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The Plot Thickens

An architect’s rendering of the new branch library to be built in East Forest Park.

An architect’s rendering of the new branch library to be built in East Forest Park.

As she talked about libraries, and borrowed (that’s an industry term) from Mark Twain when she said their death was greatly exaggerated, Molly Fogarty used some words and phrases that definitely brought her argument home.

That’s because these are not the kinds of things that would have been said about these institutions a century ago, or perhaps even a decade ago.

“Libraries help level the playing field,” said Fogarty, director of the Springfield City Library. “They help people cross the digital divide; they’re technology hubs.”

Elaborating, he said that, in this computer age, access to the Internet isn’t anything approaching a luxury. It’s a necessity, for those who want to learn, apply for a job, or fact-check a work project.

And providing that access is just one of the ways libraries have changed over the years, from when they were mostly, but not entirely, book repositories.

“Books are still a big part of what we do, but there’s so much more,” she said. “Libraries are the one place where you can get help, get questions answered, use a computer, borrow materials, attend a program … and it’s all free. We have 700,000 visitors a year, and if we weren’t here, where else would they go?”

Molly Fogarty

Molly Fogarty stands in Wellman Hall at the main branch of the Springfield City Library. It’s empty at this moment (the library was closed at the time), but within five minutes of opening each day, she said, each computer is occupied.

Which brings us to the planned new East Forest Park branch of the Springfield Library. This is a facility that has been talked about for decades, and it’s been on the proverbial drawing board for a few years now. Funding has been secured from the city and state that will cover a good deal of the $9.5 million price tag, and a capital campaign, titled Promise Realized, has been launched to raise the remaining $2 million.

Matt Blumenfeld, a principal with Amherst-based Financial Development Agency (FDA), which has coordinated fund-raising campaigns for new libraries and additions across the state and beyond, said the Springfield project provides an intriguing tutorial, if you will, on the changing and expanding role of libraries and their continued importance to individual communities.

Library-building projects contribute jobs and additional vitality to downtowns and specific neighborhoods, he told BusinessWest, but the libraries themselves act as community resources vital to residents.

“It’s much more than the children’s room and a lending library,” he said, adding quickly that these components are obviously still part of the equation. “It’s a community information hub, and that’s so important in communities where there is a lot of need.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at the East Forest Park branch project and the many ways in which it captures the changing landscape for libraries and shines a bright spotlight on their growing, not waning, importance to those who walk through their doors.

A New Chapter

Blumenfeld calls it his cubicle.

This is the small office cleared for FDA on the fourth floor of Springfield’s Main Library on State Street, one of the city’s enduring landmarks.

Two desks have been shoehorned into the space, which is a command post of sorts for the Promise Kept campaign, which was launched in September and will continue for the next 15 months or so.

Blumenfeld, who has operated out of such spaces at more libraries than he can count, will be in his cubicle at least two days a week by his estimates as he coordinates the campaign and makes the case for individuals, families, and businesses to donate.

It’s a strong case, and, as noted earlier, one he’s made often in this region over the past several years. Indeed, FDA coordinated the campaigns for new libraries or expansions in West Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke, among many others.

He said Springfield’s campaign, already off to a solid start, is similar to many others in that many of those being asked to contribute have questions about the future of both books and libraries.

“The challenge we always have in a campaign is to get donors to understand that the library of the future serves many of the same functions as the library they think about,” he explained. “The Holyoke Public Library was founded with the motto ‘the People’s College,’ and that’s really the sense of what a library is. It’s a learning commons for everyone, and all you have to do is walk through the door.”

The case for libraries is best summed up in those phrases used by Fogarty earlier. Indeed, while libraries will always be a place to borrow a book, video, or piece of music, and also a place where people can find quiet and a place to read, study, and conduct research (often with others), these facilities now level that playing field Fogarty mentioned.

And this role takes on new meaning in communities like Springfield, where many families live at or below the poverty level and Internet access is often beyond their budget and, therefore, their reach.

To get her points across, Fogarty talked about what would be a typical day at the main branch, and specifically the computer room.

Matt Blumenfeld

Matt Blumenfeld says that today, libraries are community information hubs, and, therefore, vital resources for cities and towns.

“When we open the central library, within five minutes, all of the computers are being used,” she said, adding that there are 45 of them currently, and they will be used by roughly 100,000 visitors over the course of a year.

“People are waiting to get in,” she went on. “And we have a reservation system; if a computer isn’t available when they arrive, they can make a reservation for later in the day — and they do.”

There’s a reason for this — actually, several of them, she said.

“There is a digital divide in this country; if you have a computer at home and you have sufficient Internet access, your children are able to do their homework at home, you’re able to do research at home, you can apply for a job at home. If you don’t…”

Her voice tailed off as if to say, before she actually said it, that those on the wrong side of this divide are at what would have to be considered a societal disadvantage.

“You can’t apply for a job right now unless you do it online,” she went on. “That’s the way you can do it. So we’re bridging that digital divide for a large number of people.”

And this bridge involves more than a computer and a mouse, she went on, adding that library staffers will assist patrons with setting up an e-mail account, with writing a résumé, and in countless other ways.

They’ve been doing all that in what has passed as the East Forest Park branch for the past 15 years or so. This would be the small storefront, a former video store, actually, on Island Pond Road. There are six computers at that facility, said Fogarty, adding that there will be 56 at the new, 17,000-square-foot, single-story branch to be built on the grounds of the Mary Dryden School on Surrey Road.

The new facility will feature a so-called ‘teen zone,’ a children’s area, and “quiet study rooms,” said Blumenfeld, adding that now, perhaps more than ever, libraries have become gathering spots and resources for all members of a family.

Fogarty agreed, adding that the Springfield City Library has literally thousands of programs for young people and adults alike, and they are focused on everything from workforce training to adult literacy; from poetry to creative writing. And many of them have waiting lists.

The Last Word

The tagline for the Springfield City Library reads “All Yours, Just Ask.”

Those four words speak volumes — in every way, shape, and form — about this institution and all those like it. There is so much there for the visitor, and all he or she has to do is ask.

It’s always been that way, but today, when there is a digital divide that represents an extremely deep crevasse, the importance of libraries, contrary to what may be becoming popular opinion, has never been greater.

And in that respect, ‘Promise Kept’ is more than a slogan attached to a fund-raising campaign — it’s an operating mindset.


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

Education Sections

Degrees of Growth

The AIC campus

The AIC campus has seen considerable change over the past decade, and the picture continues to evolve, with a planned addition and renovations for an existing building to house exercise science classes.

American International College has again earned placement on the list of the fastest-growing colleges in the country. Overall, the institution has nearly doubled its enrollment over the past decade or so, largely out of necessity. But the methods for achieving such growth — specifically in response to trends within the marketplace and a high-touch approach to student needs — offers lessons to schools of all sizes.

Jonathan Scully was searching for a word or phrase to describe the situation when it comes to enrollment on college campuses today.

He eventually settled on “it’s scary out there,” which certainly works, given the current trends. Indeed, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, there were 18,071,000 students taking classes on American campuses in the spring of this year. That number was 19,619,000 million three years earlier, a nearly 8% decline. According to most reports, the numbers have been falling rather steadily, about a percentage point or two the past several years, with no real change on the horizon.

There are a number of reasons for this drop, noted Scully, dean of Undergraduate Admissions at American International College (AIC), who listed everything from smaller high-school graduating classes to a relatively strong economy — when times are worse, people often stay in school after graduating or return to school because they are unemployed; from outmigration to steep competition for a smaller pool of students.

Whatever the reasons, most schools — from community colleges to some prestigious four-year institutions — are struggling to maintain their numbers and, at the same time, their standards for admission.

AIC has managed to not only buck these trends but achieve status as one of the fastest-growing schools in the country, said Scully and Kerry Barnes, dean of Graduate Admissions.

Jonathan Scully

Jonathan Scully says AIC takes a high-touch approach with students, both before and after they arrive on campus.

Indeed, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently named AIC one of its “fastest growing colleges in the United States,” the sixth time the school has made that list in recent years. Among private, nonprofit doctoral institutions, AIC placed fourth among the top 20 colleges and universities in the country, with a 95% growth rate. Overall, AIC nearly doubled its enrollment between 2005 and 2015. (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, ranked ninth, is the only other school in the Commonwealth that placed in the same category.)

Most of this growth has come at the graduate level, where overall enrollment has risen from 415 to more than 2,000 over the past decade, but there has been improvement on the undergraduate side as well, with the overall numbers up 5% over that same period, much better than the national averages.

AIC has achieved such growth in large part out of necessity. A decade ago, the school was struggling mightily and needed to make a number of adjustments, in everything from its physical plant to its enrollment strategies, to attract students to its campus. But the climb up the charts has also resulted from ongoing and heightened attention to the needs of both the business community and students.

Regarding the former, said Barnes, the college has surveyed the marketplace and worked with businesses across a number of sectors to identify in-demand skill sets and areas of need when it comes to trained professionals. This has led to creation of new degree programs in areas ranging from occupational therapy to casino management.

“We’ve been able to identify key trends within the marketplace,” said Barnes, “but also work with local businesses to say, ‘what do you really need?’ and ‘what do you want students to have in order to be successful in their positions?’ or ‘what are your current employees looking for, and what do you need them to know?’”

Such questions, and the answers to them, have led to the creation of new degree programs, specific areas of study, and even new facilities, such as the expansion of a building on State Street, across from the main campus for exercise science programs.

As for the latter, said Scully, AIC is working hard — much harder than it once did — to assist students (many of them first-generation college students) both before and after they actually start attending classes in an effort to make them more comfortable and better able to meet the many challenges confronting them.

“We focus on a high-touch approach, and we take it all the way through — from recruitment to the time students are on campus,” he explained. “We realize that students aren’t always going to be ready for the rigors of college, not ready for application process, not ready to take that step on their own. And rather than say ‘figure it out — or don’t,’ we hold their hand the whole way and give them whatever they need.”

Add it all up, and it becomes easy to see why AIC has now become a regular on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s fastest-growing colleges chart.

For the this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with Barnes and Scully about how the school intends to continue earning placement on that list, even as the enrollment picture becomes ever more scary.

Class Action

They call it ‘summer melt.’ And they’re not talking about ice cream.

Indeed, college administrators use that term to refer to those students they lose between the time they sign on the proverbial dotted line and when classes begin in the fall. There are many reasons for this meltage, said Scully, including financial matters and other personal issues.

“It’s a big problem for a lot of institutions, especially those like AIC,” he explained, referring to the large percentage of low-income and first-generation students at the school. “A student pays their deposit, they intend to enroll, but they fall off for any number of reasons.”

AIC has devoted a considerable number of resources — all of them in that category of hand-holding — to the matter, and as a result, it has seen its melt rate drop from 18% a few years ago to 11%, just below what would be average for schools with AIC’s size and demographics.

This dramatic improvement in a critical area is just one example of how AIC is bucking national trends with regard to attracting and retaining students — and the manner in which it is achieving such results.

Kerry Barnes

Kerry Barnes says graduate programs at AIC have enjoyed explosive growth as the school responds to changing needs in the business community.

But before getting more in-depth about the present and future, it would be prudent to first take a look back — to where AIC was about a decade or so ago.

Talk about scary … that would be an apt description of the picture on campus. Neither Scully nor Barnes was around back then, but they’re both from this area, and they both know what the conditions were like.

“It was a very different place back then,” said Scully. “The physical plant was in decline, the enrollment numbers were falling, technology was lacking. But sweeping reforms were instituted, and they continue today.”

Indeed, both Barnes and Scully give considerable credit to AIC President Vince Maniaci, who arrived on campus in 2005 and made increasing enrollment his first priority — again, out of necessity and real threats to survival.

“There’s a lot to be said for a leader who’s willing to take educated risks,” Barnes told BusinessWest. “We’ve been very thoughtful in our growth, and Vince has supported that, and so has the board of directors. And that’s very important for a school our size to rebound from where we were 10 years ago.”

AIC’s successful efforts to roughly double its enrollment are attributable to a number of factors, said Scully and Barnes, but mostly, it all comes back to working harder, listening better, being innovative, and being nimble. And they have examples for each category.

With regard to working harder, Scully noted everything from those hand-holding efforts he described to more aggressive recruiting across the school’s main catchment area — Massachusetts and Connecticut.

He said there are eight admissions staffers, a big number for a relatively small undergraduate population (roughly 1,500 students), but it’s indicative of that high-touch approach and a reason why the melt numbers are comparatively low.

And this approach continues after the student arrives on campus.

“We hand things off to the academic side, to the student-life side,” said Scully. “They pick up the baton and run with it, and make sure students are treated the same way we treat them during the recruitment process; they get what they need, they get the attention, and they never become a number.”

As for the listening part, Barnes noted, again, that it involves a number of constituencies, including one she called simply the “marketplace.”

By that, she meant careful watching of trends and developments with regard to jobs — where they are now and where they’ll in be the years and decades to come — but also concerning the skills and requirements needed to take those jobs.

panoramic

As one example, she cited education and, specifically, a requirement in Massachusetts for teachers to become licensed. “We’ve been able to identify programs with growth potential, specifically to meet the needs of the local K-12 districts,” she explained. “We’ve been able to work with those districts to make sure we’re bringing the right licensure programs to their areas; that’s been hugely successful for us.

“We’ve been able to create very structured growth within our own programs to help meet what the market in Springfield needs,” Barnes went on. “In healthcare, we’ve had considerable growth in occupational therapy, physical therapy, and family nurse practitioners, but we’ve also been able to branch off and start key programs like the resort and casino management program, an arm of the MBA program.”

Scully agreed, noting that, with undergraduate programs — and all programs, for that matter — there is an emphasis on creating return on investment for those enrolled in them, something that’s being demanded by both students and the parents often footing the bill.

“We’re focused on programs that the market demands, that are interesting, and that are ROI-driven,” he explained, referencing, as examples, offerings in visual/digital arts, public health, theater, exercise science, and other fields.

“There’s going to be a high demand for exercise science graduates, athletic trainers,” he explained. “So we’re giving the market what it needs.”

As for innovation and nimbleness, they go hand in hand — with each other and also the ‘working hard’ and ‘listening’ parts of the equation. It’s one thing to listen, said Barnes, and it’s another to be able to respond quickly and effectively to what one hears and sees.

AIC has been able to do that, not only with new programs, but also in how programs are delivered, such as online, on weekends in some cases, and in accelerated fashion in other instances.

“We’re being very smart about the programs that we’re offering, and we’re working closely to update everything on the academic side to make sure it’s relevant,” she went on, adding that, in addition to relevancy, the school is also focused on flexibility and enabling students to take classes how and when they want.

“I think it’s cliché to say we’re nimble, but we are,” she told BusinessWest. “We’re able to a do a lot of things that larger institutions can’t, and we’re really in tune with our students and what they need.”

Determined Course

All this explains why AIC is making the best of a scary situation, especially on the undergraduate level.

The school’s presence on — and rise up — the fast-growing colleges list is significant and makes for good press for the institution. More important, though, is how such growth was accomplished.

Words such as ‘relevancy,’ accronyms like ROI, and phrases such as ‘high-touch’ do a good hob of telling this story.

It’s a story of a remarkable rebound in a relatively short time — with more intriguing chapters to come.

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

Education Sections

A New Chapter

Laurie Flynn says her new role with Link to Libraries enables her to make her passions — reading and children’s literature — her profession.

Laurie Flynn says her new role with Link to Libraries enables her to make her passions — reading and children’s literature — her profession.

Laurie Flynn says it’s not often that one gets to make their passion their profession.

And it was the opportunity to do just that which prompted her to put aside a budding marketing business she co-founded a few years ago and become president and CEO of Link to Libraries (LTL), the decade-old nonprofit that, as the name suggests, puts books on the shelves of school libraries and other agencies and promotes childhood literacy on many levels.

“It just seemed like this serendipitous, perfect opportunity to bring together what I’ve learned professionally and my personal passion for children’s literature, and also for reading and writing,” said Flynn, who has made LTL only the latest example of making her passion her work.

Indeed, Flynn, who returned to college (Simmons College in Boston, to be more specific) in 2011 to earn a master’s degree in writing for children, has long been a children’s book reviewer for Kirkus Reviews, handling middle-grade and young-adult books across all genres. And for nearly two years, she was the Western Mass. regional coordinator for Reach Out and Read, a nonprofit that works to incorporate books into pediatric care and encourage families to read aloud together.

Desiring to take her work with literacy and children’s literature to a still-higher level, Flynn assumes many of the responsibilities carried out by Susan Jaye-Kaplan, co-founder of LTL, as it’s called, along with Janet Crimmons, in 2007. Jaye-Kaplan told BusinessWest she will remain quite active with the organization, as a board member, fund-raiser, and volunteer, among other roles, but acknowledged that, as LTL continues to grow, geographically and otherwise, it was time for the nonprofit to hire a paid, full-time president.

LTL’s warehouse at Rediker Software is crammed with books bound for area schools and nonprofits.

LTL’s warehouse at Rediker Software is crammed with books bound for area schools and nonprofits.

“This was a very necessary step to continue growing Link to Libraries and broadening its impact,” she said of the decision to hire a director. “We were at a crossroads, growth-wise, and this was the direction we needed to take.”

Flynn, who moved into LTL’s donated office space at Rediker Software in Hampden in late September, told BusinessWest that her first few months will be spent “learning the territory,” a phrase with multiple meanings.

First, there is the actual physical territory, meaning the dozens of schools and nonprofits across Western Mass. and Northern Conn. that LTL serves; she’s already visited several, and more trips are scheduled. There is also LTL’s operating structure, complete with a network of hundreds of volunteers handing assignments ranging from reading in the classroom to packing books bound for area schools.

And there’s still more to that word ‘territory,’ including everything from the art and science of selecting the books that will be distributed to soliciting new sponsors for LTL’s hugely successful Business Book Link program, which recruits businesses large and small to sponsor individual schools.

Actually, Flynn was already familiar with much of this territory through her work reviewing books, with Reach Out Read, and also work as an LTL volunteer. Indeed, she was, and would like to go on being, a volunteer reader at Homer Street School in Springfield.

But she acknowledges that she has much to learn, and is eager to get on with doing so.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with Flynn about her new role and her decision to turn her passion for books and childhood literacy into her new business card.

Turning the Page

Flynn brings an intriguing résumé to her role with LTL, one that includes time working in both Parliament and the U.S. Capitol.

The former was a relatively short stint — an internship undertaken while she was enrolled at the London School of Economics in 1993. The latter was much more involved, covering the first half-dozen years of her professional career.

A Washington, D.C. native, Flynn started working as deputy press secretary for U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) in January 1995, and a year later became his press secretary, serving in that role until 1998, when she became communications manager in the office of the Secretary of the Senate.

In that role, and also as a staff assistant handling special projects and communications in the office of the Clerk of the House, she was heavily involved with press inquiries and other aspects of construction of the $621 million U.S. Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), a large underground addition to the Capitol complex that opened in 2008.

After relocating to Western Mass., she became an independent communications consultant, specializing in event planning and execution, product launches, and writing of documents related to corporate marketing and mission.

And after spending two years with Reach Out and Read, she co-founded Red Mantel Communications (her partner had a red mantel in her home, where the two would often brainstorm), which specialized in media and public relations, event planning, and other communications-related work.

“I was fortunate enough, since it was our own company, to focus on communications work I really wanted to do,” she explained. “Much of it had to do with nonprofits and with helping corporations focus their philanthropic giving as a way to generate good press for not only the business, but also the organization; we really tried to focus on local agencies when we could to help raise their visibility.”

Among her clients was Balise Motor Sales, which had already forged a unique relationship with Homer Street School — the late Mike Balise, a principal with the company, purchased winter coats for students there — and took it to a higher level by adopting the school through LTL’s Business Book Link program.

Flynn, who read to fourth-graders at Homer Street, said she was content in her work with Red Mantel, but when she heard that LTL was going to commence a search for its first full-time paid director, she became intrigued.

But first, she needed convincing that Jaye-Kaplan, the energetic face of the nonprofit, was really going to take at least a small step back in her role as leader of the agency.

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“I couldn’t imagine her actually stepping away — I thought she would change her mind, which would have been fine,” Flynn said. “But she was firm — she was going to step back.”

The position attracted a number of applicants, most of them with backgrounds in education, nonprofit management, or both, and Flynn eventually prevailed in a search process that ended in early September.

Looking ahead, Flynn said her informal job description is to build on LTL’s solid foundation and advance its work to not only put books on library shelves and in students’ hands, but to encourage young people to read and impress upon them the importance of doing so to attain jobs and careers.

“I just have a deep love and appreciation for the importance of reading in kids’ lives,” she told BusinessWest, adding that the Business Book Link program is an important part of this mission.

And not simply because the businesses donate money to purchase books for the schools they’re sponsoring. A perhaps even bigger component is how those businesses become involved with the schools — by reading to students, but also funding field trips and other initiatives — and having their employees visit the classrooms and become role models of sorts.

“That community involvement, and getting representatives of the business world to come into the classroom and take the time to sit down with those kids … that’s just so important and so unique,” Flynn explained.

Overall, she said would like to see the organization broaden its work and its mission in some important ways, but without ever straying from its reason for being.

“I’d like to see Link to Libraries grow as a resource — a source of literacy information and a way to connect teachers with books,” she explained. “I’d love to see us expand that way and create a new niche, as a children’s literacy resource.”

Meanwhile, she would like to use books and reading as a way to help young people “find their own voice.”

“By sharing a love of reading and stories,” she told BusinessWest, maybe we can inspire kids to write their own.”

As she contemplates how to do that, Flynn said the region’s many noted children’s authors, including Jane Yolin, Holly Black, Richard Michelson, and others, could play a role in such work.

“These authors could become a resource for teachers and educators in our community, offering them new and interesting ways to approach reading to kids to make it interesting and relevant.”

Book Smart

As LTL celebrates 10 years of carrying out its unique mission, this is an appropriate time to pause and reflect, said Flynn, adding that the milestone, and her arrival as the first paid director, are turning points for the organization.

Together, they symbolize the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the agency. And while the specific plotline of this chapter isn’t known yet, the story is likely to be one of continued growth and deeper impact within the community.

As for Flynn, she is excited to be helping to script this chapter. That’s to be expected when your passion becomes your life’s work.

—George O’Brien

Education Sections

The ‘Arms Race’

Westfield State University President Ramon Torrecilha

Westfield State University President Ramon Torrecilha says investments like the school has made in its food services are necessary in a changed landscape in higher education.

