But in the current climate, all institutions likely need to be strategizing about how to adapt.

“We still have work to do. I mean, this is only a piece of what we need to do from a long-term perspective, but these are the things that we need to do now in order to become stable and then be able to grow.”

That said, “I think that AIC is a really special place, and I want us to be able to continue to serve these students,” she said. “I think the students that we have are so amazing, and that’s why it’s important that we’re doing all of this.”

Where Are New Title IX Regulations Not Enforceable?

By Contributor
Education

Emerging Challenges

By Kathleen E. Dion and Sabrina Galli

By Aug. 1, 2024, universities across the country were required to implement the Biden administration’s new regulations concerning Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which contained numerous expansions on the law’s protections.

Kathleen Dion

Kathleen Dion

Sabrina Galli

Sabrina Galli

For example, the regulations, released in April 2024, redefined sex discrimination to include “all forms of sex-based discrimination,” as opposed to only sexual harassment, and include discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

While these regulations are intended to expand protections for all under the Title IX umbrella, not all are happy with the expansions. As anticipated, litigation has emerged, challenging multiple portions of the new regulations and resulting in district courts issuing preliminary injunctions throughout the country barring enforcement of the 2024 regulations. Challengers to the new regulations oppose the expansion of the sex-discrimination definition to include discrimination based on gender identity, the ‘de minimis harm’ standard, and the definition of hostile-environment harassment as it applies to gender-identity discrimination.

As a result of these lawsuits, the 2024 regulations have not been enforced in nearly 26 states, encompassing a large portion of the South and Midwest, including but not limited to Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Not only were these injunctions issued on a state-by-state basis, but one injunction out of Kansas barred enforcement of the 2024 regulations on any campus that had a chapter of one of three conservative organizations: Young America’s Foundation, Female Athletes United, or Moms for Liberty.

“As anticipated, litigation has emerged, challenging multiple portions of the new regulations and resulting in district courts issuing preliminary injunctions throughout the country barring enforcement of the 2024 regulations.”

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) responded by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to partially stay the injunctions, allowing the non-challenged parts of the new regulations to go into effect. On Aug. 16, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Department of Education v. Louisiana, denied that request, citing the lower court’s findings that the provisions in dispute were too intertwined with other provisions of the rule to allow severability.

A dissent written by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justices Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson disagreed, finding that the injunctions barring enforcement of the entire rule are too broad.

While the states enjoining enforcement of the 2024 regulations have fluctuated over the last few months, the U.S. Department of Education’s website provides a full list of enjoined states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The Department also maintains a list of schools where the 2024 Title IX regulations currently cannot be enforced.

It should also be noted that schools on the department’s list are not limited to schools in the above-listed states. For example, the list currently has nine schools listed from Connecticut, four schools in Massachusetts, 20 schools in New York, and several schools in California.

Institutions included in either list may be asking, what now? In light of the litigation and injunctions, the DOE has issued guidance explaining that — in states or schools where the 2024 regulations are enjoined — the Title IX regulations, as amended in 2020, apply.

Some institutions covered by the regulations have not amended their policies that applied during the 2023-24 school year. Other schools, particularly those that are not in the 26 states covered by a statewide injunction, have decided to implement policies that are consistent (either wholly or in part) with the new 2024 regulations, reasoning that the injunctions do not apply to the schools themselves but rather to the DOE’s ability to enforce the new regulations to those schools.

As the litigations play out in due course, institutions in affected states will want to be on the lookout for any changes to these preliminary injunctions as well as consider whether any state laws weigh into their consideration whether to amend their policies to be consistent with the new regulations.

 

Kathleen E. Dion is chair of the education industry team at Robinson+Cole. She represents private schools, colleges, and universities in a variety of civil matters, such as tuition disputes, allegations of staff misconduct, and Title IX matters. Sabrina Galli is a member of Robinson+Cole’s business litigation group and education industry team. She represents corporate clients in general commercial litigation matters involving breach of contract and business torts, as well as in arbitrations, mediations, and settlement negotiations.

UMass Amherst’s $600 Million Campaign Seeks to Harness Momentum, Generate More

By
Education Special Coverage

Accelerating the Process

While UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes is thoroughly engrossed in the university’s ongoing $600 million fundraising campaign, the most ambitious in the school’s history, he admits to allowing himself to occasionally think about the next campaign and the bold, round-number goal that might be attached to it.

“I’m not sure, but most of the flagships, after having a $600 million or so campaign … they’ll go after $1 billion, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t set that goal given where we are and the stature we have,” Reyes told BusinessWest. “We’re developing a stronger foundation, a stronger philanthropic arm of the university, and I have no doubt that we’re building such a strong foundation that the next one will get us to those levels.”

But enough about the next campaign and that statement goal.

The current initiative, called “Accelerate: The Campaign for UMass Amherst,” is still in its middle stages, with much work still to be done. To date, more than $452 million has been raised from nearly 100,000 donors, with several “transformative” gifts that are helping the school make major strides with the campaign’s three major commitments: revolutionizing access to higher education; growing investment in cutting-edge research, teaching, and creative endeavors; and magnifying the university’s impact on the common good” (more on these later).

Overall, the campaign is aptly named, said Reyes, adding that, through the campaign and the funds it will raise, the institution will work toward accelerating a wave of momentum that has seen the university and individual schools and programs, such as the Isenberg School of Management, rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and increasingly become a school of choice.

“I’m not sure, but most of the flagships, after having a $600 million or so campaign … they’ll go after $1 billion, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t set that goal given where we are and the stature we have.”

Its $600 million goal makes a statement in its own right, he said, noting that this number speaks to not only how high the state’s flagship public university has risen, but also to its plans to continue on that trajectory at a time when many institutions are struggling.