When people hear the phrase ‘arms race in higher education’ — and they’re hearing it a lot these days — what usually comes to mind are dining commons that offer more choices than a five-star restaurant, dorms that look more like hotel suites, and elaborate gyms, rock-climbing walls, and related athletic facilities.

And while that’s certainly part of the picture when it comes to this arms race — terminology generally used to describe a heightened competition for students and especially top talent — there are aspects to this equation that are far less obvious to the casual observer, according to the college presidents we spoke with, including:

• A new administrative position — director of Enrollment Management — at Westfield State University, noted its president, Ramon Torrecilha;

• A considerable investment in additional personnel and facilities in the Career Services Office at Western New England University, said its long-time president, Anthony Caprio;

• Development of a “student experience master plan,” said UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, noting, for example, that the dormitory towers in the Southwest residential area do not exactly lend themselves to social interaction; and

• Renovations to the Hatch Library at Bay Path University to create what President Carol Leary called “collaborative and adaptable spaces for group learning in an environment that is also sensitive to technology.”

These steps and others are being taken because this arms race — a phrase that none of these presidents seemed particularly eager to say out loud because of the somewhat negative connotation attached to it — is about much more than competing for what has long been a smaller, seemingly more discerning, pool of high-school students with ramped-up facilities. Indeed, it’s also about — or more about, according to those we spoke with — helping these students succeed and generating value for the huge investment that they and their parents are making in their education.

UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy

UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy says that, as schools compete for students, geographic boundaries and the line between public and private schools have become blurred.

Thus, you’re hearing words and phrases that college administrators hardly ever said out loud until recently — like ‘value,’ ‘customers,’ and ‘return on investment.’

“The value proposition of higher education has changed insofar as the discourse these days is on the return on that investment,” said Torrecilha. “There is a much bigger emphasis on outcomes; students and parents are very interested in knowing what the outcome will be from a four-year education.”

More to the point, they’re interested in securing a solid outcome, meaning a job with a salary worthy of four years of tuition and fees.

“As the cost of education has escalated, more attention has been paid — and rightly so, frankly — to what the student is getting out of their education,” said Subbaswamy. “As the cost has shifted from the state to those families over the years, both students and families are more aware of what they’re giving up, and universities are more attuned to providing value.”

Meanwhile, the presidents we spoke with said there is a fine line between making an investment in a new dorm, dining commons, student union, or science center because it helps in the recruitment process — and because competitors have already built such things — and doing so because these are necessary investments in efforts to help students succeed.

And they would argue that, on their campuses, it has been more for the latter than the former.

“At Bay Path, our response to the ‘arms race’ is all about value — how we provide students with the academic experiences that will best prepare them for the future,” said Leary. “In response to our students’ expectations for value, we strive to contain the cost of education. We are one of the lowest-priced private colleges in the Northeast, and the American Women’s College is exceptionally cost-effective. The investments we make, and increasingly the areas where our donors support Bay Path, are in financial aid, academic advising, and career preparation, including paid internships.”

While Subbaswamy admitted there was one facility on the UMass Amherst that might — that’s might — fall into the category of “keeping up with the Joneses,” as he put it (the John Francis Kennedy Champions Center for UMass Basketball), he and other presidents said their schools are not spending money on items that don’t add to the value proposition and the overall learning experience.

Said Leary, who recoiled at the word ‘amenities’ as it is so often used in discussion of the arms race, “there are not many frills with a Bay Path education.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the many aspects of this arms race, and especially the ways in which area schools are heightening their focus on student success and generating that sought-after return on investment.

Food for Thought

Subbaswamy couldn’t recall the exact wording or many of the specific design details, but the advertisement in the Boston Globe several months ago certainly caught his attention.

It was placed by the University of Pittsburgh, which, to his recollection, was touting itself in that advertisement as the “best public university in New England.”

“Since when did Pittsburgh become New England?” he asked BusinessWest, adding that this marketing initiative speaks volumes about what’s happening in higher education today and the forces that are fueling this arms race.

In short, borders, geographic and otherwise, are coming down as schools recruit needed students, said Subbaswamy and others we spoke with, adding that there is now little distinction between public and private four-year schools — especially as many states pull back on funding and shift the burden to students and their parents. Meanwhile, many institutions, like the University of Pittsburgh, are casting a wider net in the search for students, and taking steps to land them.

And marketing efforts, like that Boston Globe ad, are just one vehicle. For example, in 2015, the University of Maine launched something called its Flagship Match program, whereby students in Massachusetts, for example, could enroll at the Orono campus for the same price they would pay to attend UMass Amherst, a deal that slashes roughly half off Maine’s nearly $30,000 out-of-state rate.

And the tactic has worked. Indeed, the number of Massachusetts students planning to attend UMaine has nearly doubled since the introduction of the program.

But, as noted, discounting the cost of an education is only one of the strategies being put to use. New dorms, dining commons, and, yes, the occasional rock-climbing wall have been built in an effort to turn the heads of students and especially their parents, said Caprio.

Anthony Caprio

Anthony Caprio

We’re aware that the audience has changed. They want bigger, they want more modern, they want to have privacy, they want a lot of room around them.”

And they’re doing it because such facilities are now expected, and, to some extent and with some constituencies, demanded, he went on.

“We’re aware that the audience has changed,” Caprio explained, using that term as a collective for students and their parents. “They want bigger, they want more modern, they want to have privacy, they want a lot of room around them.”

In some respects, that’s because this is what they’ve grown up with, not only at home, but also at some of the high schools going up in communities across the state and the country. “Some of these high schools have better athletic facilities than we do,” he said, without a trace of exaggeration in his voice.

Caprio noted that even elite, Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale have been making huge investments in non-academic aspects of their campuses, presumably because even these institutions need to do so in this changed environment.

Torrecilha agreed. “When students come to a new-student orientation, they don’t ask to see the classrooms — they want to know where they’re going live; they want to see what the residential hall looks like and feels like,” he said.

This focus on campus life also explains why WSU recently made a huge investment in creating its own food-services department and significantly upgrading its offerings.

The ambitious project, undertaken in partnership with UMass Amherst, which currently has the top-rated food-service division in the country, was described by Torrecilha as a risk, one he considers well worth taking.

“I spent a lot of nights thinking about this because it meant bringing a $13 million operation into the school budget,” he said, adding that WSU previously used an outside vendor to prepare food. “And once you hire these people, they become part of your payroll. So it was risky, but it was worth it; our participation rate is up considerably.”

Meanwhile, WNEU is also investing in a new dining commons, a $28 million renovation Caprio said is being undertaken out of necessity, not exactly a desire to keep pace, although he acknowledged that’s part of the ‘necessity’ part.

“When we deliberated about this, we said, ‘we have to modernize,’” he explained. “We had a building that was very nice, but it was totally inadequate — it was too small and not conducive for anything but students chowing down their food and getting the heck out of there because someone was trying to grab their seat. That’s not the kind of place we want it to be.

“Students are used to different kinds of diets, and there’s such a new awareness about the quality of food, the types of food available, and how it’s prepared,” he went on. “It’s simply impossible to ignore all of that, and you need to have the right facilities to do it.”

A Study in Value

But while the competition for students has escalated, thus adding to the building and renovating boom talking place on many campuses, so too has the need to show a return on the investment that students and their parents are making, said Torrecilha, adding that both phenomena are part of a still-changing landscape in higher education.

“We’re much more outcomes-driven than ever before,” he told BusinessWest, using that collective to refer to colleges and universities of all shapes and sizes. “Institutions of higher education are being asked to demonstrate that their students will be able to be placed in a job or, in some cases, transition to graduate school.”

And this sea change has led to other types of investments, some of them far less visible — such as those in counseling, career-placement facilities, and enrollment-management efforts designed to not only get students into a school but also get them onto the podium at commencement ceremonies — yet are also part of the arms race.

Carol Leary

Carol Leary says that ‘value’ in higher education is not about rock-climbing walls, but instead about providing a solid return on the investment made in attending college.

Leary said such efforts fall into that broad category of ‘value,’ and noted that this concept is so important to the school and its administrators that it is one of the four main tenets of its Vision 2019 strategic plan and was the primary area of focus for the board of trustees during this past academic year.

“Last fall, the board participated in a series of focus groups with students, parents, alumni, and employers so trustees could hear first-hand how our customers define value,” she went on. “What we learned — and it was no great surprise to us — is that the cost of education, academic advising, and career preparation are top of mind. Not one word was mentioned about luxury dorms, rock-climbing walls, Jacuzzis, or other amenities that some people think of when they hear the term ‘arms race.’”

She believes these focus-group responses are directly attributable to the diversity of students Bay Path serves — more than half are first-generation college students, and an equal number hail from families with what she called “extraordinary financial need.”

“And the majority of our students work one if not multiple jobs to pay for their education,” she went on, adding that two-thirds of Bay Path’s undergraduate students are adult women enrolled through the American Women’s College (AWC), which offers programs online.

“While unique, their expectations are aligned with our traditional students,” Leary said of the AWC students. “They want a major and an experience that will enable them to excel in careers or graduate school.”

And with that phrase, she summed up succinctly what has become a point of heightened emphasis for all schools.

Indeed, while ‘student success’ is not exactly a recent phenomenon, that two-word phrase wasn’t heard much in the corridors and offices within higher-education facilities until this century, said Subbaswamy.

Now, it is the primary directive, and there are many elements that go into this quotient, including facilities like new science buildings (UMass Amherst, WSU, Bay Path, WNEU, and other schools have one, by the way), additional personnel and resources in career centers, WSU’s director of Enrollment Management, and, yes, even those new dining facilities.

“The fields we’re expanding into at this school are ones that require very modern facilities,” said Caprio, echoing the thoughts of his colleagues as he spoke. “We need to have modern laboratories, whether we’re teaching pharmacy or any of the sciences we’ve expanded into, or engineering, or our new programs, like occupational therapy.

“You need to have ultra-modern, up-to-date, current laboratories, because without those tools, these students cannot be prepared to go out and work in the profession they’re choosing to go into,” he went on. “We’re not doing it for show, nor are we doing it because the students can’t tolerate anything more simple; we know what we have to provide in order to provide the kind of education these students need and that they expect to get the jobs they desire.”

Leary used similar language as she talked about Bay Path’s renovations to science labs on its main campus and the building of the Philip H. Ryan Health Science Center in East Longmeadow.

“We created state-of-the-art facilities to make sure our students have hands-on experience with cutting-edge equipment,” she noted. “Advanced technology has literally transformed teaching and learning in disciplines like neuroscience, occupational therapy, and physician assistant studies. Thus, these new facilities are driven purely by academic needs. I think that is important.”

At UMass Amherst, said Subbaswamy, the more than $1.8 billion in campus infrastructure work undertaken over the past 10 years has been far more about replacing neglected facilities built 50 or 60 years ago — “catching up,” as he called it — than keeping up with the competition.

Course of Action

As he talked about the arms race and the greater emphasis on outcomes today, Torrecilha mentioned another new and apparently necessary expenditure for his institution — the purchase of student names from the College Board.

When I meet with parents, or at our open houses, I talk about how we bring about return on investment to them, and how we’re not at all ashamed or hesitant to say that believe in art for art’s sake and education for education’s sake. We really work hard at trying to provide services and guidance to our students so they understand the world of work and understand the pathways to getting effective jobs.”

This is something the school has never done before (many colleges and universities have been doing it for decades), but is doing now as part of the heightened focus on enrollment and enrollment management, he explained, adding that the school will be acquiring roughly 100,000 names at 42 cents each.

These are the names of young people, most all of them in Massachusetts and the bulk of them from the eastern part of the state, an area WSU has traditionally recruited many of its students from. And they are considered to be potentially solid fits for the institution.

“We’re being more strategic in the way in which we recruit students,” he explained, adding that, as part of this initiative, he wants WSU to start the recruitment much earlier than a student’s junior year in high school — when it traditionally begins — and perhaps as early as elementary school.

WSU’s purchase of students’ names is part of that heightened emphasis on outcomes, said Torrecilha, adding that the school’s new director of Enrollment Management also falls into that category. It’s an important hire, and it speaks to how the business of higher education is changing.

“Westfield State University, like a lot of state institutions, didn’t have to think about enrollment until very recently,” he said, driving home his point by noting that, until this year, the school processed all applications by hand. “It was one of those cases of ‘build it and they will come’; we never had to think about the incoming class, but times have changed.”

Today, the school is far more focused on attracting students, creating what Torrecilha called the “right mix” of students, and guiding those students to success — be it in graduate school or the job market.

This is increasingly a sector-wide approach, said Subbaswamy, noting that his school, like most others, is making greater investments in the realm of student success, many of them outside the classroom — through everything from additional behavioral health services to larger staffs and more resources for the career centers, to that aforementioned effort to improve social interaction in 20-story dormitories.

“Students are here for four years — and we are really acting on behalf of their parents,” he said. “It’s an awesome responsibility to have 22,000 18-to-22-year-olds under your care for eight months of the year, and that’s how we have to approach it.”

All this brings Caprio back to that phrase ‘return on investment,’ one that the individual holding his job three decades ago likely wouldn’t have uttered.

“But I use it just about every day,” he said. “When I meet with parents, or at our open houses, I talk about how we bring about return on investment to them, and how we’re not at all ashamed or hesitant to say that believe in art for art’s sake and education for education’s sake. We really work hard at trying to provide services and guidance to our students so they understand the world of work and understand the pathways to getting effective jobs.”

Torrecilha agreed. “We want our students to identify their passion and find a major to fulfill that passion, but also be productive citizens in the sphere of work or graduate school.”

Bottom Line

Returning to the subject of WNEU’s new dining commons, Caprio described that facility in a way that effectively articulates the many components to this arms race and why it is changing the landscape on so many campuses.

“This will be a place where students come all day and eat, and have space to work if they wish, and work in groups to continue the learning experience in a very comfortable manner that’s convenient to them,” he explained. “Some people would say that really is unnecessary, that it’s unneeded extravagance.

“But it’s not,” he went on, “if you define yourself as a place where people come to learn and learn in groups and have meaningful exchanges in that particular setting. It’s no longer just a cafeteria. It’s a learning center for all practical purposes.”

Thus, it’s an important part of the nationwide effort to bring new emphasis to that word ‘value’ and produce a return on an obviously huge investment.

This is a new age in higher education, one of hotel-like dorms, dining facilities with ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘gluten-free’ stations, and a ‘student-experience master plan’ at the state university.

And all institutions are still adjusting to this new order.

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

Education Sections

Determined Course

Harry Dumay

Harry Dumay says Elms College generated considerable momentum under Sr. Mary Reap, and he hopes to build on that progress.

Soon after Harry Dumay reached that point professionally where he determined he was ready and willing to pursue a college presidency, he did what many people in that situation do.

He put together a wish list, or a preferred list, if you will, of the type of institution he eventually wanted to lead. And he did so because, in such situations, as so many eventual college presidents have told BusinessWest over the years, ‘fit’ is all-important — to both the candidate and the school in question.

When asked about what he preferred, Dumay ran off a quick list:

• A Catholic institution would be ideal — he had already worked in high-level positions for two of them, Boston College and St. Anselm College in New Hampshire;

• A sound financial footing was also high on the list — and there are many institutions not on such solid ground;

• A commitment to strong academics was a must; and

• Above all else, he desired to lead a school with a strong track record for diversity — not merely ethnic diversity (although that was certainly important), but the broad range of student and educational diversity (he would get into that more later).

Because Elms College in Chicopee could check all those boxes and others as well, Dumay not only desired to fill the vacancy to be created by the announced retirement of Sr. Mary Reap last year, but he essentially made the nearly 90-year-old school the primary focus of his presidential aspirations.

The more I started looking into Elms College, the more I started to become fascinated by it, and I just fell in love with the place.”

“The more I started looking into Elms College, the more I started to become fascinated by it, and I just fell in love with the place,” he told BusinessWest.

Dumay, who was serving as vice president for Finance and chief financial officer at St. Anselm when Elms commenced its search, said he was quite familiar with the school through another role he has carried out for several years — as a member of the New England Assoc. of Schools and Colleges’ Commission on Institutions of Higher Education.

He knew, for example, that not long ago, the school wasn’t on that sound financial ground he desired, and that it was only through a significant turnaround effort orchestrated by Reap that the school was no longer on a list of institutions being watched closely by NEASC for financial soundness.

“Sister Mary has essentially completed a turnaround of the financial situation at the institution over the past eight years,” he noted. “She took it from numbers that were not satisfactory to having successive years of positive margins and putting the college very well in the black.”

But as she put Elms on more solid financial footing, Reap also maintained and amplified what Dumay called “an entrepreneurial spirit” that manifested itself in new academic programs and construction of the Center for Natural and Health Sciences, which, when it opened in 2014, was the first new academic building on campus in more than 30 years.

And she led efforts that enabled the school to make great strides in what has become a nationwide focus on student success and, overall, greater return on the significant cost of higher education.

As he talked about his goals and plans moving forward, Dumay, who arrived on campus July 1, said his immediate assignment is to meet as many people within the broad ‘Elms community’ as possible. This means faculty, staff, trustees, and area business and civic leaders, he said, adding that his primary role in such meetings is to listen to what such individuals are saying about Elms — its past, its present, and especially its future.

This listening and learning process will continue at a retreat next month involving the school’s leadership team, he went on, adding that his broad goal is to attain a common vision concerning where the school wants to be in the years to come and how to get there and execute that plan.

But in most all respects, Dumay said his primary focus is on keeping the school on the upward trajectory charted by Reap. For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Dumay about that assignment and his approach to it.

A Stern Test

As he prepared to sit down with BusinessWest on a quiet Friday afternoon earlier this month, Dumay was wrapping up one of those meet-and-greets he mentioned earlier — this one a quick lunch with trustee Kevin Vann, president of the Vann Group.

As noted, there have been several of these sessions since he arrived, and there are many more to come as Dumay continues what could be described as a fact-finding, opinion-gathering exercise concerning not only Elms College but the region, and students, it serves.

As he mentioned, Dumay already knew quite a bit about Elms — and most of this region’s colleges and universities, for that matter — before arriving on the Chicopee campus. He is determined, though, to add to that base of knowledge.

He’s learned, for example, that nearly a third of the school’s students are first-generation, meaning that they’re the first in their family to attend college. Dumay said that statistic certainly resonates with him — he, too, is a first-generation college graduate — and that his career in some way serves as a model to the students he will soon lead.

A native of Quanaminthe, Haiti, Dumay came to the U.S. to attend college, specifically Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., a historically black, public, land-grant university founded by African-American veterans of the Civil War.

He graduated magna cum laude, and would continue his education with a master’s degree in public administration from Framingham State University, an MBA from Boston University, and a doctorate in higher education administration from Boston College.

He would put those degrees to use in a number of different positions at some of the nation’s most prestigious schools.

He worked as director of Finance for Boston University’s School of Engineering from 1998 to 2002 (he was hired and later mentored by Charles DeLisi, who played a seminal role in initiating the Human Genome Project), before becoming associate dean at Boston College’s Graduate School of Social Work from 2002 to 2006, a rather significant career course change — in some respects, anyway.

“From engineering to social work … those are vastly different worlds,” he explained, “but my job was essentially the same: working on aligning resources —— technology, processes, and people — to support the work of the faculty.”

Dumay then took a job as chief financial officer and associate dean at Harvard University’s Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2006, and served in that capacity until 2012.

That timeline is significant because he was at Harvard at the height of the Great Recession, which took a 30% bite out of Harvard’s huge endowment and not only prompted the delay of an ambitious initiative to expand the campus into Allston — a plan that included the School of Engineering — but also brought about campus-wide efforts to create greater operating efficiencies. And Dumay played a significant role in those efforts.

“That was some of the most rewarding work I’ve been part of,” he said. “And there were some great opportunities for learning how organizations can structure themselves to be more efficient.”

He then took another significant career course change, moving on to St. Anselm, where, instead of working for a specific school or division, he become CFO of the institution and later became senior vice president and, in many respects, the right hand of the president. In that role, he played a key role in developing a new strategic plan for the school.

After nearly two decades of work in higher education in these leadership roles, Dumay said he considered himself ready, professionally and otherwise, to pursue a presidency.

And others were encouraging him to take that next step.

“For a while, being a number two on a campus seemed to be very satisfying and very appealing,” he explained. “But, progressively, my former president started to encourage me to seek a presidency, even though I had been thinking about it as well.”

Elms College

Harry Dumay says Elms College, like most colleges and universities today, is putting a strong focus on student success.

At the advice of his former president, he attended a year-long program sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges designed to help individuals discern whether they have a ‘vocation for a college presidency.’

“Those are their words,” said Dumay. “They want people to think about this not as a job, not as a step in one’s career, but as a vocation, as a calling, because there’s a certain work to be done as a college president.

“It eventually became clear to me that the influence that I wanted to have and the way I wanted to contribute to higher education, a presidency was the best position, the best vantage point to make that happen,” he went on.

While many who reach that point where they can truly say this is a calling cast a somewhat wide net as they explore and then pursue opportunities, Dumay took a more specific focus. And when Reap announced her intention to retire last year, Elms became the focus of his ambition.

“This was the one search I was seriously involved in,” he said.

School of Thought

What intrigued him was the institution Elms has become over the past 89 years, and especially the past few decades — one that could easily check all those boxes mentioned earlier, and especially the one concerning diversity and the many forms it takes here.

The student body is just one example, he said, adding that it has historically been ethnically diverse and added a significant new dimension when men were admitted for the first time in 1997.

But it is diverse in many other respects as well, including the depth of its programs and the nature of “how teaching happens,” as Dumay put it.

“Elms College has a diversity of formats in which it provides a strong Catholic liberal-arts education,” he explained. “It happens on campus, it happens through online education, it happens with the residential population, it happens with people who commute, and it happens off campus through a number of sites. That’s a broad definition of diversity that appealed to me.”

Beyond the diversity, the school also has that solid financial footing that Reap had created, momentum in the form of new programs in areas from health sciences to entrepreneurship, and something else that Dumay identified — “courage.”

He used that term in reference to the school’s decision to admit men 20 years ago, but said it has been a consistent character trait.

“Institutions that have made big shifts like that … to me, that shows resiliency, forward thinking, and courage,” he explained, “because it takes courage to change an institution’s trajectory like that and make decisions that will not be popular with all constituents. To me, that was impressive.”

Equally impressive has been progress at the school in that all-important area of student success.

I’m not sure how that effort is going to continue with the current administration, but higher-education institutions have, in general, taken that message to heart. Instead of getting that mandate from the federal government, this sector has been telling itself, ‘we’d better to be able to prove ourselves … we need to show how our students are receiving value for the dollars they’re investing in their education.”

This isn’t a recent phenomenon, he noted, but there has been considerably more emphasis on ROI as the cost of education has continued to climb.

The Obama administration made that focus a priority, he went on, adding it worked to put in place measures for how well a specific school’s degree programs were translating into success (salary-wise) in the workplace.

“I’m not sure how that effort is going to continue with the current administration,” he went on, “but higher-education institutions have, in general, taken that message to heart. Instead of getting that mandate from the federal government, this sector has been telling itself, ‘we’d better to be able to prove ourselves … we need to show how our students are receiving value for the dollars they’re investing in their education.”

Measures created or emphasized in this regard include everything from graduation and retention rates to the starting salaries of graduates in various programs, he continued, adding that Elms has achieved progress in this regard as well.

“Sister Mary had started an initiative to really focus on student success as part of our strategic plan,” he explained. “And as part of that, there is a plan to create a center for student success, and she started a campaign to raise funds for it.”

That facility will likely be ready by the end of summer, he said, adding that the school’s commitment to not only enrolling students but giving them all the tools they will need to graduate and achieve success in the workplace was another factor in his decision to come to Elms.

Moving forward, Dumay said that, after several more meetings like the one he had that day, and after the leadership retreat in August, and after gaining a better sense of where the college is and where it wants to go, he will commence what he said is the real work of a college president.

“That is to ensure the coherence and the articulation of a common vision, so we can all be pulling in the same direction,” he explained, adding that this is the essential ingredient in achieving continued progress at any institution. “Anything that anyone has been able to do has begun with getting everyone in the same frame of mind and saying, ‘this is what we’re going to do.’”

Grade Expectations

As he talked about that process of getting everyone at an institution of higher learning on the proverbial same page, Dumay acknowledged that this can often be a stern challenge in this sector.

“The theory is, higher education is like steering a car on ice,” he said with a smile on his face, adding that such work can be made easier through clear articulation of a vision and the means through which it will be met.

And this is the essence of a college president’s job description, he said, adding that, back at that year-long program for aspiring college presidents, he definitely came away with the sense that he did, indeed, view this as a calling, or vocation, and not a job or stepping stone.

And Elms, as he noted, was the natural landing spot.

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

Education Sections

Bringing Classrooms to Life

By Alta J. Stark

Steven O’Brien emceed Western New England University

Steven O’Brien emceed Western New England University’s Student Media Festival, part of his spring internship as chair of the festival.

Today’s college graduates understand it takes much more than book learning to compete in the job market; employers are looking for real-world experience. Students gain that experience through internships in their field, but they gain more than that. BusinessWest spoke with a few from this year’s graduating class who said their internships gave them confidence, inspiration, connections, and, in one case, a whole new career focus.

As thousands of new graduates from the region’s colleges and universities prepare to start their careers in a competitive labor market, the range of their majors is as varied as their diverse backgrounds and talents. But they’re finding it often takes more than a degree to prepare for the work world.

Increasingly, who gets the plum jobs comes down to the work experience students accrue well before they graduate.

“As students transition out of the university into the real world, employers are looking for students with experience,” said Andrea St. James, director of the Career Development Center at Western New England University. “College internships are now a major component in providing students with on-the-job skill sets they need to succeed. We encourage students to get that experience early and often.”

All colleges boast active career centers that help cultivate meaningful and practical experiences for students, but a unique consortium of career-center professionals is bringing it all together in the Pioneer Valley. Comprised of career directors from American International College, Bay Path University, Elms College, Holyoke Community College, Springfield College, Springfield Technical Community College, Western New England University, and Westfield State University, College Career Centers of Western Mass (CCCWM) provides companies and organizations a central venue in which to connect with a pool of potential interns and entry-level candidates located in Western Mass.

“We meet monthly to learn from each other. We want to help students not only build their résumés, but help direct where they may want to take their education when they leave,” said St. James.

CCCWM cross-posts job and internship opportunities, participates in career fairs throughout the year, and educates and empowers students through special events and focus groups, she added. “It’s a great resource to add to the specialized career preparation that’s available to students in their schools’ career centers. We encourage students to start exploring opportunities in their first year because an effective combination of education and career programs is a valuable complement to the academic experience.”

Laurie Cirillo

Laurie Cirillo says her department at Bay Path empowers women to take charge of their own career path.

In addition, career counselors help internship-seeking students make and maintain connections with friends, peers, professors, and alumni who may be helpful in their search. To hear the students tell it, those efforts are paying off.

The Right Channels

As a communications major at Western New England University, Steven O’Brien is learning how to tell stories creatively and effectively. He’s an incoming senior who’s spent the past three years studying mass media, television, radio, online media, and media production. This past spring, he jumped at the chance to turn his academic learning into real-life, hands-on experience.

“Ask anybody who has anything remotely to do with finding a job after college — anybody from the career development center, any of my professors — and they’ll tell you internships are critical because more and more employers, even for entry-level positions, are looking for people who have experience in the field,” he said.

O’Brien chaired WNEU’s 15th annual Student Media Festival, which celebrates student-produced music videos, news reports, newspaper articles, radio programming, commercials, public-service announcements, and digital photography.

“The Media Festival is a huge part of the spring semester for everyone who enters WNE. My focus was to make this the best it could be and do my job well because a lot of people were counting on me to do that,” he said.


SEE: List of Colleges in Western Mass.


He worked closely with Professor Brenda Garton-Sjoberg, who told BusinessWest that internships place students in the driver’s seat to navigate through career options, as well as providing outstanding networking opportunities.

“They allow students to experience a job through academic credit to determine if that’s the best path for their future down the road,” she explained. “I believe internships are essential for anyone, especially students interested in careers in communications.”

Simply put, O’Brien added, “being in the internship environment forces you to either sink or swim. It puts you in a position that, if you don’t have these skills, you have to find them quickly. If you’re not familiar with something, you need to know about it, and you need to learn about it.”


We encourage students to start exploring opportunities in their first year because an effective combination of education and career programs is a valuable complement to the academic experience.”


What O’Brien liked best about the internship was wearing many hats. “It was really a multi-faceted internship that went beyond the norm. It dealt with myriad skills and disciplines from public speaking and PR to marketing, media production, event planning, social-media marketing, and e-mail marketing. To get a taste of each of those, I think, was incredible.”

St. James agreed. “It’s the soft skills that he’s building that all employers value; yes, it’s the networking, the résumé building, but knowing how to manage personalities, the critical thinking, the teamwork, the motivation, communication, the small talk that has to occur to bring this people together — that’s really invaluable.”

O’Brien aced the internship in more ways than his grade. He also networked himself into a paid summer internship with the festival’s media sponsor, Cloud 9 Marketing Group, a fairly new startup founded by a recent WNE graduate.

“I worked with him throughout the entire process, and got to know him,” he said. “After the festival, I e-mailed him to ask if he was looking for interns this summer. We met, and now it looks like I’ll have an internship this summer that grew from my spring internship.”

Gaining Empowerment

Alison Hudson has been performing since she was 3 years old. She says she’s always known she wanted a career that would include her love of the creative arts and her passion for psychology. She graduated from Bay Path University in May, majoring in forensic psychology, with a minor in performing arts. In the fall, she’s going to Lesley University to seek a master’s degree in mental health counseling with a focus on drama therapy.

Hudson said her senior-year internship was critical because it showed her she was on the right path for her future. Specifically, she interned as a residential assistant at Berkshire Hills Music Academy, a live-in community for young adults with developmental disabilities, who gain communication skills through music therapy.

“The students are really wonderful,” she said. “They welcome you into their lives, and it’s very rewarding.”

Tori Bouchard, certified trainer and 2017 Springfield College graduate (left), with Sue Guyer, chair of Exercise Science and Sport Studies at the college.

Tori Bouchard, certified trainer and 2017 Springfield College graduate (left), with Sue Guyer, chair of Exercise Science and Sport Studies at the college.

Prior to her internship, Hudson wanted to work with veterans and rehabilitated criminals, but her work at the academy pointed her in a different direction. “This internship gave me the confidence to take on the challenge of grad school and follow a career path of working with people using performing arts as therapy,” she said.

In fact, helping students build confidence helps them graduate, move on to graduate school, and get a job, said Laurie Cirillo, assistant dean of Student Success at Bay Path’s Sullivan Career & Life Planning Center. “We’re trying to empower women to be in power over their own destiny.”

To help students grow and develop self-reliance, Bay Path has adopted a unique take on the internship experience, which has become a hallmark of the university. “We don’t place our students; they work with a career coach to match themselves,” Cirillo said. “We provide a solid support system and strategies for success, but we’ve found multiple benefits to having students open the doors to the next steps of their lives and careers.”

When Delmarina Lopez entered Bay Path as a freshman, she didn’t think she could do that. The young Latina woman with a love for the public sector recalls that she was ready to transfer out.

“College was a rude awakening for me, academically, culturally, and financially, but President [Carol] Leary wasn’t going to let me go. I received amazing support, guidance, and mentoring. I stayed, and I do not regret it.”

Lopez, who’d already achieved success in her young life as the first high-school-age, community-based intern for former Gov. Deval Patrick, became more active on campus, serving as Leary’s presidential ambassador, as well as president of the Student Government Assoc. She started as a criminal justice major, then switched to legal studies after interning with attorney Elizabeth Rodriguez-Ross of Springfield.

“I knew her as one of a handful of Latina leaders in our community. It was good to work with someone who looked like me and has a similar background,” Lopez said. “She taught me the importance of mentoring and bringing someone up with you, not just focusing on yourself. I learned that law isn’t about competition; it’s about justice.”

Lopez applied to multiple law schools across the country and was accepted at 12; she chose to stay close to home, entering Western New England University Law School this fall on a full scholarship.

Cirillo says helping build a woman’s self-efficacy is one of the most rewarding parts of her job. “Many students come here with a lot of self-doubt, but by the end of their college experience, they’re able to stand back and see what they’ve achieved, and what lies ahead as they realize their potential.”

Trainers in Training

Springfield College is well-known for its athletic programs. “We’re preparing students for careers in the fitness and health industry, providing them with classroom and hands-on training from day one,” said Sue Guyer, chair of the school’s Exercise Science and Sport Studies program. “Undergrads and grads work with varying populations, from top-level athletes to still-developing high-school athletes and the elderly, and they’re influencing their lives for the better.”

Tori Bouchard completed six internships during her studies to become a certified athletic trainer. It’s a program requirement to complete a clinical rotation each semester, starting sophomore year.

“Through these rotations, we’re able to connect to patients, coaches, other athletic trainers, and other healthcare professionals, and athletic directors. We’re able to grow as athletic trainers,” Bouchard said. “We’re able to see and meet all sorts of different people. No case is the same. No patient is the same patient. So you take the theories you’re learning in the classroom, and you apply them to the setting, and not everything is always textbook. Nothing is ever textbook, actually. So, sometimes you’re learning one thing, but you realize  — under supervision of the preceptor — ‘oh, this isn’t necessarily going to work for this case, but I also know about this technique.’”

Guyer said it’s impossible to measure the true value of the experiential learning. “It’s invaluable to have the opportunity to mentor into the profession,” she told BusinessWest, noting that the rotations can also have a positive impact at understaffed schools, which may have large populations of student athletes, but just one athletic trainer on staff.

“If Springfield College sends two interns to that high school, they’ve added two qualified people to help maintain the health and well-being of students,” she went on. “What we’ve learned is, if a student is able to see, feel, experience, treat, and rehabilitate athletes, that it really brings the classroom to life.”

Bouchard agreed. “The connections with people are unbelievable,” she said.
“You learn so much just by talking to other people, learning what they’ve learned, and you grow as a person.”

Bouchard has passed her certification exam and is presently looking for a paid internship before heading back to graduate school. “I think I still have more to learn in the clinic,” she said. “I think you’re always learning something new, and I want to learn who I really am when I’m working on my own team without another athletic trainer.”

That is, after all, what the college experience is really about — young people learning who they are, what they can do, and how to realize their potential.

Education Sections

Down to a Science Center

Marcia Scanlon says the numerous simulators in the new Science and Innovation Center provide unique, hands-on learning experiences.

Marcia Scanlon says the numerous simulators in the new Science and Innovation Center provide unique, hands-on learning experiences.

John McDonald hit the pause button ever so briefly in his conversation with BusinessWest and went to the window.

He then scanned the parking lot for his pick-up truck, found it, and gestured toward it. “There … that was our other lab space — my truck,” said McDonald, an assistant professor in the Environmental Science Department at Westfield State University. “Occasionally, we’d have field labs, such as animal necropsies, and we’d have to do those on the back of the truck, parked next to Route 20. We had zero functional lab space.”

The window he pointed from is one of many in the spacious classroom/lab area dedicated to Environmental Science at the Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens Science and Innovation Center at WSU, which opened last fall and was officially dedicated earlier this month.

The space represents everything this department didn’t have before — especially ample room and modern facilities such as a wet lab complete with drains in the floor. And while this department represents perhaps the most dramatic ‘before-and-after,’ ‘night-and-day’ scenario when it comes to the new building, there are many such stories to be told here.

Like the one the Department of Nursing and Allied Health can tell.

Marcia Scanlon, chair of that department, said that, prior to the opening of the new center, the Nursing Department made do with some classroom space on campus and, for hands-on skills work, a room with three hospital beds and two simulators in what amounted to rented space at Baystate Noble Hospital, about a mile from the campus.

Now, Nursing has a spacious suite of facilities in the 54,000-square-foot facility, including three simulation rooms, an eight-bed health-assessment room, an eight-bed nursing-skills lab, two control rooms, four high-fidelity mannequins, and 12 additional low- and mid-fidelity mannequins representing adults, children, infants, and newborns.

All this represents quite an upgrade, not just in space and convenience (students no longer have to make their way to Baystate Noble), but in overall learning opportunities, said Scanlon.

“By having all this on campus in this center, that gives students better access,” Scanlon explained. “It gives them better visibility, better access, and more opportunities to come for extra help if they need it.”

Jennifer Hanselman, professor and chair of the Biology Department, and Christopher Masi, chair of the Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, told somewhat similar stories.

The 54,000-square-foot Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens Science and Innovation Center.

The 54,000-square-foot Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens Science and Innovation Center.

They, like Scanlon and McDonald, said a tremendous amount of research and input gathering, including visits to many other health and science centers in this region, were undertaken before the architects and construction crews went to work.

“We affiliated very closely with Springfield Technical Community College, which is a renowned simulation center for its Nursing and Allied Health,” said Scanlon, as she discussed just one example of this process. “We went and toured there to look at their technology and their equipment, and how they integrate it  — how often do they bring students to use it, and how do they use it? We made several trips there, and they actually came here, put hard hats on, and walked through our space to give us advice.”

Those exercises have yielded a facility that takes WSU to a new, much higher level in terms of its facilities, learning opportunities, and ability to recruit top students.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest went inside the new science center to get a feel for what it means to those departments now housed there, and the university itself.

Grade Expectations

As WSU cut the ribbon on the new center on May 5, a good amount of time was spent explaining just who Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens was. And such a discourse was needed, because most in attendance — not to mention the students now doing work in the facility — don’t know the story.

And they should.

Stevens completed four years of coursework at what was known then as the Westfield Normal School in only two years. In 1905, she published a series of papers in which she demonstrated that the sex of an offspring is determined by the chromosomes it inherits from its parents. Her discovery had an immeasurable impact on science and society; however, despite the significance of her work, Stevens’ notoriety went unheralded even as her male colleagues received recognition.

It is fitting, then, that the school named the center after her, said speakers at the ribbon cutting, especially in light of the role the facility will play in advancing a statewide strategy in promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers, especially with women.

At WSU, women comprise 51% of the student population, said a spokesperson for the university, and within the school’s STEM majors, there has been 69% growth in male majors and an impressive 109% increase in female majors over the past 10 years. (Nationally, only 29% of the science and engineering workforce is female.)

The new science and innovation center should only help improve upon those numbers, said the educators who spoke with BusinessWest, noting that the facility features state-of-the-art facilities and interactive classrooms, with an emphasis on collaborative learning.

Jennifer Hanselman says the new biology facilities in the Science and Innovation Center provide educators with better opportunities to work with students and develop their skills.

Jennifer Hanselman says the new biology facilities in the Science and Innovation Center provide educators with better opportunities to work with students and develop their skills.

Translation: the Environmental Science Department has come a very long way from the back of John McDonald’s pickup truck. And the same can be said for the other departments that now call the center home.

Elaborating, McDonald said his department had a small classroom in Wilson Hall, where most science programs were housed, some counter space and cabinets, and “a hood that didn’t work and a walk-in freezer that didn’t work, and no workspace other than a collecting hallway to another classroom that was about 10 feet long.

“It was pretty meager,” he went on, adding that environmental science is a relatively new major, one that now has considerable space in which to grow.

“Getting this room, and the adjacent workroom and storeroom with a working walk-in freezer, has been a huge boon to what we’re able to do with our students,” he said of the large space now occupied by his department. “The space doubles as a teaching classroom, but we can get it as dirty as we want with soil samples, water samples, or wildlife samples.”

Meanwhile, the Nursing Department has undergone a similarly dramatic transformation through its new facilities.

Indeed, as she offered a tour of the suite, Scanlon showed off a host of amenities that were just not available to students at Baystate Noble.

These include the wide array of simulators, representing everything from newborns to a pregnant women to a senior citizen, complete with a hearing aid. These simulators can take the role of either gender — “they all come with wigs and interchangeable parts; I can make them ‘Bob,’ and I can make them ‘Dorothy,’” said Scanlon — and present students with myriad medical conditions and problems, from high blood pressure to a skin rash to heart palpitations.

There were also the control rooms guiding work with those simulators (at Noble, an educator would work from behind a curtain), as well as a ‘medication-simulation room,’ which, as that name suggests, allows students practice with retrieving and dispensing medication.

And then, there are the large, eight-bed health-assessment room and nursing-skills lab. Designed to replicate conditions in a hospital, where nurses would obviously be caring for multiple patients at a time, these facilities provide learning opportunities simply not available at Noble.

“I think this is the beginning of something big,” she said while describing what the new facility means in terms of education opportunities, using a phrase that everyone we spoke with would echo. “We’re just trying to learn the technology and see how to implement it. But in the future, this will be transforming; we’ll have inter-professional education, and we’ll be able to do things using this technology that we weren’t able to do before. And it will provide a higher degree of safety because we have the actual equipment the hospitals have.”

Masi used similar language as he talked about the facilities dedicated to the Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, noting, as others did, that the Science and Innovation Center represents a significant upgrade.

“Our new facilities provide us with a safer space to work in,” he explained. “We can now deal with more students at a given time, and we can work with them in a safer environment.”

Elaborating, he said there were 144 students enrolled in the General Chemistry classes in the new facility and roughly 80 in Organic Chemistry, both sizable increases.

“By moving from one building to the next, we can get more students in, which is important, because other majors are requiring Organic Chemistry,” he explained, adding that, beyond sheer capacity, the new space creates a more collaborative learning environment. “We’re excited to have the space and to be able to get to some of the things we’ve been slowly working on in the past.”

Hanselman, meanwhile, said the new space brings similar improvements and new opportunities for the Biology Department, which currently has roughly 230 students enrolled in that major.

“The modernized lab facilities offer us the opportunity to certainly work and prepare our students more effectively,” she explained. “We have a goal of working with our students in the scientific process; we emphasize research experience, and we planned this space accordingly.”

As examples, she pointed to two dedicated labs and a tissue-culture facility.

“Those lab spaces are never scheduled for classes; they’re used only for student research,” she explained. “This is giving us a chance to really work with students and develop their skills.

“These labs are designed in a way to promote inquiry-based instruction for those 100- and 200-level lab courses,” she went on, adding that they provide an environment conducive to problem solving and critical thinking.

Class Acts

As noted earlier, Scanlon was speaking for everyone when she said the first year of activity at the new Science and Innovation Center was merely the beginning of something big.

Something much bigger than McDonald’s pickup truck. Something that, as many of those we spoke with said, will be transforming.

Something to which Dr. Nettie Maria Stevens would be proud to lend her name.

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

Education Sections

Dollars and Sense

financialaidart

Attaining a college degree is a stern challenge. These days, paying for one is probably an even bigger challenge, for both students and their families. Area colleges are responding proactively with programs and initiatives that put information into the hands of those who need it and help students and families understand all the options and opportunities available to them.

Springfield College students Olivia Otter and Emily Giardino are well aware of the cost of higher education.

Although Springfield College (SC) was Otter’s first choice and she was thrilled to be accepted, she needed to see the financial-aid package the school offered her before she could commit to entering the freshman class.

“This year I signed up to be an RA [resident assistant] so I won’t have as much debt when I graduate,” said the 20-year-old sophomore, explaining that the job provides her with free housing and a reduced rate on her meal plan.

Giardino, meanwhile, is a junior and has a merit scholarship and a grant. Her mother, Trish Giardino, found the financial-aid process daunting but said that, at one point, their financial needs changed, and they were able to benefit from the college’s appeal process.

Families have very different financial situations, but they are faced with common denominators: the cost of higher education continues to climb, and the amount of student debt is reaching new, alarming heights.

Springfield College students Emily Giardino (left) and Olivia Otter

Springfield College students Emily Giardino (left) and Olivia Otter say the amount of financial aid students receive can play an important role in the school they choose to attend.

Studies show 44.2 million Americans owe $1.28 trillion in college debt, and the average class of 2016 graduate has $37,172 in student loans, which is 6% more than 2015 graduates owed. Graduate students incur even more responsiblity, with an average of $57,000 in loans because there isn’t much financial help available for them.

Although some people question why higher education is so costly, Stuart Jones says the demand for amenities such as great food, health and counseling services, and advanced technology continues to rise, and these are certainly factors.

“We call it the arms race,” said Springfield College’s vice president for Enrollment Management. “When families visit us, they judge our buildings and compare them to what they see at other schools. Plus, today’s students want to have fun and want to know whether the school holds events like movie nights and carnivals. They want a great education, but also want a great experience, and that comes with a price tag.”

Full tuition at SC is $36,000 annually, or $43,000 with room and board, but 85% of its students receive financial aid. “We have a responsibility to help families get the help they need, so we really work hard to keep costs down; for six consecutive years, our tuition has remained lower than the national averages for colleges of the same size,” Jones said.