And while the goal of the campaign is to raise money — for individual schools, programs, capital projects, and initiatives, as well as an endowment currently at roughly $600 million, well below other major state universities — in the course of doing so, many other goals are met, said Reyes and UMass Amherst Foundation President Arwen Duffy. At the top of this list is the opportunity to tell the university’s story to those who might not know all the recent chapters, and connecting — or reconnecting — with members of many different constituencies, including alumni, parents, foundations, the business community, and others.

Javier Reyes

Javier Reyes says the campaign is an opportunity to achieve a new level of fundraising — and a new way of connecting with alumni.

“It’s not a one-time buildup; it’s getting to a new level of philanthropy, a new level of fundraising efforts, a new level of connecting with your alumni,” Reyes said. “If you can continue gathering and really nurturing those relationships for the future, it sets the stage for future contributions.

“You also try to make sure that this is a way to bring to light great things happening at the university that many may not have noticed yet,” he went on. “When you look at your extensive alumni network, you’re able to show programs that have had tremendous success in the past years and leverage that for the future.”

Duffy agreed. “We’re trying to stay close to alumni and present opportunities for them to engage,” she noted. “And often, that engagement sparks a desire to give back in other ways. When people know what we’re up to, when they see the work that we’re doing, that often inspires investment.

“The goals set forth for this campaign are ambitious,” she went on. “But the collective power of our community makes them achievable. Alumni cherish their ties to the university, carry that pride with them, and bring inspiring energy to serving as ambassadors for UMass Amherst.”

 

On-the-Money Analysis

As she talked about the “Accelerate” campaign, its goals, the money raised to date, and the work still to be done to reach its lofty goal, Duffy drew an autumn analogy.

“It’s apple season right now,” she said. “And after you pick all the apples you can reach from the ground, you’ve got to figure out how to climb higher into the tree. It’s the same with a campaign like this one. The people that we already know and have relationships with, we’re talking to — we know where they are. As you work through all those known friends, you’ve got to figure out what’s higher up in the tree.”

And in the process of getting higher into the tree, the university will do more of that connecting and reconnecting mentioned earlier, and “inviting people in,” said Duffy, adding that this is one of the more intriguing, and beneficial, aspects of a campaign like this one — as is the ability to tell the university’s story to a wide range of audiences.

“When you look at this campaign, it gives you that kind of notoriety and the ability to project to the nation and the world where you are. Some of your alumni that may not already be connected will be found, will be connected, through these efforts, so with the next campaign, you will have a stronger network, a stronger base from which you can continue to nurture and build relationships.”

Reyes agreed. “When you look at this campaign, it gives you that kind of notoriety and the ability to project to the nation and the world where you are,” he said. “Some of your alumni that may not already be connected will be found, will be connected, through these efforts, so with the next campaign, you will have a stronger network, a stronger base from which you can continue to nurture and build relationships.”

“Accelerate,” as noted, is the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the school’s 161-year history. The previous campaign, called “UMass Rising,” ran from 2010 to 2016 and raised $379 million from more than 103,000 donors.

“Accelerate” officially began in 2018, said Duffy, and was really just getting started when the pandemic hit, slowing things somewhat, especially when it comes to the face-to-face discussions that are critical when it comes to securing larger, transformational gifts.

But the campaign has certainly gained some momentum, she noted, adding that it has been helped by the generational transfer of wealth to the Baby Boom generation, a larger and seemingly more energetic alumni base, and the university’s rise in stature and the rankings.

Arwen Duffy

Arwen Duffy says large, transformative gifts create opportunities to connect the university’s philanthropic priorities with the specific interests of donors.

Duffy noted that, while there are several constituencies being approached for support, the alumni base is the largest and, in many ways, the most important.

There are now more than 300,000 alums, she said, and they are scattered across the country and around the world. But there are several dense pockets — Massachusetts, obviously, but also the New York City area, Washington, D.C., the West Coast, and, increasingly “warmer climates.”

Among the foundation’s challenges is finding them, keeping them informed, and engaging them in the university and its future.

 

Gifts That Keep Giving

As noted earlier, the campaign has three main focal points: improving access to higher education; investments in research, teaching, and creative endeavors; and magnifying impact on the “common good.” And all of these are reflected in transformative gifts from donors. These include:

• A $21.5 million naming gift from the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Charitable Foundation to the College of Nursing, which is supporting student scholarships, an endowed professorship, the work of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, and mentoring and research initiatives that create access and equity for nursing students from a variety of backgrounds;

• A $20 million pledge by Douglas (’71) and Diana Berthiaume to the Isenberg School of Management to create endowed faculty positions, endowed doctoral fellowships, a new behavioral research laboratory, and expanded faculty research at the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship; and

• A $10 million gift from Jerome (’60) and Linda Paros to endow the Paros Center for Atmospheric Research at UMass Amherst, a center of excellence where students and faculty conduct high-impact research projects in atmospheric sciences, distributed geophysical sensing, and hazard warning and mitigation to revolutionize the nation’s ability to forecast, plan for, and respond to climate and weather events.

The Paros Center is an example, said Duffy, of how philanthropy often provides seed money or next-stage funding — situations where donors’ interests and philanthropic priorities converge with the university’s, “and you start to get some really interesting things happening.”

Reyes agreed. “With a campaign like this, you want to elevate the institution to continue to be of national prominence, find the areas in which you already have a certain level of excellence, and strengthen them,” he explained. “When you look at what we’re doing in the College of Engineering, Computer Science, Nursing, Food Science … you find the pillars where you’re already strong and say, ‘we’re going to double down on those.’ And we need resources to bring more students into those programs, retain faculty through endowed chairs, or providing support for facilities.”

As for access, that is a huge focal point of this campaign, said Reyes, adding that, at a time when the cost of higher education continues to rise and challenge students and their families, improving access is critically important.