Kathleen Chambers said Western New England University (WNEU) is tuition-driven: the majority of the price it charges pays for the school’s operating budget, and 90% of its students receive some sort of financial aid.

“It’s our job to help parents and students meet the bottom line,” said WNEU’s director of financial aid, adding that the school’s tuition plus room and board is $49,000.

We have a responsibility to help families get the help they need, so we really work hard to keep costs down; for six consecutive years, our tuition has remained lower than the national averages for colleges of the same size.”

Public schools tend to be less expensive, but families still typically need help to pay for schooling. Suzanne Peters, director of Financial Aid Services for UMass Amherst, said 80% of the school’s full-time undergraduate students have loans, grants, or other forms of aid. Tuition at UMass Amherst is $30,000, which includes room and board, books, and transportation, and www.umass.edu/umsa contains forms, information, and search engines for a wide range of scholarships which students are urged to explore.

“Part of going to college is learning to advocate for yourself, but we give families as much information as we possibly can and things to think about, such as interest rates and repayment terms,” Peters said, noting that private schools usually have more scholarship money to award students than public schools.


List of Colleges in Western Mass.


For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at what public and private schools do to help students and their parents access the help they are eligible for so they can earn a degree that will lead to a satisfying and well-paid career.

Variable Factors

Guidance counselors at high schools have information about financial aid and can steer prospective college students and their parents to appropriate resources. Most high schools also hold financial-aid information nights, while colleges and universities hold similar sessions during annual open houses.

Peters said UMass Amherst goes out into the community and puts on 100 presentations every year for prospective students and their parents, as well as panel discussions for guidance counselors, programs for incoming families, and financial-literacy sessions on campus that remind students about the debt they are accumulating.

Stuart Jones

Stuart Jones says Springfield College is unique in the amount of money it awards to graduate students.

Catherine Ryan, director of Financial Aid at Westfield State University, said that school also gives presentations and works closely with community colleges because many students transfer there after completing two years of schooling.

In general, private schools are the most costly form of higher education. State schools are less expensive, and their price tag is determined by a tiered system: community colleges are the least expensive, state universities cost more, and the UMass system is at the top of the tuition-cost pyramid.

Ryan said Westfield State costs $9,275 without room and board and $20,000 with it.

“Some students expect to be able to borrow the full amount of the cost of their education, but that’s not possible,” she noted, explaining that there are limits to federal loans. “It’s important for families to research the cost of each college the student is interested in because there are a lot of different price tags. I tell them to be organized and look at a wide range of schools.”

There are three main sources of funding for higher education. The first comes from the government via federal loans, Pell grants, state grants, and work-study programs.

The second source is scholarships or awards from a college or university, and the third is independent scholarships that are given out by a wide array of local and national groups.

“It’s our job to educate students about where they can find scholarships and grants,” Jones said, adding that millions of dollars of scholarship money goes unclaimed every year, and students should visit www.fastweb.com, the nation’s largest scholarship clearinghouse.

“We give families the tools they need to explore options and tell them what they need to know about private loans,” he went on. “But we are very honest about the amount of debt the student is likely to incur, and although some really want to come to Springfield College, we know they can’t afford it and have to help them face that reality.”

Chambers agreed, and said 90% of students at WNEU receive financial aid, and the admissions office gets in touch with students after they receive their financial-aid package to answer any questions. But they have also had to tell some students it is not realistic for them to attend the school.

However, experts say every student should fill out the Free Application for Student Aid, or FAFSA, which automatically qualifies them for low-interest and forgivable federal loans if they meet eligibility standards. It is also the first step needed to qualify a parent for a federal PLUS loan, which can be used to help pay college costs.

Catherine Ryan, director of Financial Aid at Westfield State University

Catherine Ryan, director of Financial Aid at Westfield State University

Experts say the form is important even for the wealthiest families because students may qualify for merit scholarships or other forms of aid if they don’t meet the benchmarks for federal programs. In addition, the most generous private colleges have awarded need-based aid to some students from families earning more than $200,000 a year.

However, Peters noted that it’s critical to read the FAFSA directions carefully. For example, it’s important to understand where to include the student’s tax information and where to use the parent’s.

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced new income-reporting rules for FAFSA beginning with the upcoming 2017-18 school year. Instead of using prior-year income as ‘base year’ income, it will now use what it refers to as ‘prior-prior year income.’ For example, the FAFSA will report 2015 calendar year income to schools the student designates on the form for the 2017-18 ‘expected family contribution’ determination instead of 2016 calendar-year income.

In addition, for the first time, families were able to fill out the FAFSA in October instead of having to wait until Jan. 1. Students who did so right away and were accepted at colleges received financial-aid packages early, which gives them more time to consider their options.

Ryan cautions that the FAFSA should be filled out as soon as possible each year because students who file after March 1 may lose out on help, as a college may have allocated all of its resources by that date.

Different Circumstances

Although every family is expected to contribute toward their child’s education to fill the gap between what can be borrowed and what is given to them in grants, sometimes this is not possible. “The amount is often double or triple what parents expected to pay,” said Ryan. “Middle-class families don’t quality for a lot of aid at public schools, so they should start conversations about affordability long before the student is ready to enroll in college.”

Although most schools don’t have an extra pool of money to help students beyond their initial offer, experts say if a family’s circumstances change, they should alert the financial-aid office, because special situations are taken into consideration. If extra aid is not available, private loans can be an option, but a student needs a credit-worthy co-signer, and interest often begins accumulating as soon as the loan is processed.

“But if a parent lost their job, or there is a death, divorce, or other significant change in the family, they should contact us,” Ryan noted.

Jones said some families try to negotiate the amount of aid the student will receive. “Some don’t really need our help and simply want a bargain, while others really do need assistance,” he noted, adding that, in some instances, SC is able to offer them more grant money.

Ryan said Westfield doesn’t have a reserve fund, but it looks at individual situations, and students sometimes opt to attend classes part-time while they work or help their family.

But most schools offer payment plans, and if parents request a meeting with the financial-aid office, they will be advised about their options.

“We have our own scholarship program, but it is only for upperclassmen,” Chambers noted.

Ryan said Westfield State may offer the neediest students a package that includes federal loans, a Pell grant, a state grant, and grant money from the school, which in some cases equates to the majority of the cost.

Kathleen Chambers

Kathleen Chambers says 90% of students at Western New England University receive financial aid.

But when it comes to helping graduate students, most colleges and universities don’t have much to offer.

“Most graduate students who receive financial aid receive it in the form of a job as a teaching assistant or research assistant,” said Patrick Callahan, a spokesperson for UMass Amherst. “When they apply for admission to a graduate program, they are considered for this type of aid, which is typically based on qualifications rather than financial need.”

He added that some graduate students receive fellowships that help with the cost of living or scholarships that reduce their tuition cost. Fellowships can come from university sources or outside sponsors, such as the National Science Foundation.

UMass Amherst has a robust assistance program that offers tuition credits as well as health benefits, and Westfield State offers its own programs.

Springfield College awards scholarships for excellence as well as associateships that provide students with free or discounted tuition and a living stipend in exchange for work on campus that does not exceed 20 hours a week.

Chambers said WNEU’s School of Law offers merit money based on a student’s undergraduate academic record and their results on the Law School Admission Test, but noted that graduate students can get an unsubsidized federal loan of up to $20,500 for their first year of study, which is considerably higher than the amount an undergraduate can borrow.

Countdown Begins

Time is of the essence, and most colleges send out financial-aid packages by March 1 because students must decide by May 1 which school they will attend.

The amount they borrow is a very important factor, but Chambers noted that higher education is an investment. “Unlike a car or house, a degree can’t be taken from you.”

Jones added that, although affordability and financial aid are critical factors in decision making, many parents say support services, the safety of a campus, and whether the school is student-focused also weigh into the equation.

“They want to know if the school is going to give their son or daughter the greatest chance at success,” he said.

When they finish their schooling and settle into careers, the amount of debt they owe may well figure into that definition, so it is indeed a situation that deserves serious consideration — because it will affect their lives for years to come.

Education Sections

Close to Home

 

Janet Williams

Janet Williams says an automatic interview at the WNEU College of Pharmacy is a big leg up — and a chance to stand out — for Elms students who might otherwise seem equivalent to other applicants.

Students at Elms College tend to have local roots and want to remain in Western Mass. after graduation, Janet Williams said. Meanwhile, pharmacists are in demand in the region, as they are almost everywhere in the U.S.

That’s why a recent agreement between Elms and the College of Pharmacy at Western New England University (WNEU) — guaranteeing qualifying Elms students an interview with an admissions officer at the College of Pharmacy — makes sense.

“We’ve had a few students attend their pharmacy school,” said Williams, an Elms professor of Biology, before citing the examples of two: Grant Stebbins, who graduated from Elms and then was part of the inaugural graduating class at the WNEU College of Pharmacy in 2015; and Kevin Krupczak, who graduated from Elms, went to MIT — where he co-authored biomedical articles in venerable journals —  then returned to Western Mass. this past fall to enroll in the College of Pharmacy.

“He was involved in research at MIT before deciding research might not be his bag, but maybe pharmacy was,” Williams said.

For Elms undergrads who want to create a life in the Valley, she went on, it’s convenient for them to get their degree in pharmacy at WNEU and continue to practice in the area. That’s true for Stebbins and Krupczak. “They’ve grown up in this area and wanted to stay local. It’s important for many of our students to stay local.”

 

One of the reasons an agreement like this makes so much sense and is so practical is that, when you look at where individuals want to practice healthcare, they always say, ‘I want to be local.’ If we can get Springfield-area students to stay in the Springfield area and be pharmacists, I think we’ve got a much better chance of trying to impact some of the care issues that are going on right in our yards.”

 

That idea appeals to Evan Robinson, dean and associate provost for Academic Affairs at the WNEU College of Pharmacy.

“One of the reasons an agreement like this makes so much sense and is so practical is that, when you look at where individuals want to practice healthcare, they always say, ‘I want to be local,’” he told BusinessWest. “If we can get Springfield-area students to stay in the Springfield area and be pharmacists, I think we’ve got a much better chance of trying to impact some of the care issues that are going on right in our yards.”

Interviewing and accepting more students who have local roots, he noted, is one way to do that. “An interview doesn’t guarantee anything, but it’s an important step considering how competitive pharmacy programs are.

“Elms has a great reputation and has worked with other programs in the past on articulation partnerships,” Robinson went on. “If someone has an affinity or affiliation being in the Greater Springfield area, if they have an opportunity to continue their education in the area, so much the better.”

Important Step

The agreement between the two institutions ensures that any Elms student who meets the requirements set out by Western New England College of Pharmacy will be given an automatic interview — requirements that include a minimum GPA and Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) score, and completion of certain required courses, Williams explained.

While Elms doesn’t have a pre-pharmacy program per se, it does offer majors in biology and chemistry that students often use as a springboard into further education in the medical, dental, pharmacy, or veterinary fields. Some major in one and minor in the other, or take on a dual major.

When it comes time to apply to pharmacy school, she said, many students appear equivalent on paper, with similar GPAs, standardized test scores, and extracurricular experiences.

“How do you select who to interview? Potentially, some students could slip through the cracks. With an interview, they’re able to stand apart,” she told BusinessWest. “This is a big leg up for students. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be accepted to the program, but it’s a way for them to stand apart from the rest of the students.”


Colleges with MBA Programs in Western Mass.


She said Elms students bring another advantage to the field. “Elms College, because of its Catholic roots, spends a lot of time making sure our students have good integrity and a good background of bioethics built into their classes. It’s also possible for our students to minor in bioethics while majoring in biology or chemistry.”

This is important, she said, because of how the role of the pharmacist has changed over the past several years.

“It really is expanding, I think. To a large degree, pharmacists are acting as healthcare coordinators,” Williams said. “Many people have more than one doctor and are taking more than one medication for different conditions. The pharmacist is really there to coordinate everything for the patient. Say you’re taking one thing for your heart and another for blood sugar and maybe something else for your thyroid. You have to be careful these medications don’t counteract in a negative way and cause harm. The pharmacist is playing a very big role in being a healthcare coordinator.”

Robinson agrees, having long expressed a philosophy of the pharmacist as patient educator. With the WNEU College of Pharmacy continuing to thrive — it will send its third graduating class into the field this spring — students have embraced that role as well, often honing it in community clinical residency programs with the likes of Big Y and Walgreens.

“We’ve been very excited with how our students — our learners — have not only embraced the notion of being in pharmacy school, but embraced a big part of the health profession: their activities in the community,” he said. “They have been outstanding.”

But Robinson wants pharmacy students to do more, to tackle specific issues that bring them closer to the communities in which they live and work. As one example, the College of Pharmacy has issued a challenge to students to come up with strategies to address the state’s opioid crisis.

“The problem isn’t specific to Western Mass., but realize we need to be part of the solution, whether that’s doing talks at area high schools and colleges or providing better education on this campus or working with our healthcare partners,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he has met with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno on the topic. “It’s a huge and complicated problem, and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to assist in some small way. There are a lot of players and a lot of complexities.”

He’s confident, though, that it’s just one way pharmacy students can begin to interact with their communities even before starting their careers.

“Our learners and our faculty and staff here at the College of Pharmacy have embodied the notion of community service, and they’ve done a wonderful job giving back and engaging,” he said. “This is another way of trying to channel some of that engagement.”

Making a Difference

Elms College, which currently has a range of agreements in dozens of programs with more than six institutions throughout the region, sees the value in such a community-focused pharmacy program, Williams said.

“Having a college of pharmacy in the vicinity of Elms College is a wonderful pathway for our students, because a lot of our students are local. This will give them opportunities to not only get their education in pharmacy, but also possibly continue to practice in the area.”

They will enter a field with considerable potential for career seekers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 14% growth in jobs between 2012 and 2022, an increase of 41,400 positions. The annual median wage for pharmacists is more than $116,000.

Meanwhile, 3.5 billion prescriptions are written each year, and medications are involved in 80% of all treatments. In its 2014 National Pharmacist Workforce Survey, the Midwest Pharmacy Workforce Research Consortium predicted that these trends and others — like the aging of America and the high number of pharmacists, especially men, approaching retirement age — will continue to create opportunities in the field.

“When we opened the College of Pharmacy, we were looking to do things that would impact the profession, but also the community, and one of those was keeping kids local,” Robinson told BusinessWest.

“It’s great to have graduates who want to stay in their backyards. Their hometown is where their head is, where their heart is. It’s where they were raised,” he added. “So if we can get folks from the Springfield area affiliated with Western New England, the thinking is, they’ll want to stay here and practice and hopefully make a difference.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections

RoyalChristina Royal recently took the helm at Holyoke Community College. She brings with her a phrase, or saying, that she contrived and uses often as she talks about higher education and her approach to it: “it takes a village to raise a student.”

Before accepting the position of provost and vice president of Academic Affairs at Inver Hills Community College just outside the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Christina Royal first turned down an offer to become president of a school in Texas.

The stated reasons for that somewhat unusual career decision — many who have spent years working in higher education and believe they’re ready to apply for president positions yearn for that opportunity to lead their own school — speak volumes about Royal and her priorities. And also about the next school that would choose her to occupy the corner office: Holyoke Community College.

“I didn’t feel like it was going to be the best fit to get me the college experiences that I needed to prepare me ultimately to step into a college presidency and succeed,” she said in reference to job in the Lone Star State. “I’m a lifelong learner through and through, and when I look at my career to date, I tend to seek out positions where I see opportunities for growth and opportunities where I can make an impact.

“While it’s been helpful to be upwardly mobile in my career trajectory,” she went on, “it’s more important for me to feel that I can make a difference in that role and that I can learn something.”

Which says something about the provost’s job in Minnesota — and she did quite a bit of learning there, as we’ll see later — and also about the job she started on Jan. 9.

 

I really believe that having partnerships with business and industry and the community is essential for an institution of higher education to thrive.”

 

Starting with her visit to the campus on Homestead Avenue, she said she felt a “connection” — to the school, its mission, its current efforts to meet it, and the community as a whole. And the subsequent interviews and conversations with a host of constituencies, including students, faculty, and staff, only made the connection stronger.

At HCC, she saw an opportunity to forge an even stronger connection between the school and the community it serves, and thus make both stronger and more vibrant.

“I have a phrase that I’ve used often during my career — that ‘it takes a village to raise a student,’” she noted. “And I really believe that having partnerships with business and industry and the community is essential for an institution of higher education to thrive.

“Likewise, for a community with a community college to thrive, it needs to have a strong community college,” she went on. “I look at it as a bi-directional relationship and partnership.”

Royal arrives at HCC at an intriguing time for that school, community colleges in general, the ones in this state, and the four that serve this region. Indeed, those four institutions were chosen by BusinessWest as one of its Difference Makers for 2017, for their efforts to not only provide convenient, affordable access to higher education, but for becoming huge role players in regional economic-development efforts.

And, as that story goes on to note, the community colleges in this region have increasingly been working in collaboration among themselves and myriad other partners to address a host of workforce issues, including the skills gap plaguing virtually every sector of the economy.

Royal touched on some of these efforts when she talked with BusinessWest just a few days after her arrival — “nothing in this office is mine,” she said of what was in the credenza and on the walls — and noted that they fit right in with those basic criteria she was looking for in a move up the career ladder (and a college presidency) — opportunities to learn and grow professionally, and opportunities to make a difference.

As for community colleges as a whole, they are facing a host of common challenges, including enrollment — high-school graduation classes are getting smaller, and the economy is doing generally well, two factors that certainly don’t help drive individuals to community-college gates — and also financial pressures, and ongoing efforts to improve graduation rates, or ‘success rates,’ as many like to call them, because not all students are seeking a degree.

 

The $43 million renovation of HCC’s campus center

The $43 million renovation of HCC’s campus center is just one of many opportunities and challenges facing the school’s new president.

HCC is confronting these issues just as all schools are, said Royal, while it is also focused on some of its own specific challenges, including a soon-to-commence renovation of its campus center and a host of area workforce-development issues.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Royal about why she ultimately took this opportunity to become a college president, why she focused her career on the community-college community, as she called it, and what kind of learning opportunities she’s expecting at HCC.

Facing Stern Tests

Before getting into all that, though, Royal spent some time addressing the question often put to those putting ‘president’ on their business card for the first time — how and when did she know she was ready for that level of responsibility and challenge?

She said she recalls no specific morning when she woke up with that realization, but, rather, that it came with time, the accumulation of experience, the stockpiling of needed confidence … and confirmation from others in the industry that she was, indeed, ready to ascend to the top rung.

“I had a very well-rounded background, both in business and in higher education, that gave me a sense of the issues within higher education and the changing landscape of community colleges,” she told BusinessWest. “Given the number of college presidents that have been in these roles for many years and had started to retire, I was thinking this was a good time to be looking at pursuing one of those jobs.”

As for that accumulation of experience, it has come across the broad spectrum of higher education, starting in the private sector with CompUSA Inc. There, she provided instruction to more than 2,000 students for the Social Security Administration — and a host of other corporate clients — on various software-application programs.

From there, she went to the Beacon Institute for Learning in Florida, where, among other things, she was responsible for curriculum development, implementation, and assessment of technical training and certification programs for more than 20 colleges and universities, including Duke, Notre Dame, and Rutgers.

She then returned to her alma mater, serving from 2001 to 2006 as director of Technology-Assisted Learning in Marist College’s School of Graduate and Continuing Education in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

In early 2006, she would take a job that would eventually inspire a career-path decision. It was executive director of Distance Learning at Cuyahoga Community College (CCC) in Cleveland, a massive school with four campuses, two corporate colleges, a $270 million budget, and roughly 52,000 credit and non-credit students. She would later become assistant vice president of eLearning & Innovation in 2010, a post she would hold until mid-2013.

It was during her tenure at CCC that Royal would first earn her doctorate in education (in 2007, at Capella University’s School of Education) a pre-requisite for most high-level jobs in higher education, especially president, and later achieve that aforementioned confidence and skill set also needed to ascend to those levels.

“My college president at the time said, ‘this is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re interested in this, then I’m going to send you to an executive-leader program focused on the job and the role of the president,’” she recalled. “She went on, ‘if you’re still interested when you come, let’s talk.’”

Christina Royal

Christina Royal says it take a village to raise a student, and this means more and stronger relationships between the college and the community.

 

She went, was interested when she came back, and the two did talk, she went on, adding that she considered herself ready for a presidency when there were “few surprises in the job,” and she had acquired a set of experiences that made her ready. She would cross that threshold at her next career stop — Inver Hills.

And it was also while in Cleveland, she said, that she began to focus on that aforementioned community-college community as her career ambition.

That mindset was only solidified at Inver Hills (which she chose over that Texas school), where she led a number of academic and workforce-development initiatives, including the South of the River Education Center, a workforce partnership with a host of other schools and economic-development-related agencies.

 

I had a very well-rounded background, both in business and in higher education, that gave me a sense of the issues within higher education and the changing landscape of community colleges.”

 

She told BusinessWest she has been looking at a number of president positions over the past several months, but made HCC the her main focus for a host a reasons, including geography (her family is still in the Albany area), but especially those aforementioned opportunities to grow professionally and make a difference — at the school and within the community it serves.

Grade Expectations

Since arriving on the campus during its winter intercession — students were not due back until late in January — Royal said she has taken advantage of that quiet time to meet with several of the constituencies she’ll be working with and beside.

These included staff and, later, faculty, as well as Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, several state legislators, the school’s foundation, the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, and the other area community college presidents (through a photo shoot for the Difference Makers program).

She and Springfield Technical Community College President John Cook have already talked more than a few times, continuing a dialogue — and pattern of collaboration — forged by their respective predecessors, Bill Messner at HCC and Ira Rubenzahl at STCC, who retired within a few weeks of each other last summer. (You can read more about those collaborative efforts in the story on page A4).

Royal has also become acquainted with many of HCC’s current initiatives, and there are many of them, including:

• A $43.5 million renovation of the school’s campus center. The two-year project will change the look, feel, and orientation of the campus, and give it what administrators are calling “a new front door.”;

• The Mass. Casino Careers Training Institute, a joint effort among all the state’s community colleges to train people for careers at gambling facilities, including the $950 million MGM Springfield now taking shape in that city’s South End;

• The Cubit Building. That’s the name given to an old mill in downtown Holyoke that takes that shape. HCC will be moving its culinary-arts program into the first two floors of that structure, thus making it the anchor tenant in a building that will also feature market-rate housing and is touted as one of the keys to revitalization of the city’s Innovation District;

• TWO (Training & Workforce Options), a collaborative effort with STCC to provide training programs to help business sectors and individual companies close recognized skills gaps; and

• The school’s designation as an Hispanic Serving Institution, a federal designation from the U.S. Department of Education. Schools earn it when they have an enrollment of undergraduate full-time-equivalent students that is at least 25% Hispanic, a threshold HCC has reached. If it maintains that number for a year, it will be eligible to apply for certain grants that can be used to assist that specific constituency, Royal said.

As might be expected, Royal said one of her first priorities for the school will be to undertake development of a new strategic plan, which would be the first in decades, in her estimation.

She doesn’t expect that a new plan will yield many surprises in terms of recognized priorities, growth opportunities, and a specific strategic direction (although one never knows), but instead will provide needed affirmation of a host of agenda items.

These include the broad issues of access, enrollment, and how to grow it given the current, and lingering, challenges, and developing programs to improve students’ chances for success — whether they’re seeking a certificate, a two-year degree, or a pathway to a four-year degree.

And with that, we turn to what Royal wrote to the search committee that would choose HCC’s next president as she expressed her interest in the position.

“I have been intentional in my career about serving the community-college mission,” she said. “Growing up as a first-generation, low-income, biracial college student, I understand the community-college student and the challenges they face. Student success is most effectively achieved when an institution understands the unique support needs of students in two-year colleges.”

To further emphasize ‘unique,’ she would go on to discuss — with the search committee in that letter, and then, several months later, with BusinessWest — an initiative called the Mobile Food Pantry at Inver Hills.

As that name suggests, this program, created in partnership with a Minnesota-area nonprofit called Open Door, which has a mission to end local hunger, allows Inver Hills’ students in need of food support to receive healthy food on a bus that travels directly to the college.

And there were, and are, plenty of students in need, said Royal, adding that 60% of Inver Hills’ students were classified as low-income.

Whether HCC needs a mobile food pantry or something like it remains to be seen, said Royal, adding that it is merely one example of the ways community colleges can and should work to address the many obstacles standing in the way of students’ success.

“The reason programs like Food Pantry are important is that you cannot educate a hungry student,” said Royal in a firm, direct voice. “We do have students who are struggling, their food insecure, their housing insecure, there are transportation problems … these issues are real, and they impact their quality of focus as they try to concentrate on their studies and improve the quality of their life and the lives of their children.

“We have to look at how we’re able to address, or partner with someone who can address, some of these social-service issues that come with some of the students we serve,” she went on. “So I’ll be looking at community partnerships to address some of these issues.”

Food for Thought

As Royal noted, it takes a village to raise a student.

She is now in a leadership position within that village, and is intent on using that power and responsibility to make success less of a goal and more of a reality.

And, while doing so, she’ll be focused on creating more and different learning experiences — not only for the students, but for her as well.

That’s why she came to HCC, after all.

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

Education Sections

Course of Action

Julia Chevan (right) leads Associate Professor of Physical Therapy Angela Abeyta Campbell

Julia Chevan (right) leads Associate Professor of Physical Therapy Angela Abeyta Campbell through an exercise in the simulation lab at Springfield College.

Many students work hard to earn a college degree, then find there are no jobs that match their credentials.

But the demand for people to work in healthcare settings continues to rise, and high-school graduates or individuals seeking a career change are likely to be hired quickly after graduating from a certificate or degree program in any of several fields.

“Each year, we graduate 125 to 150 students from our healthcare programs, and they walk into jobs within months of passing their exams,” said Julia Chevan, dean of Springfield College School of Health Sciences and Rehabilitation Studies. “In the past three years, our placement rate has been 100%.”

Christopher Scott told the BusinessWest that students in all 75 of the healthcare programs at Springfield Technical Community College are in great demand, and their placement rate is also high. “The lowest figure is 90%; we have close to a 99% placement rate for nursing, and 100% for medical stenography,” said the dean of the college’s School of Health and Patient Simulation.

These numbers bear out what is happening on the job front both regionally and nationally, and what is expected in the years to come.

Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be 2.3 million new jobs in healthcare occupations by 2024. Growth in the field is much faster than the average for all other occupations, and the types of jobs available are almost unlimited.

Several things account for the demand: more people have insurance, and due to advances in medicine, adults are living longer.

“Baby Boomers are getting older, people are having fewer children, and there are not enough young people to care for the aging population,” said Holly Martin-Peele, interim dean of Health Sciences at Holyoke Community College (HCC), adding that there will always be people who get sick and need healthcare.

Elizabeth Hayward-Jansen agreed. “Many students come here with tunnel vision: they tell us they want to become a nurse because it’s a job they know about. There is certainly a demand for nurses, but we try to educate them about other options: there are literally more than 200 allied health careers,” said the professor in HCC’s Foundations of Health program.

Officials from area colleges are doing all they can to prepare students for fulfilling careers in these fields, which includes working with community partners that include Baystate Health and Mercy Medical Center, which is part of the Sisters of Providence Health System.

They have created new degree and certificate programs in response to demand, and some offer options such as hybrid schooling, which is done mostly online and only requires students to be in the classroom for a limited number of sessions.

Christopher Scott and Karolyn Ryan

Christopher Scott and Karolyn Ryan say STCC offers students a 10-month and associate-degree program for students who want to become a medical assistant.

Officials at STCC report that one of the fastest-growing fields is medical assisting. “There is a tremendous demand, and Baystate calls us all the time looking for graduates,” said Karolyn Ryan, chair of the Medical Assistant Department at STCC.

The school offers a two-year degree program as well as a Pathways certificate program that can be completed in one year. Entry-level pay is $14 per hour or about $30,000 annually, and most graduates are hired as soon as they complete their studies.

“These programs also prepare them to go into other fields,” Ryan said, explaining that graduates with an associate degree often end up as office or clinic practice managers or in leadership roles because there are two prongs to the program: clinical skills, and administrative skills, such as billing and coding.

Students in both programs take the same classes for the first 10 months. At that point, they become eligible to take the certification exam, and some start working immediately, while others continue their schooling and complete the requirements needed for an associate degree.

“Many people find this career very rewarding because they can work in an administrative role, have the gratification that comes from helping people at tough times in their lives, or use it as a stepping stone to go on to other programs,” Ryan, said noting that many of their graduates have enrolled in respiratory therapy, nursing, or radiography programs.

The Commonwealth doesn’t require medical assistants to be certified, but due to changing insurance regulations, Ryan said, medical facilities cannot get reimbursed by insurers such as Medicare and Medicaid unless their nursing assistants are certified.

As a result, Baystate Health approached STCC two years ago and asked for help because the exam has to be taken within five years of graduation and many employees had passed that mark. The college responded by starting a program that prepared the working professionals to take the exam. More than 150 students took part, and the final class finished last summer.

Scott said STCC also hopes to start a medical-assistant program with evening classes and will work with its partners to find ways for students in them to fulfill internship requirements that are usually done during the day.

For this issue and its focus on employment, BusinessWest looks at several other college programs in the healthcare field, many of which have been developed, amended, or expanded in response to feedback from community partners.

Expanding Options

Dental hygiene is a popular associate-degree course at STCC, and Scott said it attracts a large number of applicants.

“We operate a clinic for the community and deliver dental care at a reduced cost; we’re trying to increase its size so we can accept more students,” he said, noting that students work in highly supervised settings.

The median wage for licensed dental hygienists is $70,000, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports salaries range from $60,000 to $98,000.

Radiology is another fast-growing field, and due to the demand for specialization, STCC will soon kick off two new, one-year certificate programs in MRI and CAT scans. Both will involve hybrid learning and will be open to radiologic technicians who have completed an associate-degree program.

“It will give them the opportunity to go into a specific area where they can work with the latest technology available,” Scott said.

Medical stenography is also popular but highly competitive; there are hundreds of applicants for the ten new spots at STCC each year.

 

A large number of nurses are retiring, and as graduates advance into specialty areas, there is a real need to backfill open positions.”

 

In addition, the demand for nurses is so great that the college added 20 openings to its program last year.

“A large number of nurses are retiring, and as graduates advance into specialty areas, there is a real need to backfill open positions,” Scott said, noting that STCC offers an associate-degree program and has articulation agreements with baccalaureate programs in the area, and its advisory boards spend a lot of time researching what the community needs.

“Our community partners ground us and drive our mission of educating students to provide community healthcare, and we adapt to address local needs,” he continued.

Specialized Study

Springfield College offers three graduate-degree programs that include a three-year doctorate program in physical therapy, a master’s degree in physician assistant studies, and a master’s degree in occupational therapy.

“The college also has a number of other programs in healthcare, including nutrition, athletic training, and clinical exercise physiology, and these three specifically address professions with an identified workforce shortage,” Chevan said.

She added that occupational therapy is attractive to adults who want to change careers due to its many rewards and the diverse settings where they are employed.

“Most people only think of three areas when they envision where occupational therapists work: in schools with children who have developmental issues, in outpatient clinics as a therapist, or at a rehabilitation hospital,” she said, explaining that many people don’t know their training includes behavioral health, which qualifies them to work with patients with psychological disorders. For example, they may be employed at a clinic and help people who have panic attacks or a brain injury, or who suffer from depression. Entry-level hourly pay averages $33.39, and in 2014 the median annual salary was $78,810.

“Their goal is to help the person manage the world independently in a way that has meaning to them,” Chevan said.

The physician assistant master of science degree is another popular option. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that such professionals are needed in a wide variety of settings, and the career is ranked as one of the fastest-growing areas in healthcare, with a median hourly wage of $47.20 and an average annual salary of $98,120.

“But there are no shortcuts to this degree, and admission is very competitive,” Chevan said, noting that it’s a 27-month, full-time program with seven semesters; students must maintain a 3.0 cumulative grade point average with at least a ‘B’ grades, and must have been employed in healthcare before they can apply for the program.

The college’s doctorate in physical therapy is a clinical degree, which Chevan noted is different than a Ph.D. or doctor of philosophy degree. She told BusinessWest that, although physical-therapy assistants can begin working in the field with an associate degree, only licensed physical therapists with a doctorate can manage a patient’s plan of care.

Students who choose to pursue their doctorate degree can enter an accelerated, three-year undergraduate program, or take the more traditional route that requires three additional years of schooling after earning a bachelor’s degree. Starting salaries for physical therapists with their doctoral degrees begin at about $86,000.

But participants in all of the healthcare programs at Springfield College work together in team settings to ensure they understand their role as part of an interprofessional team of providers and prepare them to collaborate with peers after they enter the workforce.

Chevan said Springfield College works hard to makes changes to programs that reflect what the nation, community, and local healthcare providers need.

For example, after the Institute of Medicine issued a report titled “To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System,” outlining strategies to prevent accidents from occurring as a result of poor communication between people in the healthcare field, the college made adjustments to its curriculum that put more emphasis on team building, safety, and health simulation.

Unique Program

Holyoke Community College started a Foundations of Health (FOH) program in 2010 that introduces students to a wide variety of careers and includes two tracks; one leads to a certificate or an associate degree, while the other prepares students to transfer to a four-year college or university.

Laura Christoph, acting department chair for the program, says it was developed to meet the needs of local healthcare employers and help the 800 to 1,000 students at HCC who elect to enter the healthcare field each year.

“It’s especially important since most of them start out thinking they want to become nurses, and the college only admits a limited number of applicants each year,” she told BusinessWest.

However, students can begin this pathway by becoming certified as a nursing assistant, which requires completing a 15-week semester, then passing the state exam. Entry-level pay is about $12 per hour, which increases to $15 to $18 with experience, and the demand for people with this training continues is on the rise.

“We recently received a call from a local healthcare organization that wants to start an affiliation with us because they are having a problem attracting and retaining CNAs,” said Hayward-Jansen, explaining that they often get some experience in the workforce, then leave their jobs to continue their education.

However, there are many other career paths to choose from, and one of the first courses all FOH students take is titled “Introduction to Health Careers,” which introduces them to a variety of career choices. Other courses help students determine whether they want to work directly with patients or enter an administrative field, such as the college’s one-year course in medical coding and billing.

“Insurance-company regulations have become so complex that it’s vital for every physician’s office to have a well-trained billing practitioner,” Martin-Peele said, adding that the certificate is ideal for people who need to continue working, as most classes are held online or in the evenings.

However, Christoph noted that, although hybrid or online courses are becoming increasingly popular, some students prefer to be in a classroom, where they can interact with peers and learn directly from the instructor, so HCC does its best to offer students both options.

The school also responds to feedback from its partners. To that end, in 2014 it developed a direct care and community health certificate program.

Janet Grant, the community health worker certificate coordinator and Department of Labor grant manager, says it can be an especially good career choice for people who are bilingual, as these workers provide services that include helping non-English-speaking clients fill out forms and access healthcare, which can be difficult because of issues that range from transportation to language barriers.

Other job-related activities include client advocacy, health education, and health-system navigation to promote, support, and protect the health of individuals and families.

“Many urgent-care centers are starting to employ community healthcare workers,” said Grant, adding that the certificate program takes only a year to complete, and entry-level pay is $15 to $16 per hour.

It has become a popular offering, and students in the program often become certified, then continue their education because an associate degree in the field allows them to become a supervisor or middle manager, while a bachelor’s degree in an area such as public health opens up a wide range of opportunities.

But every student who enters the FOH program is assigned to an advisor who helps them decide what courses to take to meet their goals, and Hayward-Jansen has helped many, whose choices have included public-health professionals, physical-activity therapists, occupational therapists, registered dieticians, or clinical nutritionists.

“These career paths are expanding,” she said, adding that the need for nutritionists and dieticians is increasing to help people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Changing Landscape

This spring, HCC will launch a new paramedic program in collaboration with STCC, which is one example of how institutions of higher education work closely with each other and their partners to make needed changes to programs or start new ones.

Due to advances in medicine and the way healthcare is delivered, which includes a dramatic increase in walk-in clinics and urgent-care centers, the possibilities are seemingly endless.

It’s good news for people willing to spend valuable time, money, and energy seeking a healthcare certificate or degree because, in today’s world, graduates are almost guaranteed a job that will pay well, be rewarding, and yield untold benefits and opportunities for growth in years to come.

Cover Story Education Sections

Amassing ‘Reputational Capital’

Isenberg School Dean Mark Fuller

Isenberg School Dean Mark Fuller

When Mark Fuller became a candidate for dean of the Isenberg School of Business at UMass Amherst, he saw an institution that was, by his estimation, “solid, but underperforming.” That latter adjective no longer applies. Indeed, Isenberg has made a solid move in the rankings of public schools, reaching No. 1 in BusinessWeek’s compilation of the top public schools in the Northeast. The challenge ahead — and it’s a considerable one, to say the least — is to achieve the additional ‘reputational capital’ to move still higher.

Mark Fuller says he gets asked the question all the time.

It comes in various forms, and is put to him by a host of constituencies, including school administrators, alums, other business-school deans (lots of those), and even the occasional business writer.

They all want to know how Fuller, who arrived as dean of the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in 2009, has been able to orchestrate a steady and quite impressive climb in the rankings of the region’s — and the nation’s — top business schools, especially the public institutions.

To wit, in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s current undergraduate business-school rankings, Isenberg ranks first among public schools in the Northeast (New England and New York) and 11th in the nation; among all business schools in the nation, it is 33rd. Just six years ago, those last two rankings were 36 and 78, respectively.

The answer to the question comes mostly in a long form — and you need to set aside more than a few minutes if you want that one — but also a short form, or at least a brief overview that identifies the main elements in the equation.

They are, said Fuller, creating a plan and, more importantly, executing it effectively, while also creating a culture laser-focused on student success (much more on that later).

“I’m a shameless borrower of phrases, like the one from a CEO who came to our school. He used to say that it’s 10% strategy and 90% execution, and I believe that,” said Fuller. “We’re very good at execution, and we have to be, because there’s no magical degree program that suddenly elevates you 30 spots in the rankings; it doesn’t work that way.

“Everyone knows what you should be doing — it’s not rocket science,” he went on. “Where the rubber meets the road is how well you execute on all these things.”

To make a long story somewhat shorter, this is essentially what the Isenberg School has done — and this is, in a nutshell, what Fuller tells all those who ask him the question noted above.


List of Colleges with MBA Programs


Getting more specific, Fuller said there are, quite obviously, many components to the school’s plan. They include everything from the creation of new curricular programs to raising the money needed for the endowed chairs and faculty positions needed to recruit some of the best business professors in the world; from greatly escalating efforts to promote and market Isenberg to the scene going on outside Fuller’s office — construction of a $62 million expansion of the school.

He summed up everything that’s been accomplished to date by saying that Isenberg now has a much better story to tell — in terms of everything from faculty to facilities to the success of its graduates — and is doing an exponentially better job of telling that story.

He lumps all of this together in the phrase ‘reputational capital.’ The school has much more of it than it did a decade ago, and the mission is, well, to simply accumulate much more of this precious commodity in the years to come.

That’s the only way to continue moving up in the rankings, said Fuller, who has the specific goal of propelling Isenberg into the top 10 nationally among public schools.

In many respects, moving up several more rungs will be more difficult than attaining the height currently reached, he said, drawing an analogy to golf — sort of. It is not easy, but easier to move from an 18 handicap into the single digits, he acknowledged, than it is to move from a 6 or an 8 to something approaching scratch.

So it is with business schools and climbing in the rankings, he went on, because doing so will take more work, more money, more of everything else listed above, and, overall, more success in transforming Isenberg into what Fuller called a “national brand” when it comes to business schools.

isenbergrankingbw116a

It is not quite there yet, he told BusinessWest, noting that the single word Isenberg, while it certainly resonates regionally, is not yet able to stand alone like other brand names such as Haas (University of California at Berkely); Ross (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor); and McIntire (University of Virginia).

“We want to become an iconic brand,” he said. “So when someone says, ‘I went to Isenberg,’ people know where that is. Iconic brands are one-word brands.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest asked the question seemingly everyone else is asking, but then went further, asking how Isenberg can soar still higher and what it will take for the school to achieve that ‘national brand’ status.

Numbers Game

Fuller said there are myriad ways to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure a business school’s success and level of improvement.

These include everything from the number of undergraduate applications received (up a whopping 49% at Isenberg since 2010) to the average SAT scores of accepted students (up from just over 1,200 in 2011 to nearly 1,280 in 2015; from something called ‘recruiter satisfaction,’ which, as that term suggests, is a measure of recruiter happiness with those they recruit, to comments (and a growing number of them) from alums noting that their children were accepted into many of the top private business schools nationally, but not Isenberg; from the rising number of endowed chairs to that aforementioned construction of a 72,000-square-foot addition.

But rankings continue to drive the train, if you will, in academia these days, he noted, and attaining lower numbers in all kinds of compilations was Fuller’s primary mission when he arrived on the Amherst campus in 2009 after serving for six years as chair of the department of Information Systems in the College of Business at Washington State University.

Actually, he said the more specific goal has been to increase the stores of reputational capital, and that rankings are merely a metric of reputation, or one of many, with others being placement rates at Big-4 accounting firms and penetration into leading financial-services giants such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, among others.

“I would like to see us become one of the top 10 public schools in the nation and within the top 20 overall,” he explained, adding that the school is certainly on the right trajectory for those results, but needs to maintain that course and gain more thrust to break those barriers.

And while climbing in the ranks equates to opportunities for the school and the university, he said, the far more important matter is that better rankings and reputation translate into greater opportunities for the students enrolled in the programs.

“Those sorts of universities provide great opportunities for their students,” he said of the schools at or near the top of the rankings. “When you come out of a place with that level of reputational capital, there are simply more job opportunities and higher salaries. And that reputational capital not only allows us to place students better, it allows us to recruit very high-quality students, which builds this sort of perpetual-motion machine that also allows us to recruit very high-quality faculty.”

Backing up a bit, Fuller said he was attracted to the opportunity to lead Isenberg because he saw a solid program that was, in his view, but also that of many others, underperforming.

And he saw an opportunity to change that equation.

“It had a great foundation — I couldn’t have done the things we were collectively able to do without the outstanding faculty we had here,” he explained. “I saw an opportunity to go from high quality to great.”

And while designing and building that perpetual-motion machine he mentioned isn’t the specific wording on his job description, that, in a nutshell, is what he and his team have been doing.

Degrees of Progress

Not to oversimplify things, said Fuller, because there is nothing really simple about all this, attaining more reputational capital, and thus climbing in the ranks, boils down to those two elements mentioned earlier: improving the story a business school has to tell (and there are many elements in this equation) and then telling this story in a louder, more effective voice.

And this brings us back to those main assignments for his team — creating a plan and then executing it.

The plan, Fuller told BusinessWest, has many elements, or building blocks, if you will, all incorporated into the design for a reason — or several of them.

Indeed, at its core, the plan is simple — create programs, hire faculty, and generate quality and results (outcomes) that will:

• Attract top students and enable graduates to succeed in the workplace;

• Generate enthusiasm and financial support among a host of constituencies, but especially alums;

• Enable the school to generate more reputational capital;

• Propel the institution higher in the rankings; and

• Create sufficient momentum to allow each of the above to perpetuate itself and grow in size and strength.

Elaborating, Fuller said everything his team does is student-focused and undertaken with the goal of improving outcomes, meaning everything from job opportunities to salaries.

One of the keys, he said, has been an outside-in look at curriculum, whereby industry leaders provide input on what’s being done and what can be done better.

“We’re trying to find those curricular, programmatic elements that will drive great opportunities for students,” he explained. “And we’re very deliberate in that; we don’t chase just any new majors.”

Instead, the school focuses on where the jobs are and, more importantly, where they will be, in realms such as analytics, business intelligence, and operations and information management.

Meanwhile, the school has also made major strides in the area of professional development, with initiatives aimed at creating internships, generating opportunities to study abroad (a nod toward an increasingly global economy), and helping students improve interviewing skills, network more effectively, and refine their LinkedIn presence, among other things.

“Many of our students will actually say that their peers at other schools and colleges across campus go to them to learn how to refine their résumé or their LinkedIn profile,” he explained. “And we hit the ground running on that; our students will have a résumé and LinkedIn profile by the end of their freshman year.”

Another focus, as mentioned earlier, is that statistic known as recruiter satisfaction, he went on, adding that Isenberg hired a director of organizational metrics, who, among things, garners hard data on just how happy recruiters are with the school’s graduates.

“It’s like flying on an airline,” Fuller explained. “You fly, you get a survey; the airline asks, ‘how did we do?’ We do the same thing.”