“One of the most important things is finding ways to make higher education affordable,” he noted, adding that, with funds raised from the campaign, the university will focus on all aspects of affordability — not simply tuition, but also the “cost of living,” as he put it, and the costs associated with undertaking an internship, such as travel and, in some cases, living in a different city of country.

Meanwhile, this campaign will place additional emphasis on reinforcing the university as a force in economic development across the state.

“When you think of community engagement, community-engaged research, reaching out to the community and being not only a partner, but a collaborator … it really is a different era for the university,” Reyes said. “And we’re going to start showcasing that as part of this campaign, since some of the resources that we’ll be able to gather from this campaign can help with that community engagement, with that outreach.”

 

Bottom Line

Overall, “Accelerate” comes at a pivotal moment — for the university, higher education, this region, the country, and the world. It is a critical initiative for an institution that has generated large amounts of momentum and wants to create more.

It was launched with the goal of raising $600 million, but also the larger, even more important goal of taking philanthropy at the state’s flagship university to a new level, one where the goal for the next campaign may, indeed, be $1 billion.

“Campaigns are not just about the dollars today,” Reyes said. “Campaigns are also about building the stature and the connectivity of the university such that, in the future, this support and this engagement with your alumni network and those that have a stake in the university continue to be strengthened, grown, and maintained.”

That’s what “Accelerate” is all about, and thus far, it is certainly living up to that name.

Is a Glass Bottle Better for the Planet Than a Plastic Container?

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Education

Surprising Study

 

Which packaging type for a 12-ounce, single-serve container of orange juice would you choose as the most sustainable option:

• An aluminum can made with recycled material;

• A carton described as biodegradable or compostable;

• Glass described as 100% recyclable; or

• Plastic described as biodegradable or compostable?

If you were like the U.S. consumers surveyed by food scientists in a UMass Amherst study, you’d prefer glass and believe it was the most sustainable choice. And you would be mistaken.

“Glass was the most sought-after and most highly esteemed packaging type. But it turns out, glass is actually among the least sustainable if you look at the whole packaging lifecycle,” said Nomzamo Dlamini, lead author of the paper recently published in the journal Sustainability.

Alissa Nolden

Alissa Nolden

Dlamini, a food science doctoral candidate, was a recent visiting Fulbright scholar from the University of Pretoria in South Africa studying in the UMass Amherst lab of senior author Alissa Nolden, assistant professor of Food Science.

When asked to rank the packaging choices from their perception of the most to least sustainable, overall the consumers responded: glass, carton, aluminum, and plastic.

Though food-packaging sustainability varies depending on the type of product and packaging, the size and weight of the container, and other variables, in the case of the single-serve orange juice, a carton would be the most sustainable, followed by plastic, then canned, and, finally, glass.

This came as a surprise even to Dlamini. “I was shocked to read the lifecycle assessment from the experts that it takes so much energy to produce glass and recycle it — much more than what it takes to make or recycle plastic,” she said.

The study states that “the production and end-of-life impacts of plastic are less than that of glass; plastic is lighter and thus requires less energy to transport. Furthermore, the aseptic sealing process of plastic containers using steam is less energy-demanding than the retort system used for glass.”

The study aimed to understand the motivation behind consumers’ packaging choices, while also weighing price, lifestyle, and other attitudes. In turn, the data can help industry experts understand what consumers think, believe, and prefer, and educate them on how to make more sustainable choices.

“We designed a questionnaire using a method called conjoint analysis, which mimics a real-life situation where you’re presented with various options and you have to make a tradeoff,” Dlamini said. “And we try to understand, at the end of the day, what matters to people. The whole idea behind the study was to get an understanding of what people think and what drives their choices.”

Nolden pointed out that, while many consumers expressed an intention to purchase sustainable packaging, in the end, the top motivating factor was price — particularly the lowest price — followed by packaging type, product claim, and packaging claim.

Nomzamo Dlamini

Nomzamo Dlamini

“We try to understand, at the end of the day, what matters to people. The whole idea behind the study was to get an understanding of what people think and what drives their choices.”

The ideal orange juice option — culled from the 847 adult consumers who answered the online survey — was priced at $1.10 per 12 fluid ounces, packaged in glass, locally produced, and labeled as 100% recyclable.

The message to the food industry is that consumers are motivated to choose sustainable packaging, as long as the price is right, the paper states. “These sustainable packaging options should be clearly labeled as such, effective (e.g. not defective or just as durable as conventional packaging) and affordable to increase consumers’ motivation and adoption of sustainable packaging for food and beverages.”

Ultimately, there is something even more important than choosing the best packaging when it comes to consuming food with a focus on sustainability, the paper concludes.

“Overall, while packaging choices contribute to environmental outcomes, the most impactful and practical way consumers can contribute to sustainability efforts is to reduce or avoid food waste.”

Schools Need to Consider These Seven Key Questions

By Contributor
Education

New Title IX Compliance

By Kathleen E. Dion and Sabrina Galli

 

Schools across the nation were required to comply with the new Title IX regulations by Aug. 1, 2024, and were undoubtedly given a lot to think about. As institutions continue to iron out new policies and procedures, they will need to balance a number of moving pieces. When trying to prioritize implementation, here is a list of top questions federally funded institutions should ensure they have answered.

1. Is the school’s Title IX coordinator up to date on all new regulations? The Title IX coordinator’s role has been greatly expanded by these new regulations, and it is of the utmost importance that such coordinators are aware of all changes.

For example, coordinators should be aware that the breadth of activities covered under Title IX have increased, such that the new Title IX regulations also apply to conduct that occurs in a building owned or controlled by a recognized student organization, conduct outside of the U.S. (for example, in study-abroad programs), and conduct subject to the school’s disciplinary authority. Additionally, coordinators should be prepared for an influx of complaints now that such complaints are no longer required to be formally in writing.