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And it turns the results, especially those that are not particularly favorable, into action, he went on, noting that one identified problem was with résumés, criticism that eventually led to efforts to improve and standardize those documents, so much so that recruiters can now easily recognize something Fuller called the “Isenberg résumé.”

As for growing support among alums and other groups, Fuller drew an analogy to big-time college sports.

“Attendance for basketball games where a team is losing is less than it is for a school that’s winning,” he explained. “For alumni, there was a real sense that we had to build pride in the brand, because the public business schools across the country are a very competitive set of schools, and we all want to be competitive.”

Story Lines

When it comes to telling the story better, Fuller started by gesturing across the conference room table to Chris Foley Pilsner. Her business card reads ‘Assistant Dean & Chief Marketing Officer,’ and she is the first at Isenberg to have such a title.

More importantly, she leads a growing team of professionals, said Fuller, adding that the school has become much more aggressive in recent years when it comes to promoting its brand.

“We also have a digital strategist and social-media director, among other positions,” he explained. “We’re building up that infrastructure that allows us to tell our story about how good we’ve become.

“Many people know we’ve gotten better, but they’re not cognizant of how much better we’ve gotten,” he went on. “I hear that from alumni, even; they don’t know how good we’ve really become.”

The goal moving forward is to simply have better news to report, said Fuller, meaning continuous improvement. And, as he noted, moving ever-higher becomes more difficult because the competition is more keen, and those ahead of Isenberg in the rankings have every intention of staying where they are or moving higher themselves.

Continued upward movement is made still more challenging by two rankings where Isenberg lies at the very bottom of the chart, at least among the top public schools. These would be ‘operating budgets’ and ‘school endowments.’

Indeed, Isenberg has an operating budget of $38.2 million (less than one-quarter the total registered by the top-ranked public school, Indiana University’s Kelley School), and an endowment of just over $31 million, far less than one-tenth the figure at the University of Virginia’s Darden School, ranked second overall by BusinessWeek.

In many ways, how far UMass has come despite those statistics are serious points of pride, said Fuller, but those factors, and also the lowest total (70) of tenure-stream faculty among the top schools, will represent serious hurdles to moving higher.

“We like to say, affectionately, that we fight above our weight class,” he said while referring specifically to the operating budget and endowment rankings. “But we also know that you can’t continue to do that, so we’re trying to get our alumni to help us figure out how to grow this operating budget.”

Elaborating, he said that financial gifts from alums are not the only way to enlarge the budget. Others include corporate gifts, grants, and foundation support, and alumni can assist with all of the above.

Overall, to move still higher in the rankings, Fuller and his team will have to build what amounts to a bigger, even more effective perpetual-motion machine, and continue their focus on execution.

To elaborate, he moved to the whiteboard in the conference room and drew a rudimentary schematic, in the form of a circle with the word ‘reputation’ in the middle, and references to the three elements that drive it — programs, infrastructure, and image — and the need to focus on all three.

Image, as noted earlier, is a measure of how others perceive your school, and includes everything from the many regional and regional rankings to efforts to tell the story. Programs, meanwhile, as mentioned, include everything from curricular initiatives to professional-development tools. And infrastructure is a broad term used to describe everything from facilities to the faculty, and it is perhaps the biggest area of need going forward.

The construction project going on outside Fuller’s window is a prime example of infrastructure work, he noted, adding that, with rising enrollment, Isenberg had no choice but to expand its footprint in order to provide the highest-quality education.

“We need the facilities that will allow us to hire the faculty to drive the quality of the program,” he explained, “because I can’t grow anymore, either in quality or the number of students we teach, without expanding our infrastructure.”

Another element of infrastructure is the faculty, he said, noting that the school needs to grow its endowment so it can add more endowed chairs and teaching positions and thus enhance recruitment efforts in that realm.

“The big hurdle for us to move into the top rung of the rankings is to continue to build this infrastructure of resources that will enable us to compete,” he said, drawing another analogy to college sports, this time to the elaborate training facilities needed to recruit top players and coaches to athletic programs.

Off-the-charts Improvement

When asked if there was an accepted road map for public business schools to follow to attain growth and reputational capital, Fuller said ‘no,’ but also that this is another question that those other deans put to him.

Specifically, they want to know the route Isenberg followed to become number 1 in the Northeast and reach a status just outside the top 10 nationally.

He tells them it’s a well-marked route, but the key isn’t knowing the directions; it’s in executing them properly.

That’s how a business school gets where it wants to go.

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

Education Sections

Joining the Fight

Carol Leary

Carol Leary says women can, and must, play a lead role in efforts to stem violent extremism.

At first, Carol Leary thought the e-mail she received in September was spam, and was wondering why it didn’t go into that particular folder.

It was from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), she said, and was essentially an inquiry, with the sender alerting Leary, the long-time president of Bay Path University in Longmeadow, that she had been nominated for a position on the Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council, or HSAAC, and asking if she was interested in learning more and possibly serving.

This was an acronym that Leary admits she had never heard of — “I didn’t know this panel existed” — but now rattles off with great frequency and ease.

Indeed, after determining that the e-mail was, in fact, legitimate, and not junk or, worse, a virus spreader, Le ary did apply for that panel — because she immediately grasped the importance of its broad mission and the fact that sitting on it would be a great honor not only for her, but the school she’s led since 1994.

She was chosen to join seven others as the latest members of a panel that is essentially parked at the intersection of academia and DHS, which is becoming an ever-more-important spot on the map.

Through its six subcommittees, the HSAAC focuses on such matters as campus resilience, cybersecurity, international students, homeland-security academic programs, academic research and faculty exchange, and student and recent-graduate recruitment, and that list of assignments certainly helps explain why Leary received that e-mail mentioned earlier.

Indeed, Bay Path has put itself at the forefront of such issues and concerns, said Leary, through both graduate and undergraduate degree programs in cybersecurity and specific courses such as “An Introduction to Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and “The Path to Violent Extremism,” both offered by the American Women’s College and the One Day Program at Bay Path.

“I think these programs are what really attracted Homeland Security,” she told BusinessWest, “because the newest area they will focus on is countering violent extremism, and when they saw we had classes taught by someone with a great reputation in Great Britain on this subject, they knew we had an expert.”

That would be Bob Milton. He’s the retired commander of the London Metropolitan Police Service, New Scotland Yard; director of his own consulting company that specializes in counterterrorism consulting; and, as noted, professor of Criminal Justice and lead faculty for Counterterrorism at Bay Path.

He blueprinted many of the courses at the college, including the two mentioned above, and recently delivered a talk at the school, as part of its Kaleidoscope series, called “Countering Terrorism: The New Role of Women.”

This is a subject of particular interest to Leary — and the rest of the HSAAC, for that matter — because it represents an important, but far from fully tapped resource in the battle to identify and possibly defuse developing violent extremism.

“As we know, in our own country we have young people being radicalized,” she told BusinessWest. “Mothers are probably going to be the first to recognize this. The question then becomes, how do we reach women, not only in all communities, but particularly Muslim communities across our world, probably woman to woman? I think this is going to be a very important role for women to play in the field of countering extreme violence.

As we know, in our own country we have young people being radicalized. Mothers are probably going to be the first to recognize this.”

“We need to give them the tools, the techniques, and the impetus to do this,” she went on. “We need to show them they will be helping our country and helping the families in which students are being radicalized.”

Milton agrees. “You could say that the biggest threat to the U.S. is coming from within; the last few attacks have both come from within,” he said, citing incidents in Florida and California. “We need to put much more effort into identifying those people who are becoming radicalized and then putting in place measures to try and carry out intervention. And women can play a big role in this.”

For this issue, BusinessWest looks at Leary’s appointment to the Homeland Security panel, but also the developments that led to it — specifically the school’s rise to prominence in this field — and the many issues involved with combating violent extremism.

Front of Mind

As he talked about the many issues involved with countering radicalism and the importance of doing so on many levels, Milton recited a statement issued by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army after it executed a nearly successful attempt on the life of then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton.

“It said, ‘you need to be lucky all the time — we only need to be lucky once,’” he recalled, adding that the note was received after Thatcher narrowly escaped the blast of a long-delay time bomb that left a gaping hole in the façade of the hotel. (Five others were killed in the attack, and 31 were injured).

Milton told BusinessWest that he recites that IRA message often in the talks and lectures that he gives in cities around the world, and probably not in the context that most people might think. Instead of agreeing with the gist of the missive, he says its thinking is inherently flawed.

To get his point across, he summons a quote often attributed to golfing legend Gary Player, among others, which goes something like, “the more I practice, the luckier I become.”

Whatever the exact quote is, and regardless of who actually said it, the message is clear, said Milton: the harder individuals, groups, and countries work to counter terrorism and violent radicalism, the more successful they will be.

This, in essence, goes a long way toward explaining the existence (and the mission) of not only the DHS, but the HSAAC as well — which is, in part, to practice hard at the work of recognizing and stemming radicalization.

“We need to work harder so we’re lucky,” said Milton, adding that this work constitutes a large, complex fight, started long ago and now waged on many fronts and in many ways. And it focuses on everything from working with, rather than isolating, underprivileged communities, to teaching others how to spot the many warning signs of someone being radicalized.

Milton said these include changes in behavior, being secretive, excessive amounts of time spent on the Internet, acquiring new friends, disappearing for long periods of time, and becoming angry, frustrated, even passionate about things they see on the news.

But spotting the signs is only part of the equation, he went on, adding that people, and especially mothers, need to know what to do when they see those signs.

Bob Milton

Bob Milton says individuals, agencies, and nations need to work hard to counter radicalization and essentially make their own luck.

“It’s my experience that it’s the families, and the women in the families, who are more likely to see the signs of radicalization earlier than anyone else,” he explained. “There have been so many cases in the U.K., particularly, where young women or men have become radicalized, and in some cases have gone off to fight and die in Syria, and yet their families — and particularly the women in those families — knew there was something going on and had nowhere to go.”

In short, he went on, women — especially those who are, for some reason, be it language issues or something else, isolated within their community — need to become less isolated and, therefore, more empowered to effectively deal with these situations.

And women, as noted, can play a huge role in this effort, said Leary, who, as she talked about this, drew an effective, even poetic analogy to the work carried out by women at Bletchley Park, the headquarters for Britain’s fabled code breakers during World War II, immortalized in countless books, TV series, and movies such as the recent The Imitation Game.
“The word we would use for it today is cybersecurity,” she said of those efforts to break the codes enciphered on Germany’s Enigma machines. “All the men were off fighting the war; it was the women trying to decode messages sent all across Europe. Fast-forward 70 years, and it’s clear that we again need more women in this field.”

Bay Path is certainly doing its part in this effort, she went on, adding that roughly 80 students are enrolled in its cybersecurity programs, and the number is growing every year.

The master’s-degree program in cybersecurity management graduated its first class in 2014, and there are now 30 (17 of which are women) currently enrolled in that program. Meanwhile, there are 50 students (almost all of them women) enrolled in the undergraduate program, which features concentrations in digital forensics and information assurance.

As noted earlier, though, the role to be played by women moving forward is multi-faceted and goes much deeper than taking jobs in this growing field. It entails work within and for the community to intervene and hopefully prevent individuals from resorting to violence in support of a cause or faith.

Getting the Message

Leary, named by BusinessWest as one of its Difference Makers for 2016 for her work at the college and in the community, acknowledged that she had more than enough to keep her busy before that e-mail arrived in September.

And while she has, indeed, learned to say ‘no’ over the years due to the sheer volume of requests she receives to donate her time, energy, and talent to a group or cause, that word never entered her mind when the DHS enlisted her help.

That’s because the group’s mission is so important, and also because Bay Path has made major investments — and major strides — toward become a recognized leader in cybersecurity and related programs.

And those investments can and will yield dividends at this critical juncture for the country — and the world.

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

Education Sections

Closing the Gap

Arlene Rodriguez

Arlene Rodriguez says the $3.4 million federal grant that STCC received will help Hispanic and low-income students obtain degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Arlene Rodriguez says people who apply for a grant of any type need to have a compelling story about why the money is important.

The vice president of Academic Affairs at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) knows developing the story is something that takes time, energy, dedication, and great attention to detail, which are all elements that were incorporated into a recent grant application the college submitted to the U.S. Department of Education.

The year of work that went into its preparation was well worth it, however, as the story met with unparallelled success: STCC was recently awarded one of the largest awards in its history: a five-year, $3.4 million grant for the program called the Hispanic and Low-income Transformed Education in STEM (HiLITES) Project.

It’s aimed at helping students attain degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) classes and programs, and although STCC is the only community college in Massachusetts to win this award, Rodriguez says it’s appropriate due to the school’s demographics. To be eligible to receive the grant, a college must be designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, which is attained when at least 25% of the total student population is Hispanic.

STCC’s Hispanic population is 27.6%; it has been designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution since 2013; and 56% of its students receive federal Pell grants, which are limited to students with financial need.

“This grant was very competitive, and it took all I had not to jump up and down when I heard that we were given exactly what we asked for,” Rodriguez said. “It will give us an opportunity to make significant changes proposed by faculty and students who identified obstacles to success in STEM courses during interviews that took place before we applied for the grant. People were very honest about what stopped them from continuing in these programs, and faculty talked about where they see students struggle and what we need to change,” she continued. “It was a collaborative effort that was student-oriented; we are determined to make changes to improve students’ lives, and one of our goals is to increase the number of students in STEM disciplines.”

Indeed, it’s critical for local students as well as the economy; a report commissioned by Raytheon says a workforce prepared to tackle science is needed to drive future growth and innovation, and 67% of manufacturers are experiencing a shortage of qualified employees.

In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor estimates that 8,654,000 STEM-related jobs will exist in 2018, not including self-employed STEM individuals, and although the national average wage is $42,979, those with a STEM degree earn about $78,000.

STCC has more than a dozen STEM programs that range from architectural and building technology to computer-aided drafting, CNC operations, electrical engineering technology, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), and many are not found in other community colleges across the state. But right now, only 14% of its Hispanic students and 11% of its low-income students enroll in STEM courses, and those who do need support to be successful.

This grant was very competitive, and it took all I had not to jump up and down when I heard that we were given exactly what we asked for.”

“There is a disconnect between Hispanic students and students with Pell grants when it comes to jobs that are available, and we want to bridge that gap,” said Rodriguez. “Our end goal is to prepare students for positions that are going unfilled, and this grant will allow us to provide them with the support they need to make a better life for themselves and provide for their families.”

She noted that the majority of Hispanic and low-income students enter college needing help in math and have lower rates of retention and graduation. “Students who are Hispanic and low-income perform worse on all three measures than students who are only Hispanic or low-income,” she told BusinessWest.

STCC President John Cook agreed. “We’re open-eyed about student needs, and this grant will help us address complex challenges. We look forward to building diversity across our unique array of STEM programs, and this is a chance to both expand initiatives while also trying new and creative approaches,” he said.

Multi-faceted Program

The grant money will be used to provide a wide spectrum of programs and services over a five-year period that will kick off in the spring. One of the new initiatives will introduce students in middle and high schools to STEM careers they may not know about in fields that include precision manufacturing, information technology, and HVAC, as there are job vacancies in these areas that pay well.

STCC’s plan is to bring the students to campus, introduce them to the faculty, show them the machines they will work on if they enter these programs, and educate them about careers associated with STEM degrees and the type of work they would perform on a daily basis.

“A student may not know these courses are available, or think they couldn’t succeed in them because they require a lot of math. But we have fantastic teachers who are able to teach these subjects in creative ways that make it easy to learn, and our faculty wants to make sure that our students succeed,” Rodriguez said, noting that, in some cases, students with an associate’s degree can earn $50,000 to $60,000 after graduation, and many have job offers before they matriculate.

There is also a plan to work with local high schools and expand the dual-enrollment system that allows students to go to the STCC campus and take courses before they receive their high-school diploma, as well as to expand programs with four-year colleges and improve the transfer rate by creating a seamless transition.

Assessments are conducted of a student’s math and English skills when they enter STCC, which is important because Rodriguez says many students are not ready for college-level math and need to take a series of courses to get them up to speed, which is a national problem at the majority of community colleges.

“The average age of our students is 26, and taking extra courses can be frustrating; they may have families or part-time jobs, so there is a sense of urgency to graduate,” she said, adding that many have GEDs, and even those who did well in high school may need to regain math skills after spending years away from the classroom.

“The grant will allow STCC to provide these students with enough support to take math and science courses without prolonging the time it takes them to graduate,” she continued, explaining that this may mean redesigning some STEM courses, offering additional tutoring, and providing more professional-development opportunities for instructors.

Students who are part-time and have not yet selected a major will also be exposed to STEM courses and careers through demonstrations, guest lectures, and other avenues.

In addition, two STEM advisers will be hired to conduct outreach and help students interested in STEM careers transition into the progams, and a STEM Center will be created as a centralized location for presentations, group study, tutoring, and faculty work. Rodriguez noted that the STEM Center will likely be located in space that will be vacated when the new Learning Commons is completed in 2018.

Change Agent

A 2013 report by the Commonwealth that addressed the skills gap says pipelines are powerful tools because they address both sides of the issue by giving people in the workforce the skills they need while responding to the changing nature of what employers are seeking from their workers.

The grant will help to strengthen the local pipeline, and since STCC graduates live locally, are committed to the community, and usually stay in the area, the grant is a win-win situation, Rodriguez said.

“Community colleges are the front lines of workforce education, and we can respond to employers’ needs in a way that four-year schools may not be able to,” she noted. “The essence of this institution has remained unchanged for the past 50 years, and it has helped to produce leaders in business, government, and education in various professions that benefit the community. Our college continues to be an engine of economic opportunity and development for the region.”

Indeed, it’s an ongoing story, and this chapter should have a happy ending as students are given the support they need to enter careers that pay well and local employers see an increase in qualified candidates to fill jobs, which will allow their companies to grow and thrive in a changing economy.

Education Sections

A New Test

John Cook

John Cook

John Cook, who only recently became ineligible for BusinessWest’s Forty Under 40 program, took the reins at Springfield Technical Community College last month. Beyond youth — he’s not that much older than many students on this historic campus — he brings energy and a leadership style grounded in being a good listener.

As one passes through the ornate main entrance to Springfield Technical Community College, to the right is a small parking lot with a few reserved spaces. John Cook’s name is on one of them.

Well, not literally, but there is certainly a spot set aside for the president of the institution, a title Cook assumed just a few weeks ago. But he has made up his mind that he won’t be using it.

Instead, he might, like some of the college’s students themselves, try to find a spot reasonably far up the steep Pearl Street hill, several hundred yards away from that choice space, and walk through the campus to the main administration building.

He fully understands that this is a symbolic gesture, and one that certainly won’t impact the school’s persistent parking issue/challenge/problem — whatever one chooses to call it — in any significant way.

But he nonetheless considers it an important gesture because it indicates how he intends to manage — by listening closely and responding to what he hears. Far more meaningful answers to the parking situation will eventually become reality, he told BusinessWest, and in the meantime, he intends to be part of the solution is some small way — and also do some more listening while getting from Pearl Street, or wherever he finds a spot, to Garvey Hall.

“During the interview process, people asked about my style, my approach, and for me that’s a very difficult question,” he said while answering essentially the same question when put to him by BusinessWest. “Because for me, a lot of that approach is demonstrating appreciation for others and being a good listener. And it’s hard when you’re asked the question and are asked to respond, because what I really want to do is go around and ask questions of other people and give them a chance to be heard.”

The young Cook — he only recently became ineligible for BusinessWest’s Forty Under 40 program — has been doing plenty of listening for the past six months or so, through that interview process and then during his first few weeks on the job, and he’s intent on continuing that habit.

In fact, he has already put in motion some plans to open the lines of communication between himself and a host of constituencies — and keep them open. One involves blocking off time each week for open office hours — they started last week — while the other entails scheduling what he calls ‘town-meeting’ sessions.

The former, as the name implies, is time when his office door is open, literally and figuratively, to anyone who wants to go through it. That includes faculty, staff, students, and “the community,” he said, adding that he’ll make himself available from noon to 1, but also in the early evening (5:15-6:15) for those who would be on campus those hours.

From left, John Cook, state Sen. Eric Lesser, and STCC trustee Eric Hagopian

From left, John Cook, state Sen. Eric Lesser, and STCC trustee Eric Hagopian, president of the Mass. Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing, tour ‘Building 19,’ the future home of STCC’s Learning Commons.

As for the town meetings, these will involve the entire college community, he explained, and will feature an open, interactive format, one where he will share the microphone and welcome input.

“Rather than having me stand and deliver for a period of time,” he explained, “we’ll have our vice presidents up there giving updates on critical projects, and we’re going to take questions.”

Cook, most recently the vice president of Academic Affairs at Manchester (N.H.) Community College (MCC), takes the helm in Springfield during a milestone moment in the school’s history — a year-long 50th anniversary celebration. And while acknowledging that this might be a good time to look inward and set new goals, he said this occasion is better suited for reaffirming established goals and recommitting the institution to its simple, but at the same time complex, mission statement: ‘STCC supports students as they transform their lives.’

I didn’t look at many schools, and in my search, this was the only one where there seemed to be an early match, an early fit. I’m lucky that STCC and I found one another.”

Support comes in many forms, obviously, but mostly in the realm of helping students arriving at the historic campus — carved out of the Springfield Armory — see their way through to graduation or whatever goal they set when they enrolled.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with STCC’s new president about new his career challenge and the start of the school’s proverbial next 50 years.

Setting the Scene

To say that Cook’s office on the second floor of Garvey Hall takes on a Granite State look and feel would a large understatement.

Parked against one wall is his first pair of skis (they’re wooden and considerably older than he is, although he doesn’t know exactly how old). Meanwhile, photos of snow-capped peaks adorn other walls, and a map of New Hampshire, where he had spent the sum of his professional career, hangs behind his desk.

“It provides a sense of place,” he said of this collection. “Where we went to college matters, and where we grew up matters. These are little reminders of where I’m from.”

But while his office speaks of where he’s been personally and professionally and provides that sense of place, he says he feels right at home with what he can see outside his windows, as well.

And by that, he was referring to everything from the community college atmosphere, to the similarities between MCC and STCC (more on those later), and even to the century-and-half-old buildings that give the school its unique flavor.

“I have a real healthy appreciation for historic structures,” he explained with a laugh, using those words in reference to both architecture and the high cost of upkeep. “Because I’ve helped to renovate two antique houses, both dating to the late 1700s. These buildings (at STCC), they’re oldies, but goodies; you just can’t build that kind of character any more.”

These were just some of the many motivating factors that prompted Cook to zero in on STCC as an attractive landing spot as he initiated his quest for a college president’s job — a search that began only a year ago, or just after the ink was dry on his doctorate diploma, earned at the University of New Hampshire. (A Ph.D. is considered almost a pre-requisite for presidents’ jobs today).

Elaborating, Cook said that while he wasn’t sure if his next career challenge would (or should) be a chief academic officer’s position at a larger institution or a presidency, he certainly felt qualified — and ready — for the latter.

Especially at a community college, because of work in everything from new-degree-program development to efforts to forge pathways — from high school to college, and then from MCC to four-year institutions.

Those are just some of the accomplishments listed on his resume, which notes that upon graduating from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., and then earning a master’s degree in community/social psychology at UMass Lowell, Cook started his career at Granite State College, part of New Hampshire’s public university system, as a research and evaluation coordinator in 2000. He would later become faculty coordinator at the school, and eventually serve as assistant dean of Faculty.

In 2012, he became vice president of Academic Affairs at MCC, a small community college (at least when compared to STCC) with just under 3,000 students and 55 full-time faculty.

At MMC, he took a lead role in the development of a number of new dregree and certificate programs across several academic realms, including Health Science, Life Science, Robotics, and Cyber Security. He also collaborated with a number of parties to create early-college pathway programs for high schools, encouraged faculty to embrace STEM pathways, and worked to build a culture that, as he put it, “embraces data and an analytical approach to decision-making.”

With this background, buffeted by that aforementioned doctorate, as well as some strong encouragement from MCC President Susan Huard, Cook began looking at college president positions. And as things turned out, he didn’t have to look very long or hard before coming across an opportunity that seemed worthy of that adjective ‘perfect,’ both professionally and personally (this job allows him to remain very close to his two young children from a previous marriage, who are still living in New Hampshire).

“I feel very fortunate — people who have been there, people who have been presidents of multiple institutions tell me that often, you’re looking for months, sometimes years, for the right institution,” he told BusinessWest. “I didn’t look at many schools, and in my search, this was the only one where there seemed to be an early match, an early fit. I’m lucky that STCC and I found one another.”

By that, he meant that he identified the school as the focal point of his quest for a president’s job, and the search committee, following an intense, six-month exploratory and interview process, deemed him the best candidate to take it into the next half-century, following the 12-year tenure of Ira Rubenzahl, who succeeded Andy Scibelli, who spent 21 years in the president’s office.

Those two leaders have taken the school to new and lofty heights, said Cook, adding that he considers it his responsibility to continue and build upon this legacy.

Course of Action

Looking back on the lengthy search process for STCC’s next president, Cook said he was asked a number of intriguing questions during several interviews — and, as might be expected based on what he said earlier, he had several for those on the other side of the table.

STCC during its 50th anniversary

John Cook takes the helm at STCC during its 50th anniversary, a time, he said, to recommit to its message of helping students succeed.

One of them was a rather direct query about what members of the search panel were looking for in the next leader of the school. Words and phrases that came back repeatedly were ‘accessible,’ ‘approachable, ‘forward-thinking,’ and someone willing to be a “champion” for the school and community colleges in general.

He intends to be all of the above with actions that go well beyond giving up his parking space.

For starters, he noted his open office hours and planned town meetings, as well as that leadership style of listening and demonstrating appreciation.

Through such initiatives, and with such skill sets, Cook feels he’s ready and able to lead efforts to address the many challenges facing the school moving forward and outlined in a recently drafted strategic plan. They include:

• That aforementioned parking problem. It’s not exactly a recent phenomenon, in fact the challenge is in many respects as old as the school. But it remains a constant and is always a consideration with the next item on the list;

• Enrollment. It soared during the Great Recession, as it did at all area public schools, but has retreated since, for reasons ranging from a vast improvement in the economy to smaller high school graduating classes;

• The ongoing restoration and renovation of the structure known as Building 19, a huge, 700-foot-long former storage house for the Armory that is being converted into a campus center that will host a wide array of offices and programs. Conceived and nurtured by Rubenzahl, the project will reorient the campus and shift most activity from the main administration building to ’19,’ as it’s called, on the north side of the campus;

• Continuing the collaborative efforts between STCC and Holyoke Community College, forged by Rubenzah and his counterpart at HCC (now also retired) Bill Messner. Formerly, and in many ways still, rivals (at least when it comes to enrollment and athletics), the schools have come together on many projects in recent years, especially the TWO (Training and Workforce Options) program that has helped area companies develop talented workers and close a recognized skills gap. Cook said it will be one of his priorities to continue the collaborative efforts and initiate new ones.

But the broader, overriding assignment will be to certainly carry out the school’s mission and help students succeed, he said, adding there are many elements to this equation.

Indeed, the college needs to not only help students with academics and put them on a track to success, but keep them on it.

“Some of it, in fact a big part of it, is life — how do we help students with those issues, not just education,” Cook explained, noting that many STCC students cannot be described with that industry term ‘traditional.’ “They’re working a lot, they’re raising families, there’s transportation issues; all those things influence our students, regardless of their age.”

Cook said that the recently announced Commonwealth Commitment program would certainly help with this assignment.

The initiative incentivizes individuals (through rebates on tuition and fees and a $30,000 cap on the cost of a four-year degree) to enter a community college, graduate in two and half years or less, move on to one of the state universities or UMass campuses, and wrap up a baccalaureate degree in no more than four and a half years.

“This really helps incentivize students to not just go part time,” he explained. “If you can find the wherewithal to go full time, you’re going to earn that associate’s in two years, tuition has been frozen for you, and that really helps see them through to that bachelor’s.”

Thus, the program also further escalates the role community colleges are playing in preparing individuals for today’s technology-based economy, he noted, adding that these institutions are ready for, and well-suited for, this heighted responsibility.

“One of the things community colleges, and especially STCC, have is the ability to respond quickly and nimbly to changing needs within the community,” he explained. “If a community college partner says ‘we have a need,’ we can help with that assessment, and sometimes, in a short time, have a training program ready for them.”

Hot Spot

Returning to the matter of where his car will reside, Cook acknowledged, again, that his gesture was not intended to solve the problem.

“We’ve got creative an innovative ways to put that spot to better use,” he explained. “It’s one spot for our hundreds of staff and faculty and thousands, but it’s not much for me to park on Pearl Street and walk on over.”

By doing so, he gets to demonstrate his sensitivity to the issue, and, more importantly, do something he likes much more than answering questions: Asking them.

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

Education Sections

Unequal Rights?

Bill Spirer

Bill Spirer says ballot Question 2 is about expanding charter schools in underperforming districts where students historically have had few options.

Todd Gazda stopped along the Riverwalk in Ludlow to admire the view a week ago and began talking with a senior citizen who was relaxing at the site.

“As soon as he found out who I was, he asked me what I thought of Question 2,” said the Superintendent of Ludlow Public Schools, adding that the gentleman was extremely interested in the issue.

Indeed, the question that will appear on the November ballot is significant because it is the first time in state history the public will have the opportunity to voice their opinion about school choice.

If passed, Question 2 would give the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to approve 12 new charter schools or expand existing charter schools as a result of increased enrollment every year beginning Jan. 1, 2017. Priority would be given to applicants in public-school districts that score in the bottom 25% on standardized tests two years before their application. In addition, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would establish standards by which annual performance reviews would be judged.

The question has generated strong feelings, heated arguments, and major fund-raising campaigns: when BusinessWest went to press, proponents had raised $18 million and opponents $12 million, most of which will be spent on TV ads.

The debate began in earnest last year after Gov. Charlie Baker, who is a strong a proponent of charter schools, introduced a bill to increase their number in the Commonwealth. The Senate revamped the proposal before passing it, but it was rejected by the House, which didn’t support the changes that had been made.

Lawmakers continue to be heavily divided on the issue, but after the House rejected the bill, the Mass. Charter School Assoc., Great Schools of MA, and Democrats for Education Reform led an effort to get the question on the ballot to increase options for the 32,000 students on charter-school waiting lists.

Both sides have powerful arguments. Opponents say charter schools don’t serve the same number of English-language learners (ELL) and students with profound special needs who require costly services; the admissions process is unfair to students whose parents are not interested in their education or don’t have the skills needed to seek information or enrollment in alternate schools; the state has failed to provide the level of reimbursement promised to public schools when a student leaves their district for a charter school; building and staffing costs don’t decrease when students leave; and charter schools are not subject to the same standards as district public schools, which makes it easy for them to eliminate students with behavior problems.

Todd Gazda

Todd Gazda says the amount of money Ludlow loses every year to charter schools is more than the amount allotted to run an elementary school.

Proponents argue that they admit students by lottery and serve a diverse population; their behavioral standards are strict but fair; their academic results are higher than urban and suburban schools; they offer students in low-performing districts a chance to get a high-quality education; the funding formula does not discriminate because money allocated to each student in a district simply follows them; and they are actually public schools that are open to all students and don’t charge tuition.

But both charter- and public-school directors and superintendents agree that money is an important issue because schools across the state are grossly underfunded.

“My fear is that the debate over charter schools will divert attention from the bedrock issue of school funding in general,” said Northampton School Superintendent John Provost, referring to a study conducted last year by the Foundation Budget Review Commission, which looked at the formula used to fund public schools and found a $1 billion deficit.

The Mass. Assoc. of School Superintendents thinks the amount is closer to $2 billion, and Provost argues that the ballot question is secondary to financial problems facing all public schools, which include charters.

“I feel it’s the wrong policy to be voting on at this time,” said Provost. “Charter schools were created when the education budget was growing, but in many communities funding has been stagnant since 2008, and it’s a matter of diverting money from a pie that is not growing.”

Karen Reuter

Karen Reuter says charter schools were founded to model innovation and specialization, and were not meant to replace public schools.

Sabis International Charter School Director Karen Reuter agrees that state funding for education is inadequate. “If we could raise the bar for every student, maybe we wouldn’t have to have such an oppositional agenda,” she noted.

But she says the issue comes down to access to quality education, which makes the ballot question important.

For this edition and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at arguments on both sides of the question and what will be at stake when voters go to the polls.

Shortchanging Students

Barbara Mandeloni, president of the 110,000-member Mass. Teachers Assoc., says $450 million diverted from district public schools to charter schools has had considerable consequences, and some schools have had to cut support services to children with special needs, while others have cut teachers or language classes and other extra curricular programs.

“Public schools represent the best of who we are and contribute to the common good; they are not about individualism, but about a shared sense of purpose and something bigger than ourselves,” she said, adding that the New England NAACP is a leader in its coalition and Black Lives Matter has called for a three-year moratorium on charter schools because, critics say, they are creating a two-tiered system that is resegregating schools.

“We need to defeat this bill, then have a conversation about funding so we can give every child the opportunity to have a broad and rich curriculum and access to resources,” she said, adding that many charter schools have discipline standards that force students with behavioral issues out.

Daniel Warwick

Daniel Warwick says charter schools have a large, negative impact on Springfield’s public schools.

Springfield School Superintendent Daniel Warwick says adequate funding for urban schools has always been a problem, and they barely make the minimum net school spending needed to educate each child. And the impact of charter schools on the Springfield district has been tremendous; they lose $41 million each year to charters and are reimbursed only $6 million, but still have to educate an extremely diverse population that includes many refugees who have undergone tremendous trauma in refugee camps, as well as a large number of students with profound special needs, including some who enter the ninth grade after never spending a day in a school.

“We have the most difficult students to educate. There are a lot of English-language learners and students with special educational needs who are the most difficult and costly to educate in terms of achievement results,” he said, noting that, although charter schools say they do outreach, the percentage of high-need special-education students they serve doesn’t rival that of the sending district, which is a nuance in achievement levels that hasn’t been addressed.

He thinks equal access to education would mean that charter schools hold lotteries that include all students in their district, not just those whose parents are motivated to fill out application forms, which is often prohibitive due to language and socioeconomic barriers.

“If we are going to continue the charter-school movement, there are issues that need to be addressed, and making sure their populations match their sending communities in every way is one of them,” he said, adding that, if charter schools are not educating the most needy students, their achievement results need to be called into question.

“It’s a lightning-rod issue on either side, but from the perspective of public-school funding and student-assignment structure, it is particularly troubling because once you go to a lottery system you are dealing with a different population,” Warwick continued, noting that the demographics in the city’s magnet schools also differ, especially in terms of parent involvement.

Springfield schools had to cut $13 million from a budget this year that was already underfunded by $10 million, and the loss was increased by a $3 million shortfall from the state’s failure to reimburse them appropriately for students lost to charter schools. Another $5 million was lost to school choice, which doesn’t account for the fact that Springfield has to provide transportation for these students.

“We have had to cut direct services to kids and 56 positions from our central office,” he said, “and class sizes will continue to grow if the funding stream isn’t changed.

“If we were funded according to the findings of the Foundation Review Commission’s recommendations, we would have $25 million more this year to adequately address the students we serve,” he went on, adding that this is a social-justice issue.

Gazda agrees, and says proponents argue that Question 2 comes down to school choice.

“But when you dig deeper, the facts below the surface reveal a different picture; we are one of relatively few districts who lose very few students to charter schools, but geography does make a difference,” he explained. “Charter schools are being held up as a better alternative, and that narrative is just not true; their students don’t perform remarkably better than most public-school students.”

The state is supposed to reimburse district schools 100% of the money they lose the first year a student switches to a charter school, and 25% for each of the following four years. But not only has it cut school funding in general, it has not come close to meeting those numbers.

Ludlow lost 19 students to charter schools in FY ’16, which cost $434,878, but was reimbursed only $122,467.

“It had a marked impact on us and the things we could do. In a school system the size of Ludlow, $300,000 can go a long way,” Gazda said, adding that there is no way for local school boards to judge whether charter schools are using funds efficiently.

In addition, charter schools were originally created to have the flexibility to be innovative in creative ways and share their best practices with local school districts, which Gazda says has not happened.

“The way the system is set up is competitive and almost adversarial, because of the flow of resources away from district public schools. It has the effect of creating a tiered education system, particularly in urban areas,” he continued, noting that parents in urban areas often cannot afford to move to towns with better school systems; Ludlow has a wait list of 350 students for school choice, and the vast majority are from Springfield.

He said a single mother who wants the best for her child often views charter schools as a place where the child can be saved. “But my answer is to fully support public schools so we can change the environment in all schools.”

Northampton recently commissioned a survey of charter-school parents to learn why they were opting out of their neighborhood schools.

“It showed the charter-school population is very unique in terms of demographics; 100% of the parents said they had a college degree, the majority had graduate degrees, and their household incomes were far above the incomes of local families,” Provost said.

Last year, Northampton Public Schools received about $644,000 less from the state than in 2010. The city has 200 students in charter schools, which equates to $2 million in lost revenue each year, and although none of their elementary schools is that small, $2 million is far more than the amount appropriated to each school.

“The main impact is the loss of programs we can provide,” Provost said, adding that more than 20% of their students have disabilities.

Different Agendas

Dominic Slowey says the governor modeled his original bill on a draft ballot question put together by charter advocates.

“The majority of charter schools are in urban districts that are underperforming, and the ballot question is their last resort,” said the spokesperson for the MA Charter School Assoc. “Springfield only has room for one more charter school with 400 to 500 seats, and many cities, including Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell, and Fall River, have reached their cap. In many cities, parents don’t have enough high-quality public-school options, but charter schools have worked to fill that gap and put them on an even keel with communities like Longmeadow, Wellesley, and Amherst.”

He added that charter schools have reached out to low-income African-American and Latino families, and by every independent measure, the schools have outperformed not only urban schools, but suburban schools.

There are 72 charter schools operating in the state, and the approval process is difficult, so only three to four schools a year make the grade.

Proponents also explain that charter schools are heavily regulated by the state; their finances and academic progress are monitored annually and they must continue to set new goals. In addition, they are subject to a five-year review, and if they fail to live up to their charter, they can be placed on probation or closed, which has happened to two Springfield charter schools.

Sabis International Charter School in Springfield serves children in kindergarten through 12th grade who reside in the city. It has won national awards since it was founded in 1995 and has a waiting list of 2,900 that is rigorously combed every year to ensure it is accurate, which has been done in response to arguments that the waiting lists for charter schools are outdated and inaccurate.

As at other charter schools, admission at Sabis is by lottery for the 100 kindergarten seats each year, and since its retention rate is 90%, there are few backfills.

Sabis is housed in a beautiful facility backed by Sabis Educational Systems, but Reuter says some charter schools are financially challenged and have to engage in considerable fund-raising.

“But money doesn’t guarantee positive outcomes,” she said, noting that she has served in a variety of educational settings, including a stint as a union teacher in New York City. “Education is a changing landscape with new standards and assessments, and this bill is really about whether students can access quality education. But it’s a shame that we have gotten to a place where people have to vote, because we all want the same thing: to provide the best education possible for every student.”

Historically, the school’s population has been equally divided between Caucasian, Hispanic, and African-American students, but recently the number of Hispanic students has increased, and the Asian population is growing. Its ELL population is very small, and only 14% to 16% of those students have special-education needs, but Reuter said they are seeing an increase of students with profound special needs and had to create a separate classroom setting for them last year.

“We don’t serve the same range of special-education students as public schools, but charter schools were not meant to replace public schools,” she told BusinessWest. “They were meant to model innovation and specialization.”

Its sister school in Holyoke serves children in kindergarten through grade 8, and although parents would like to see it expand to the high-school level, the city has reached its cap.

However, Reuter says graduates outperform their peers in Holyoke High School, and it’s unfair that parents and students can’t continue their education at the school of their choice.

Springfield Prep Charter School opened in Springfield last year with a kindergarten and first grade. A second grade was added this year, and founder Bill Spirer’s hope is to expand to grade 8 by the 2022-23 school year.

There are two full-time teachers in every classroom, and the school has an extended day that runs from 7:50 a.m. to 4 p.m. and a slightly extended school year. All students come from Springfield, and outreach efforts are done in English and Spanish at Head Start programs by volunteers, who also knocked on doors in the city’s South End last January distributing flyers about the school, which has a one-page application.

“Massachusetts has one of the strongest records of charter-school performance in the county, and the data in this state is really clear; charter schools are very effective, especially in urban areas where there haven’t been many good options for parents,” Spirer said, adding that his facility’s demographics mirror those in Springfield Public Schools and nine out of 10 students are from economically disadvantaged families

Richard Alcorn, executive director of Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion School in Hadley, says it provides a unique curriculum and wants to expand to a fully articulated K-12 program.

“The charter schools in Hampshire and Franklin counties really serve as alternative schools,” he noted, adding that his school serves students from 30 districts and 17.5% are from low-income families, which is lower than urban centers, but higher than the school’s host community, where 13.2% of students fall into that category.

But he agrees that funding is inadequate for all schools. “People need to step back and look at what is going on in public education. The impact of charter schools is very small and has nothing to do with the real problem of funding and what is going in terms of demographics,” he told BusinessWest.

Far-reaching Implications

Charter schools all have different missions and leadership, and serve different communities, so Spirer says they can’t be classified with the same adjectives.

“It’s a very complicated issue that has different implications for districts of different sizes. But the ballot question is still about the most underperforming districts,” he explained.

Gazda says perception is reality, and right now the narrative coming from Boston and Washington is that public schools are failing, which is not true.

“However, we need new solutions rather than garnering old ones that don’t work,” he said.

These wide-ranging observations and opinions only scratch the surface when it comes to the high levels of debate and controversy that define ballot question 2. About the only certainty is that the matter is now in the hands of voters.

Education Sections

Study in Strategic Thinking

Ramon Torrecilha

Ramon Torrecilha

Ramon Torrecilha took the helm at Westfield State University in late January. Well before he arrived, he understood that the school and its many constituencies were poised to move forward and get to the next level. Since arriving, he’s only become more convinced that the institution is ready to make a positive leap. The challenge ahead is taking the ambitious goals that the school has put down on paper and making them reality.

Ramon Torrecilha recalls that, maybe 15 months or so ago, he was a candidate for a number of advertised college presidents’ positions in several states.

But upon visiting the Westfield State University campus and talking with members of several constituencies there, he decided to drop out of several of those other searches, including the one taking place at another school in the Bay State. When asked why, he started with a quick answer that required a lengthy explanation.

“It was that kind of institution,” he told BusinessWest, using that phrase to describe what he encountered as a student at Portland (Oregon) State University in the early ’80s. Like other schools at the time, it was suffering budget difficulties and undergoing staff reductions. The faculty that remained were dedicated and singularly focused on student success, he recalled.

“The relationship I was able to develop with faculty allowed me to have a transformative experience at Portland State,” he recalled. “And when I looked around here, I felt that Westfield State was very similar in that regard. You get a strong sense of community here.

“We’re student-centered; our faculty members are committed teachers, stellar researchers, and faculty that cares about student engagement,” he went on, clearly proud to shift the tense of his remarks to the present, and thus use terms like ‘we’ and ‘our.’ “So there was an alignment between myself and the kind of institution I was looking for, and Westfield State University.”

Beyond these characteristics, though, Torrecilha, who knew very little about the school before his first visit and was diligent in his “discovery process,” noted that there was something else about the institution that became apparent — and appealing — to him.


 Go HERE for a list of Colleges in Western Mass.


“The sense I got was that the institution was really ready to move forward — it was ready for the next stage,” he said, using a phrase with many applications.

For starters, it meant moving on from the controversy, and statewide negative press, that accompanied the ouster of his predecessor, Evan Dobelle, amid reports of extravagant and reckless spending practices — although Torrecilha believes the school has, by and large, already done that.

“There was an interim president in place [Elizabeth Preston] for two full years, and she did a tremendous job of stabilizing the institution,” he explained. “Westfield State is a very resilient institution; it has what we call good institutional bones. It showed to the higher-education community that it was much, much stronger than a hiccup in leadership.”

But that next stage also refers to a host of other initiatives at this school of roughly 6,000 students, from expanding programs, especially in healthcare, to broadening graduate programs and generating more momentum in regional and statewide efforts to get more people into college and then successfully on to completion of a degree program.

the state university

Ramon Torrecilha says he wants to make Westfield and the state university within it true destinations.

A sociologist by trade, Torrecilha will bring to his new position a deep understanding of multiculturalism and the issues confronting different demographic groups, but also his own opinions on how college presidents should approach their work, one forged through roughly a quarter-century in academia.