2. Does the institution’s Title IX policy include the expanded scope of sex-based discrimination? Under the new regulations, sex discrimination now includes “all forms of sex-based discrimination,” as opposed to only sexual harassment, based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The regulations also prohibit discrimination based on parental, family, or marital status.

3. Have all necessary non-discrimination policies been drafted and finalized? The new Title IX regulations require that a notice of non-discrimination be provided to students, employees, applicants for admission and employment, and all unions and professional organizations holding collective-bargaining agreements.

Further, if they did not have a policy in place already, schools also must ensure that they have a policy prohibiting retaliation, including at the peer level, and that the policy calls for handling complaints of retaliation the same way it manages complaints of other forms of sex discrimination. The U.S. Department of Education has released helpful guidance on drafting such policies, which may be helpful to institutions as such policies are implemented and/or revised.

4. Is there a schedule or plan in place for annual employee training? Schools must annually train all employees on Title IX, their obligation as employees to address sex discrimination, and their reporting requirements. Different training is required for each of four employee statuses, pursuant to the following categories:

• All employees;

• Investigators, decision makers, and individuals with authority to modify or terminate supportive measures;

• Facilitators of informal resolution processes; and

• Title IX coordinator and designees.

Practically speaking, institutions will have to evaluate the best method for ensuring that the training reaches all employees. Schools may consider implementing mass Title IX trainings for employees or incorporating such training into other meetings or trainings that are already in place. For example, institutions may consider incorporating such training into pre-existing staff meetings to effectively reach all employees rather than imposing additional, separate training times wherein some staff may not be available or are reluctant to attend.

5. Did the school decide to implement an informal grievance process? The new regulations permit schools to adopt an informal resolution process for complaints of sex discrimination based on sex stereotypes; sex characteristics; pregnancy or related conditions; sexual orientation; gender identity; parental, family, or marital status; as well as for complaints of quid pro quo sexual harassment and Clery Act offenses for non-students. This informal process is less prescriptive and gives the investigator additional flexibility in facilitating the investigation.

6. Is the institution using a single-investigator model, and does it accomplish the school’s objectives? The single-investigator model allows the investigator to also act as the decision maker in the Title IX case. This means that they are not only conducting all of the interviews and collecting all of the evidence, but also assessing the credibility of all parties and rendering a decision as to whether a Title IX violation occurred.

First, institutions should confirm that the single-investigator model is permitted in their jurisdiction, as not all courts have allowed it. The single-investigator model has been critiqued for potential pitfalls in providing due process, but it also often has the benefit of efficiency and can be helpful given that the investigator is generally most familiar with all facets of the case.

Second, if the school’s jurisdiction does allow for use of the single-investigator model, then there are a number of questions to consider, including whether the institution wants to use said model, whether it will conduct investigations in-house or outsource, and whether parties will be permitted to pose questions to the decision maker.

7. Has the institution decided to use live hearings? Is that method working for the needs of the school? Live hearings, which were once required, are now permitted but no longer required. Schools can evaluate the use of a live hearing on a case-by-case basis. If a school has decided to use live hearings, has a decision been made on:

• What criteria will be used to determine whether to do so for each case?

• Whether live cross-examination will be permitted?

• Whether the school will provide an advisor to parties who do not have one?

Schools should keep in mind that, if they choose not to conduct live hearings, they still must allow parties to propose relevant and permissible questions to the other side and that investigators must record party and witness interviews, subsequently providing each party with an audio or audiovisual recording or transcript of said interviews with time to propose follow-up questions.

If schools decide to pivot away from the use of live hearings, evaluate whether the new process is working. Is the process more or less effective and/or time-consuming than the use of a live hearing? Does the new process affect the decision maker’s ability to reach an equitable result? It is common for new policies to include a bit of trial and error.

Overall, as institutions ensure compliance with the new regulations, it would not be surprising to see schools continue to revise policies based on how the new procedures pan out in practice. This is especially true given that the new regulations give schools more autonomy in deciding how to manage grievance procedures and related policies despite expanding the applicable scope of conduct.

With the new school year underway, Title IX teams should keep an eye out for how their chosen policies work in practice and consider any needed changes as the school year progresses.

 

Kathleen E. Dion is chair of the education industry team at Robinson+Cole. She represents private schools, colleges, and universities in a variety of civil matters, such as tuition disputes, allegations of staff misconduct, and Title IX matters. Sabrina Galli is a member of Robinson+Cole’s business litigation group and education industry team. She represents corporate clients in general commercial litigation matters involving breach of contract and business torts, as well as in arbitrations, mediations, and settlement negotiations.

 

MassEducate Opens Up Free Community College to Everyone

By
Education Special Coverage

Access Granted

John Cook calls it “historic.”

And he’s not alone among the region’s community-college presidents in lauding the potential of MassEducate, a state-funded program that makes community college free for everyone who meets enrollment requirements and does not yet have a bachelor’s degree.

MassReconnect, which the state launched last summer to fully fund tuition, books, and supplies at community college for students over age 25, has already been a “game changer,” said Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College, contributing to a 15% enrollment increase at STCC from the previous year.

“That’s an almost-unheard-of gain in higher education. And it’s hard not to attribute so much of that to the attention of adults on this idea of, ‘oh, I can come back; there’s a pathway for me.’ So it really did change our fortunes,” Cook noted. “We’ve seen about a 10-year decline in enrollments. With this major policy change, we were able to halt that and go in a different way.”

MassEducate, then, has the potential of building on MassReconnect significantly — and putting a college education within reach for everyone, regardless of economic status, Holyoke Community College (HCC) President George Timmons said.

“We’ve eliminated barriers and dealt with equity and access issues,” he told BusinessWest. “Regardless of your socioeconomic status, background, ethnicity, whoever you are, you can go from kindergarten to getting an associate degree as a right in the state of Massachusetts. That’s phenomenal. And it’s huge for the lowest socioeconomic members of society. While there still may be other barriers, finances will no longer be a barrier.”

George Timmons

George Timmons

“Regardless of your socioeconomic status, background, ethnicity, whoever you are, you can go from kindergarten to getting an associate degree as a right in the state of Massachusetts. That’s phenomenal.”

Michelle Schutt, president of Greenfield Community College, said GCC enrolled 256 MassReconnect students last year, which contributed to turning around an 11-year enrollment decline — a common story among community colleges over the past decade — with a 13% increase last fall. And MassEducate is expected to drive those numbers higher.

“It is so incredibly exciting,” she said when she spoke with BusinessWest on Aug. 7. “Applications are up 22% from last year on this date, acceptance is up 33%, and head count is up 11%. And last year, we got 300 students from August 10 to the first day of class, so those numbers should get even better. We couldn’t be more excited and appreciative of our elected officials who had the vision for this.”

MassEducate, a $117.5 million annual investment by the state, covers tuition and fees for all students, plus books and supplies for some. The program aims to support both economic opportunity for students and workforce development across a Massachusetts economy that has struggled, sector by sector, to recruit and retain talent in recent years.

Importantly, the program is a ‘last dollar’ investment, meaning students will still access federal funds, like Pell Grants, as well as state aid and scholarships, and MassEducate will pay the costs that remain, so it’s not funding anywhere near the full cost of a student’s education.

“It’s important to note that we didn’t leave any money on the table,” Timmons noted. “Basically, the state comes in and closes the deal for whatever gaps you may have.”

Schutt believes the program will have far-reaching impacts on students, families, and the economy.

Michelle Schutt

Michelle Schutt

“Now higher education can be attainable for more people, and that will change families for decades. I’m very passionate about the effects of education, particularly generationally. This will have such a huge impact on families, on the workforce, on social mobility.”

“It is surreal that K-12 education became free in the Commonwealth in the early 1800s, and here we are, almost 200 years later, finally giving higher education the support it needs,” she said. “Now higher education can be attainable for more people, and that will change families for decades. I’m very passionate about the effects of education, particularly generationally. This will have such a huge impact on families, on the workforce, on social mobility.”

 

Back to School

Schutt served on a MassEducate planning committee that met every other week throughout most of the 2023-24 academic year; the group, about 30 in all, included elected officials, business leaders, union representatives, administrators, financial-aid officers, faculty, and others.

“I’ll be honest — I’ve spent my entire life in higher education, but I never guessed this would be so complicated. People had all different perspectives on it, and that’s what these committees should be — we shouldn’t be all monolithic thinkers,” she said.

“Some people wanted to cap the total; other people wanted the students supported up to the total cost of attendance at a community college, which can be $20,000 a year. Others thought it should only be for students in particular majors — high-demand fields. Some thought if they already had an associate degree, they shouldn’t get another. All voices were brought to the table, and we had great conversations.”

Cook said the college presidents, through the Massachusetts Assoc. of Community Colleges, had a strong voice in the process.

“It was a great lift last year to help launch MassReconnect, and now, the universalness of MassEducate will further add to that. And we’re excited,” he said. “I’ve said before that MassReconnect was a game changer. But MassEducate is historic.”

While many graduating high-school seniors will still prefer to attend a four-year college right from the outset, time will tell how many will pivot to a debt-free first two years before entering the workforce with an associate degree or transferring to earn a bachelor’s degree.

“We have some very robust early-college pathways, and we work closely with a couple of different high schools to put credits in high-school students’ hands,” Cook added. “So it’s just natural to have them know there’s a no-cost avenue to continue on with STCC.”

The committee Schutt participated in discussed whether MassEducate should cover only tuition and fees, but the final bill that passed also included books and supplies for those who qualify based on family income.

John Cook

John Cook

“I’ve said before that MassReconnect was a game changer. But MassEducate is historic.”

“We talked a lot on the committee about the opportunity cost of education. Tuition and fees are not the only cost,” she explained. “Transportation, childcare, all the things that we face every single day, those don’t go away because you have free tuition. So that was the motivation behind helping with book costs.”

Schutt expects some prospective students will hear about MassEducate too late this summer to meet the requirements for the fall semester, and as a result, she feels enrollment increases won’t happen all at once.

“Students found out about this two weeks ago, they haven’t started the FAFSA process, and it’s challenging to get enrolled for the fall because of the steps they have to take to be eligible to enroll in this program. My gut says we’ll see a much more significant uptick in the spring, and then, next fall, we’re going to see the full effect.”

Timmons agreed. “Given the cyclical chain of events, we’ll probably see a greater impact in the spring and in subsequent years. You’ll see a significant bump as people know about it and have time to apply to FAFSA and MASFA again.”

Cook, like Timmons and Schutt, is gratified with the outcome of the bill, and grateful for the legislators who supported it.

“We saw some real champions out this way, and we saw a willingness by the House and the Senate to negotiate to this point,” he told BusinessWest, adding that, because of the success of MassReconnect, “we really had a way last year to build a line of sight toward this outcome. Many, many people saw the value and benefit, and that helped us arrive here today.”

 

Degrees of Progress

Timmons noted that community colleges in Massachusetts saw an 8% enrollment bump in 2023 following passage of MassReconnect — and 45% among the over-25 crowd. That was heartening in more ways than one; not only did colleges benefit, but the program was actively targeting the fact that some 750,000 Massachusetts adults have started a college degree but not finished it.

“That seemed like low-hanging fruit, and MassReconnect really bears evidence of that,” he said, before noting that MassEducate has, at its heart, the same goals of access and equity.

“I’m so passionate about this work of education. It is the great equalizer. Once you have an education and all the rights and privileges of that degree, you can earn a livable, sustainable wage, you can take care of yourself and your family, and you can literally change the trajectory of a family. You’re not only changing your own life, but the lives of your children and your grandchildren.

“That’s amazing,” he went on. “Think about the impact on people in Massachusetts who will be paying taxes, earning livable wages, and entering the middle class and beyond, who otherwise would not be able to do so. And from a workforce-development standpoint, employers are getting a much more educated and prepared workforce to do the work that is needed.”

Graduates can connect with those jobs in more than one way, Cook said, noting that some might not realize they can enter good careers at a sub-bachelor’s level, in fields ranging from STEM to healthcare, and now do it without debt.

“And we know that our baccalaureate partners will also be the recipients down the road when students transfer. We look forward to that. This is just so significant for Massachusetts,” he added. “The term I use is, community colleges can become an equity engine for higher education.”

At STCC, where more than half the population are students of color, many of whom are first-generation college students in their families, the idea that even more students, especially those from lower-income families, may be able to access and education and a career is exciting, Cook said. “MassConnect demonstrated that, when you can get people’s attention, you will get the outcomes that you want.”

“Think about the impact on people in Massachusetts who will be paying taxes, earning livable wages, and entering the middle class and beyond, who otherwise would not be able to do so.”

One challenge now, Timmons said, is to make sure new students at HCC have the resources they need to succeed.

“With an influx of students, we have to focus on success and completion and how to scale up our support services for students. We’ve dealt with equity and access. Now, how do we remove the barriers to get them across the finish line and right out into the workforce or transferring to a four-year institution? These are good problems to have. I’d rather have these problems than not have them. And over time, we’ll address them as we need to.

“There’s still time to enroll,” Timmons was quick to add. “All you have to do is approach your local community college, express interest, and as long as they meet the program requirements and follow the steps, anyone in Massachusetts can start a new path toward a better way of life, which is pretty exciting for me.”

HCC, I Found Light Against All Odds Partner to Help Women at Risk

By Contributor
Education

Giving a Hand Up

 

On April 30, representatives from Holyoke Community College and the Springfield-based nonprofit I Found Light Against All Odds agreed to work closely to increase educational and workforce training opportunities for young women at risk for homelessness. 

HCC President George Timmons and Stefan Davis, CEO, president, and founder of the Springfield-based I Found Light Against All Odds, met at the college to sign a memorandum of understanding outlining the terms of the agreement.  

I Found Light Against All Odds provides support services for young women to help address social and economic issues that can lead to poverty and homelessness. Specifically, by signing this memorandum, HCC and the foundation agree to broaden support services for area women, ages 18-20, to help them obtain safe housing and career opportunities through education and training. 

“This agreement is firmly in line with HCC’s mission and vision to remove barriers to student success, to break cycles of poverty, and provide opportunities for education and training that will allow more young women to be successful, earn a livable wage, and enjoy all that life has to offer,” Timmons said.

According to statistics cited in the memorandum of understanding, Hampden County has a poverty rate of 16.9%, which is higher than the national average of 11.5%. Meanwhile, the poverty rates in Springfield and Holyoke are even higher at 25.5% and 26%, respectively. 

“This agreement is firmly in line with HCC’s mission and vision to remove barriers to student success, to break cycles of poverty, and provide opportunities for education and training that will allow more young women to be successful, earn a livable wage, and enjoy all that life has to offer.”

“At the same time, research shows that many community-college students in Massachusetts experience hunger and/or homelessness, as well as other types of basic needs insecurity that can serve as barriers to degree completion and thereby limit economic sustainability and mobility,” the memorandum states.

Davis thanked Timmons and HCC faculty for the partnership. “We look forward to working with you and your staff to help these young women that are in darkness, searching for light and education. These women have dealt with a lot of trauma throughout their lives and are looking for ways to end the cycle of poverty. This collaboration proves that we care about them and that they have our support.”

Through the agreement, the foundation is looking to connect with HCC’s existing academic support services, such as admissions and financial-aid counseling, as well as career and transfer advising and more. 

“It’s a natural fit between an agency that works to support young women and a college, HCC, which is known for its wraparound support model,” said Jeff Hayden, HCC’s vice president of Business and Community Services.

Before the signing, Davis introduced a video about I Found Light Against All Odds that featured interviews from two of its consumers. One of them was Alisandra Pantoja from Springfield, who attended the April 30 event. 

Pantoja also stood beside Davis as he put pen to paper. She will be taking advantage of all the opportunities outlined in the agreement as a student at HCC starting in September, and plans to major in human services. “I like working with people,” she said.

Massachusetts Senate Proposes Free Community College for All

By Contributor
Education

Expanded Opportunity

 

On May 6, Senate leaders unveiled MassEducate, a proposal for tuition-free, universal community college for all Massachusetts residents, aimed at boosting the state’s workforce and expanding opportunity for students and families in every part of the Commonwealth.

The announcement was made during an event at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, where Senate President Karen Spilka, Senate Ways & Means Chair Michael Rodrigues, and Senate Higher Education Chair Jo Comerford gathered with members of the Senate, presidents of the Commonwealth’s 15 community colleges, business leaders, students, and advocates.

“Today, we shift conversations about college from ‘I wish’ to ‘I will’ for thousands of students and families in Massachusetts,” Spilka said. “We are investing in talent that is right here at home and opening the workforce floodgates to employers who are starved for graduates, so Massachusetts keeps the competitive edge that we pride ourselves in.”

MassEducate would invest $75.5 million in new spending to cover tuition and fees for all residents, as well as up to $1,200 for books, supplies, and other costs to students who make up to 125% of median income in the state. Pell-eligible students already eligible for a books stipend through state financial aid would also be eligible for a stipend for books, supplies, and costs of attendance, for a combined amount of up to $2,400 per year.

“Today, we shift conversations about college from ‘I wish’ to ‘I will’ for thousands of students and families in Massachusetts.”

“With the historic investments announced today, ushering in universally free community college and more, the Senate doubles down on our commitment to build back the power and promise of public higher education,” Comerford said. “The Senate investments will propel the Commonwealth forward toward greater social equity and greater economic competitiveness.”

The Senate’s plan, which will be included in the chamber’s FY 2025 budget, would continue to invest in programs created in the FY 2024 budget, including $18 million in free nursing programs at community colleges and $24 million in free community college for residents over age 25.

Students would be eligible for free tuition, fees, and the stipend in the fall 2025 semester if the proposal is included in the Commonwealth’s final FY 2025 budget.

To support students whose education paths can be jeopardized by unanticipated life events, Senate leaders announced the creation of the Student Persistence Fund, a $10 million investment that would go directly toward aiding community colleges and state universities in supporting low-income students with such costs that are shown to put someone’s chance of finishing school at risk, such as transportation, childcare, or food insecurity.

Understanding that retention and graduation is directly tied to support systems like advising and career planning, the Senate also proposed an $18.3 investment in the Supporting Urgent Community College Equity through Student Services (SUCCESS) program, which is designed for community colleges to invest in wraparound supports and services using models proven to strengthen outcomes for students facing systemic barriers, especially for colleges’ most underserved populations.

To ensure the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program, the Senate’s proposal would institute annual tuition-increase caps at community colleges set at an inflation index. And to hold community colleges accountable for producing positive outcomes, the proposal creates a working group to re-evaluate community-college performance funding, aimed at better aligning state funding with key metrics such as student success and workforce alignment.

Recognizing that many Massachusetts students opt directly for four-year universities, the budget makes a $105 million investment in the Massachusetts financial-assistance program MassGrant Plus, which keeps college costs low for students at all public colleges in the Commonwealth. This increased investment builds on recent investments that have allowed all Pell-eligible students in Massachusetts to go to a community college, state university, or UMass campus without paying tuition or fees.

The proposal additionally includes policy directives to study future paths to success for the Commonwealth’s students. It directs the Department of Higher Education to improve the credit transfer pathway between two- and four-year institutions so students can easily transfer to a public four-year institution. It also creates a new commission to evaluate current state financial assistance for students to attend state universities and UMass and evaluate ways to further ensure accessibility and affordability of an education at these institutions.

Bay Path Goes All In with Acquisition of Cambridge College

By
Bay Path University President Sandy Doran
Education Special Coverage

A Bold Step Forward

Bay Path University President Sandy Doran

Bay Path University President Sandy Doran

 

As she talked about how Bay Path University’s acquisition of Cambridge College came about — and, more importantly, why — Sandy Doran, Bay Path’s president, turned the clock back almost a year to when the university undertook a ‘strengths and opportunities’ analysis to understand where its growth opportunities might lie.

This led to creation of a cross-disciplinary leadership task force to conduct an analysis of strategic growth opportunities, building on the things the school does well while also focusing on ways to amplify those traits.

This task force eventually identified five opportunities for growth — everything from graduate programs to business-to-business corporate sponsorships; from expansion of its online American Women’s College to growth in enrollment among Latino populations.

As it considered these opportunities and how to seize them, Doran said Bay Path, its leadership, and its board could “do some things around the edges” with all or several of them, as she put it, or “do something bold and think about our future in a transformational way.”

Given Bay Path’s recent history — one that has seen it achieve dramatic growth and rise from a two-year college to a four-year university with a growing slate of degree options and national recognition in fields like cybersecurity — the latter course was essentially a given, said Doran, now in her fifth year as president of the college, adding quickly that the question became what this bold move would be.

“Outside of Puerto Rico and New York City, Western Massachusetts has the largest Hispanic population in the United States. We knew that, in order to meet the needs of that population, we needed to grow our student services, we knew we needed additional support, and we identified it as a potential growth opportunity.”

As different opportunities were considered, the answer became an acquisition of Cambridge College, a Boston-based, private, nonprofit institution established in 1971, a move that should enable Bay Path to double its overall enrollment; gain a presence in other markets, including Boston and Puerto Rico, which Cambridge as a campus; and, overall, achieve growth in all those areas identified by the task force.

This includes enrollment among Hispanic populations, she said, noting that this is one of the fastest-growing constituencies in this region.

“Outside of Puerto Rico and New York City, Western Massachusetts has the largest Hispanic population in the United States,” Doran told BusinessWest. “We knew that, in order to meet the needs of that population, we needed to grow our student services, we knew we needed additional support, and we identified it as a potential growth opportunity.

“We wanted a partner that had experience serving this Hispanic market,” she went on, adding that Cambridge College, which is a designated Hispanic-serving institution, has this experience, among many other qualities.

Indeed, overall, Bay Path and Cambridge share a number of other strengths — everything from online programs (locally, Cambridge, which had a location in Springfield’s Tower Square, now offers programs only online) to meeting the needs of first-generation college students, said Doran, adding that the schools also share missions and values.

Longmeadow campus

Much of Bay Path’s growth is taking place beyond the borders of its Longmeadow campus.

“Those cultural aspects — of serving the same student populations, of thinking about our values and joining together with another organization and making sure that their values were compatible and strengthened ours — are key; we just knew that, without that shared mission, those shared values, we wouldn’t be able to move forward,” she said, adding that this merger represents the latest in a series of bold moves for Bay Path.

The ones to come before have taken it to levels that might not have been imagined 25 years ago. This latest one will build on those efforts and take the university to different places — quite literally, in the case of Puerto Rico and the Boston market — and figuratively when it comes to needed size and higher status among the region’s and country’s higher-ed institutions.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at this intriguing merger — how it came about and what it means for Bay Path as it continues its recent history of taking bold steps.

 

Course of Action

Sounding much like area bank presidents, which have been harping on the need for size in a changing financial-services environment for years now, Doran said growth is perhaps more important than ever for institutions of higher education.

Given the spiraling costs of doing business and the many challenges facing colleges and universities, including demographics in the form of smaller high-school graduating classes, growth in overall enrollment is critical.

“To be a financially sustainable institution, it’s important to have 5,000 students or more,” she said, adding that Bay Path now surpasses that number. “Five thousand students gives you the resources, it gives you the financial strength, the revenue streams — all those things that are essential to a sustainable institution.”

And, as in the banking industry, there are different ways to achieve growth in higher education. One method is organic growth, through everything from more aggressive marketing to creation of new degree programs, especially at the graduate level, a course taken by many schools locally, including Bay Path.

But there are also opportunities to partner with other schools and, increasingly, to acquire them, especially as more struggle with enrollment, face uncertain futures, and, in some cases, even close their doors.

Doran said Bay Path has been looking at many growth strategies, including acquisition, and had looked at several different institutions.

“We talked to some colleges in the Southeast, we talked to some in the Southwest, we talked to some in the middle of the country, and ultimately, we were very fortunate to find a partner here in Massachusetts,” she said, adding that Cambridge College emerged as the option that made the most sense, for many reasons, especially those shared traits and values, as well as areas of focus — particularly online programs and service to Hispanic students — that would provide Bay Path with avenues for growth. “They had so much of what we were looking for in a partnership. What they have to offer lines up beautifully with what we were looking for.”

Doran said she didn’t know if Cambridge was looking to be acquired, but did know that it was looking to partner, as many schools are in these challenging times. Elaborating, she said Cambridge certainly suffered during the pandemic — again, as many schools did — but coming out of COVID, its enrollment has been increasing over the past few years, with much of that growth coming in online programs.

“It’s not a just a checklist of how you communicate with students and families whose first language is Spanish. Are we offering all the right supports? Do we understand the cultural nuances of how to serve the Hispanic market, which is very much growing in Western Mass.?”

And while talks with other potential acquisition candidates progressed to different degrees, Bay Path eventually crossed the finish line with Cambridge College because the ‘fit’ — the word you hear so often in these transactions — was right for both sides, and especially Bay Path.

“It’s one thing to read about mission and culture and values on a website and talk about it with people inside an organization,” Doran said. “But it’s really when the boards sit down, the leaders sit down, and you have a chance to meet with students that you get a true picture. I had the chance to meet with students at Cambridge College, and that is really what convinced me, the board, and others that this is really the right fit.

“And that’s because their students are our students,” she went on. “Half are students of color, half are first-generation students, 60% of their students are in graduate programs, and 60% are online.”

 

Class Acts

Getting back to the growth-strategy exercises of a year ago and the establishment of a matrix to determine whether a potential partner might be right for Bay Path, Doran said several necessary common threads were identified, with shared mission and values being just one.

Others include everything from a strong culture of innovation to an opportunity to “expand our reach,” as she put it; from a commitment to workforce development to strong business-to-business partnerships.

When it comes to expanding reach, this is a broad term that covers considerable ground, said Doran, encompassing everything from expansion into new geographic regions to reaching new populations to expansion of online and graduate programs.

Merging with Cambridge College allows the university to do all of that, she said, adding that the acquisition brings with it a number of huge growth opportunities.

As one example, she returned to the Hispanic population and Bay Path’s desire to better serve — and, yes, capture more of — that market, explaining why this acquisition makes sense for the institution.

“We have here a limited experience in terms of fully serving the Hispanic market,” she explained. “We’ve developed some student supports; we’ve given them some academic supports. If you peruse our website, you’ll see that many of our web pages are now in Spanish, so we can speak directly to students whose native language is Spanish and to their parents.

“But we knew that we didn’t know enough because there’s a huge cultural component,” she went on. “It’s not a just a checklist of how you communicate with students and families whose first language is Spanish. Are we offering all the right supports? Do we understand the cultural nuances of how to serve the Hispanic market, which is very much growing in Western Mass.?

“We really wanted to reach into that marketplace because we knew how important it was for Western Mass., and for the nation, for that matter,” she continued. “This is the fastest-growing population in the country, and as an institution, our job, our mission, is to serve those students with equally robust and dedicated resources.

There are other benefits to be gained from this acquisition, obviously, said Doran, who listed Cambridge College’s portfolio of graduate programs as another of them.

Elaborating, she explained that developing new graduate programs and bringing them to market is a costly, very involved process that can take years, when time is a luxury few institutions have.

“To bring a new program to market can take two to five years,” she explained. “So the opportunity to grow graduate programs by acquiring another college was absolutely essential to what we were thinking about, and with Cambridge, we’re acquiring about 30 new graduate programs.

“So if you think about it, even taking two years to bring a program to market, it would have taken 60 years,” she went on. “That’s a long time, even for me.”

 

Grade Expectations

Doran said full integration of Cambridge College into Bay Path will take 18 to 24 months, and over that time, several issues will be settled, including whether — and in what ways — the Cambridge College name will live on.

That name has some value in various markets, she said, adding that she hopes the brand lives on in some form.

Meanwhile, she’s more certain about other aspects of this acquisition, especially the part about it being a bold, decisive step at a time when such actions are required of higher-ed institutions looking to fully emerge from the challenging pandemic and post-pandemic periods in a position to not merely survive, but grow and thrive.

“I will credit our board with being such strong partners,” he said. “They’ve always been bold, they’ve always been strategic — we were the first in the region to have online education — and that kind of support is very critical.”

And it’s yet another example of how a school with a rich past is focused, as Doran put it, on thinking about the future in a transformational way.

Five College Consortium Helps Its Member Campuses Accomplish More

By
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

By
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

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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

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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

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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


By
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

By
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.