“When you think about it, presidents don’t run anything — presidents provide a sense of direction, identify priorities for the institution, and provide a vision and a map for how we’re going to get there,” he explained. “But it’s really the faculty and staff that run the place, so understanding how to do this and understanding the organizational psychology of the institution becomes really important in the presidency.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Torrecilha about his decision to take his career 3,000 miles to the north and east, and how he intends to lead efforts to draft that road map for taking this 178-year-old institution to the proverbial next stage.

Course of Action

Visitors to the president’s office at WSU — and a host of other spots on campus, for that matter — can pick up some intriguing reading material if they are so inclined.

Indeed, in an effort to fully communicate what he has seen, heard, and learned since arriving on campus in January — and also to set a tone for what he wants to happen next — Torrecilha has printed a compendium that details it all.

It’s called the “President’s First 100 Days Report,” with the working subtitle “Vision for a Model, Comprehensive Public Institution.” And it includes everything from a detailed accounting of the new president’s meetings since he took the helm — 102 with direct reports, 84 with campus constituents, 11 with the Westfield State Foundation, and five at alumni events, for example — to the results of an extensive survey of students, faculty, and staff.

Torrecilha said the purpose of the report was to put down in black and white (and a host of colors as well) the sentiments he expressed about where the school is and where he and those various constituents want it to go, and also state the basic tenets of a new strategic plan for the school.

That plan will have a number of key bullet points, including stated goals common to all of the Commonwealth’s public schools — increasing retention, improving graduation rates, and decreasing the so-called ‘achievement gap’ among state residents of different demographic groups. But there will be some more specific planks as well.

Ramon Torrecilha

Ramon Torrecilha has been meeting with a host of constituencies since his arrival in January.

These include a broad push to strategically grow graduate programs, which will in turn provide financial and other sources of support for undergraduate programs; better engage alumni, many of whom go on to live and work in the Bay State upon graduation; and strengthening ties to the community, meaning both the host city and the region as a whole.

“Achieving student success does not come from just one mind,” Torrecilha writes in the report. “Currently, we possess the brushstrokes of a vision. But decisions about how we are going to achieve our goals is ongoing. The process is fluid and organic, and relies on collaboration from students, faculty, staff, and other partners.”

Roughly translating this passage, Torrecilha acknowledged that it’s one thing to put goals, aspirations, and visions down on paper. Making them reality is quite another.

“The next fiscal year will bring the hard work of taking ideas on paper and making them happen,” he explained, adding that the overarching goal, or assignment, is to make Westfield and the university there a true destination.

He believes the university’s ready — and he’s ready — to do just that.

And he’ll bring to the task a broad résumé of experience, one that includes everything from experience in the classroom to a host of administrative positions.

Our story starts at Portland State, where Torrecilha majored in sociology and became inspired by a faculty member to get the graduate degrees needed to teach that subject, which he did, with first a master’s at Portland State and then at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which had one of the nation’s top programs in that field.

Achieving student success does not come from just one mind. Currently, we possess the brushstrokes of a vision. But decisions about how we are going to achieve our goals is ongoing. The process is fluid and organic, and relies on collaboration from students, faculty, staff, and other partners.”

His specific fields of study were demography, poverty, and socioeconomic developments, and this would shape his teaching, starting at Berkeley College in New York, where he taught, among other things, a course titled “Minority Groups.”

In the course of doing so, he essentially refocused it — on sociological concepts, rather than specific demographic groups. He eventually wrote a paper with a graduate student on how to redesign such courses nationally, and it caught the attention of the American Sociological Assoc.

“The next thing I knew, they called me and said, ‘come to Washington and help us think about how to fuse multiculturalism into the curriculum,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this began a stint as director of something called the Minority Fellowship Program and Minority Opportunities Through School Transformation.

From there, he went to the Social Science Research Council in New York, working specifically as director of the Public Policy Research Program on Contemporary Hispanic Issues, before shifting back to higher education and a stint first as director of Multicultural Programs at Mills College and then executive vice president of the Oakland, Calif. School.

He then served as provost and executive vice president at Berkeley College, before returning to Mills College and service in a variety of roles, including interim president. His most recent stop was as provost at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

By 1993, he said, he had made becoming a college president his stated goal, and he spent his career preparing himself for that eventuality.

“In academia, you have to sort of expose yourself to different things and have jobs in the many divisions that form a university,” he explained, “in order for you to harness the know-how and understanding of the different parts of the institution, and the sector.”

Which brings us back to last spring, and his decision to pull out of several presidential searches and focus on WSU.

Degrees of Momentum

Torrecilha said this choice came down to a word many use upon making a career decision of this kind: fit.

“In higher education, the question of fit, both from the standpoint of the candidate and the standpoint of the institution, becomes an important consideration,” he explained, adding that, in all matters that mattered to him, the fit was ideal.

He was looking for a school with a student-centered focus, and the school was looking for someone willing to make a substantial commitment to the school and the host city — and spent a year considering more than 400 candidates to find such an individual.

By commitment, Torrecilha said a stay that would be at least seven or eight years, out of necessity. “It takes that long for someone to really put some strategic initiatives down and then make them happen.”

As he talked about how he intends to go about meeting the goals set down in his first major communiqué to the WSU campus, Torrecilha said he will bring to the task an attitude, or mindset, far different than that of his controversial predecessor.

Summing it up, he said it comes down to putting the school, and especially its students, first — always. This sounds simple and quite obvious, he said, but some college and university presidents tend to forget this basic premise and make it about them.

“I want to serve as the president, but not be the presidency,” he said, choosing those words carefully. “It’s not about me, and as a sociologist I understand the differentiation.

“You bring to the job qualities that allow you to create that road map and enable you to work with members of the community,” he went on. “But you have to be able to put yourself on the side and think institutionally: ‘what’s the best thing for the institution?’ You have to remove personalities from that process.”

This is the approach Torrecilha says he will take to the various initiatives outlined in his “First 100 Days” report. These include efforts to expand and enhance graduate programs, thus making the school more of that destination he described, and for more types of students.

Ramon Torrecilha with the WSU soccer team

Ramon Torrecilha with the WSU soccer team

This strategic step will also help not only with broadening the school’s reputation — it has been known throughout its history as a teachers’ college, and more recently for criminal justice — but also in withstanding certain demographic shifts (something Torrecilha obviously understands) and especially smaller high-school graduating classes for the foreseeable future.

“Birth rates are declining, and the numbers of traditional college students are going down, and for this reason, most of our growth is going to come at the graduate level,” he said, citing, as one example, a new physician assistant master’s-degree program, the first of its kind for a public school in the state.

But those smaller high-school graduation classes means WSU, like all the other public schools in the Bay State, will have to become more diligent about helping students — traditional and non-traditional alike — enter college and then leave it with a degree.

This challenge explains many of the affiliation agreements between WSU and the area’s community colleges — programs that facilitate moving on to the four-year institution — and also why Torrecilha is a strong supporter of the state’s Commonwealth Commitment program, which incentivizes individuals (through rebates on tuition and fees) to enter a community college, graduate in two and a half years or less, move on to one of the state universities or UMass campuses, and wrap up a baccalaureate degree in no more than four and a half years.

When asked about the challenges WSU would face if a large number of students took the state up on its offer, Torrecilha replied simply, “that would be a really good problem to have.”

Applying Lessons

He was speaking about the state, the business community, and area cities and towns that would benefit from having a better-trained workforce. But he was also speaking about the state’s public schools and especially WSU, which embraces its role in training individuals for a global, technology-driven economy.

This is part of that ‘moving forward’ and ‘moving to the next stage’ vibe, for lack of a better word, that Torrecilha experienced when he first visited the campus on Western Avenue.

That vibe was a big factor in prompting him to take his name out of consideration for other presidents’ jobs and focus his sights on WSU. And it’s one he believes will take the school to the various destinations on the road map he’s helping to create.

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

Education Sections

Building a Launchpad

Isiah Odunlami

Isiah Odunlami will be among the attendees at the first Startup Lean Weekend, staged by Elms College’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Isiah Odunlami is an accountant by trade, currently handling audit and tax work for Springfield-based Moriarty & Primack. He enjoys the work, and, like most in this field, finds the ability to help clients grasp issues and solve specific problems quite rewarding.

But while he’s obviously an accomplished ‘numbers guy,’ ‘bean counter,’ or whatever else one chooses to call those in this field, he believes he has other talents — as a leader, role model, and motivator.

He’s done a few motivational talks, including some before young people in his hometown of Providence, R.I., and recently pieced together a video that enables him to put some of his thoughts, or messages, as he prefers to call them, before potentially much larger audiences.

“It still needs some work, to be sure,” he said of that video, adding quickly that many have already seen it and been moved by it — so much so that he is advancing and escalating thoughts of turning these talents into a business venture. And to do that, he knows he needs contacts, support, advice, direction, and some kind of affirmation that this is something he can sell.

His quest for all the above will bring him to the Elms College campus in Chicopee on July 29 for something called the Startup Lean Weekend (subtitled “Creating Customers and Value”), which is aptly named.

Indeed, this is a full weekend of programs, designed for people who are just getting started, and focused on the Lean Launchpad concept, which involves accelerating the traditional startup method of creating a business plan and then launching a venture from it.


 Click HERE for a list of area Colleges with MBA Programs


It is the first initiative of the Elms College Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), which was created for … well, people like Odunlami. These are individuals and teams who are not quite ready for prime time as entrepreneurs and, therefore, a group like Valley Venture Mentors (VVM) and its accelerator program, designed for companies with developed concepts and, in most cases, already-established businesses.

But they do have ideas, said Amanda Garcia, CPA, director of the CEL and an associate professor of accounting at Elms, adding quickly that many don’t know whether that idea will sell, how it can be sold, and to whom. And they need to find these things out before they invest significant amounts of time, money, and sweat in that concept.

“Research shows that 42% of startups fail because of a lack of product-market fit,” she explained. “What the Startup Lean Weekend will help people do is flush out an idea and determine if there’s a market for it before they spend a lot of money.”

Amanda Garcia

Amanda Garcia says the basic mission behind the CEL is to help those with entrepreneurial energy “fail less.”

The program will feature a host of specific programs, which all take the form of learning opportunities, networking platforms, or both, said Garcia, listing everything from an “idea jam” to a business pitch competition to a networking dinner. By the time it’s over, participants — and the college is expecting about 30 of them — will have a much better idea of whether there is a market for their concept and how to take that idea forward.

Over the course of the next year, there will be other forms of programming, including a Lean Launchpad course, which will take participants down the pathway of building an idea into a venture, as well as other classes on subjects ranging from marketing to financial planning (more on all this later).

Both Garcia and Nancy Davis, business development specialist for the CEL and Elms’ MBA program, acknowledged that there is a great deal of energy in the region concerning entrepreneurship and educational programs focused on this subject. The emerging goal at Elms was to be part of this movement, while not duplicating any of the efforts taking place at other colleges and universities, or within organizations such as VVM and the Grinspoon Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Initiative.

With that goal in mind, school officials met with these various players, asking questions and listening very carefully to the answers. What emerged was a desire to meet noted gaps in programming, and, eventually, a vehicle for doing so — the CEL.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at this initiative and how those at Elms believe it will be a valuable addition to what is becoming a bourgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.

The Idea Is Ideas

As she talked about the CEL, Davis said the name was chosen carefully. It reflects a desire for this new program to focus on entrepreneurship, leadership, and how these skills are intertwined in many ways.

And this brings her back to those many discussions that were had, not only with other colleges and agencies like VVM, but also with those administering the region’s many leadership programs. What came out of those talks was a need for something that wasn’t a four-year degree program, but could help individuals (again, like Odunlami) who have some entrepreneurial energy and could use some help with tapping it.

Putting things another, more colorful way, Garcia said the CEL, and especially its Lean Launchpad weekend and course, will help individuals “fail less,” and save money in the process.

Elaborating, she reiterated that the Elms initiative is, as the name implies, a center for entrepreneurship. It features a full portfolio of programs, from degrees and certificates in entrepreneurship to workshops, to the Startup Lean Weekend (there will be four of them over the next year).

They are designed, said Garcia, for people who have an idea but not a business, or those who have a business and may want to expand it or take it in new directions and need to know if these plans have merit.

Nancy Davis

Nancy Davis says Elms created the CEL with the broad goal of bringing still another dimension to the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

In addition to the Startup Lean Weekend, there will be a CEL Lean Program, an eight-week course focused on subjects ranging from keeping and growing a customer base to creating a revenue model, to defining one’s value proposition. There are also several CEL graduate-program tracks involving accounting and financial planning.

While Elms doesn’t want to duplicate the efforts of other groups involved with entrepreneurship, it does want to partner with them, and there should be plenty of opportunities to do just that, said Garcia.

“Some people aren’t ready for VVM and its accelerator, and this program would be great for them,” she said. “And there’s an opportunity for them to work through their idea and apply to the accelerator for further experience or launch. There are many opportunities for partnership — with us sending people to them, and them sending people to us.”

The solid response to the first Startup Lean Weekend is encouraging, said Davis, adding that it verifies the need for such programming. She said she doesn’t have a firm profile of those who have signed up yet, but knows there is strong interest among Elms alums (Odunlami is one of them) who have an entrepreneurial bent.

This includes many graduates of the school’s health programs, said Garcia, noting that many are looking to open or expand practices in various fields and could look to the CEL and its various forms of programming for help.

“I think that area will grow quickly for us,” she explained. “We have a master’s in nursing and a master’s in business, and there are a lot of entrepreneurial minds there.”

As for Odunlami, he knows there is a need for his motivational speaking and writings, especially when it comes to young people. “We need to nourish our youth — they’re the ones who are going to be running the world,” he explained. “And if we can give positive messages to these people, who’s to say how great our country, and this world, can be? It starts with one young person and continues from there.”

What he doesn’t know if he can convert his desire to meet this need into a successful venture. But he intends to find out.

Venturing Out

There’s a new billboard greeting motorists heading south on I-91, one with a simple message that sums up the CEL.

“Starting a Business? Start at Elms” is the headline in bold type, and it speaks volumes about how the school intends to become an important player in efforts to harness the entrepreneurial energy in the region and help those with ideas, well, fail less.

Elms has practiced what it now preaches; it did exhaustive research and determined that there was a need within the market and a desire for it to be filled, and it has launched what can only be called a business venture itself with great optimism.

That’s because there are many people like Isiah Odunlami, who need a better idea about whether — and how — their idea will fly.

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

Education Sections
Joan Kagan

Joan Kagan, Square One president and CEO

For more than 130 years, Square One has met the challenge of providing quality early-childhood education, thus serving not only young people, but also their families and the community. Today, as the importance of such education becomes ever more apparent, the challenges to providing it continue to mount. Square One is trying to meet those challenges through vital connections to a host of constituencies.

By Sarah Leete Tsitso

When a water main broke and created a massive sinkhole in the middle of downtown Springfield two weeks ago, Square One President and CEO Joan Kagan could empathize with those who were displaced.

She has seen more than her fair share of disasters and led her team back from the brink. In June 2011, a tornado tore through Square One. Eighteen months later, another of its buildings was destroyed by a gas explosion downtown. Even now, the view from the Square One administrative offices on Main Street is obscured by bulldozers, dirt piles, and orange fencing that are all part of MGM’s massive construction project.

Through — or despite — it all, this 133-year-old nonprofit organization continues to thrive, serving 700 children and their families each day, even in the face of adversity. When the tornado hit on a Wednesday evening, the agency reopened on Monday morning and had space for every single child in the program. After the gas explosion, it got tougher; the team was weary from living in crisis mode and struggling to find the energy to regroup and rebuild. Still, despite the loss of two sites, it had to turn away only 17 children, helping those families find other programs that met their needs.

“The key to the survival of Square One is our adaptability and responsiveness to the needs of the community,” said Kagan. “We have a great, committed staff and team, a board that is willing to take occasional leaps of faith, and a caring community.”

To further strengthen the organization, Kagan and the board of directors recently made a bold decision to expand the resource development team. She hired Kristine Allard in July as vice president of development, then added Dawn DiStefano in January to serve as director of grant development.

Together with Kagan, this experienced team is already making an impact in raising funds and awareness.

Building a Solid Foundation

Square One’s mission is to ensure that all children and families have the opportunity to succeed at school, at work, and in life by providing educational programs, family-support services, health and fitness resources, and a voice in the community. At the core of everything it does is a belief, confirmed by research, that children who begin learning early become better learners for life.

Programs at Square One include center-based child care; preschool and kindergarten; home-based child care in 40 locations throughout the region; after-school, weekend, and summer programming for children living in homeless shelters; fitness and nutrition initiatives; job-skills training for parents; parent education for incarcerated and post-incarcerated parents; supervised visitation; peer support groups for victims and survivors of domestic violence and parents recovering from addiction; and family literacy programs.

Kristine Allard

Kristine Allard, vice president of Development for Square One, says the agency hopes to build support by creating connections.

Taking a holistic, whole-family approach to early-childhood education ensures that the needs of the child are met, with a belief that family success contributes to educational success. As science and research have expanded to show the importance of early-childhood education, the demand for highly qualified teachers has risen dramatically over the past couple of decades. Unfortunately, salaries for these teachers have not kept pace, which presents a near-constant issue for organizations like Square One.

Kagan said early-childhood education has been a focus in terms of curriculum development and resources; however, there is still a lot of work to do in ensuring that programs can attract — and retain — energetic, committed, qualified teachers to lead these classrooms and undertake the important work happening inside.

For many years, early-childhood education was called nursery school, and was focused on keeping children safe and entertained while their parents were at work. Now, these programs are geared toward preparing children for public school, making sure they are ready to learn and interact with their peers when they enter kindergarten.

As this evolution progressed, the need for trained and educated teachers expanded. But supply has not kept up with demand, particularly since jobs in early-childhood education have notoriously low pay rates. Kagan said it is increasingly difficult to find and keep these teachers. As their level of education and training increase, they often leave to take better-paying jobs in the public school system.

Because Square One mostly serves at-risk children and families, Kagan and Allard stressed the need for teachers and others who can meet the unique needs of this population. Of the 700 children served each day, only four are privately paid. The others receive some sort of subsidy that enables them to access services.

Many of Square One’s children have at least one parent who is incarcerated. Others are involved with the Department of Children and Families, are homeless, have at least one parent in recovery, or have a teen parent. With this wide array of needs, Square One employs social workers, therapists, and others who can provide support services to the children and their families.

Many of these family issues have an impact on education, as well as the children’s social and emotional growth. If a child is hungry or malnourished, it affects that child’s ability to focus in school. If a child has a toothache, he or she may not be as cooperative and open to learning.

Kagan noted that 85% of brain development occurs between birth and age 5; if a child does not have a solid foundation, he or she will fall behind, resulting in lifelong implications for future success. To give a strong start to as many children as possible, Square One has partnered with the YMCA, Head Start, and the Springfield School Department on a pilot program geared toward providing free early education to 4-year-olds who had never before participated in a formal program. The school department, which received a four-year grant from the state, provides coaches who work with the teachers at Square One to ensure that the curriculum aligns with state standards.

“We realized there is a large pool of children entering kindergarten who have had no access to formal child care or preschool, so those children were entering kindergarten completely unprepared for it,” said Allard. “This means they are already way behind their peers, even when it comes to basics like how to stand in line or take instructions from a teacher.”

The program launched in September, with 60 children in three classrooms participating at Square One. Kagan reports that, while there have been challenges, the children’s growth has been remarkable.

If You Fund It, They Will Learn

Funding for pilot programs like the one at Square One is important, but only scratches the surface of the organization’s true financial needs. Kagan spends a considerable amount of time lobbying legislators at the state level to increase funding for education programs.

While she understands there is only so much money to go around, and plenty of worthwhile causes looking for a piece of the pie, she believes access to early-childhood education is crucial to the growth and development of society as a whole. She and others in the field have spent years advocating for adequate funding to cover the cost of doing business, which includes paying teachers a living wage and providing exceptional classroom experiences.

At Square One, the annual cost to provide high-quality early education and care is $15,000 per child. The state reimburses $9,000 of that cost, leaving a $6,000 gap for each child, every year.

“The state has to understand that this is really about getting children off to a good start,” she said. “We want them to succeed in school, graduate, go to college or vocational training, and become productive members of society. We also need the state and other stakeholders to understand the savings involved; when you invest in early education, the research has shown that there are significant savings down the road in costs associated with social welfare, criminal justice, and special-needs programs.”

Financial limitations have resulted in fewer programs offering these services to children statewide, and fewer seats in the remaining classrooms. In recent years, the number of available spots for those seeking early-childhood education in Massachusetts has shrunk by 3,000. This reduction in capacity is due to several factors, including the difficulty finding teachers and ever-increasing state regulations. If programs cannot find staff and cannot comply with state licensing requirements around the quality of the teachers they do find, they are closing their doors. It’s a simple business problem — it is not possible to operate without quality staff and enough money to pay the bills. When these centers close, it is the children who suffer.

Square One

At the core of everything Square One does is a belief, confirmed by research, that children who begin learning early become better learners for life.

If a child doesn’t have access to early-education programs, they have difficulty keeping up with their peers once they enter the public schools. The struggles are academic, social, and behavioral, and are challenging to address once the ship has sailed. For many of these struggling students, Kagan noted, it’s like going to a job every day where your boss yells at you for doing it wrong, but never shows you the right way.

This is where public and private investment in early-childhood education comes into play. Advocating for increased government funding is one way to raise needed funds, but it can’t be an organization’s only revenue stream. This is where Allard and DiStefano come in.

Developing a Brand

Since joining the team almost a year ago, Allard said she has been asking a lot of pointed questions. Did people in the community know the Square One brand? Did they know about the wrap-around services provided for families? Were they aware that there is more to Square One than preschool? Had people made the mental transition from the organization’s old identity — Springfield Day Nursery — to its new one?

The team sought answers to those questions, and built its development plan around the answers. This included implementation of a new annual fund-raising campaign, more marketing, bigger special events, and expanded outreach on new grant opportunities. The equation is simple: if they can raise more money, they can serve more kids, pay higher teacher salaries, and have a greater impact on the community.

“When you look at our families and the challenges they face, it can consume you,” said Allard. “Or, you can identify a need and perhaps make a call, write a grant, make a connection in the community, and, in the end, find a solution.”

While Greater Springfield does not have a deep pool of donors, the businesses and individuals here are generous with both their time and money. However, with fierce competition for limited dollars and volunteers, nonprofits like Square One are focused on tracking results. Donors look at their contributions as investments, and want to see those investments yield dividends. Kagan and Allard believe their donors appreciate the work done by the organization and understand how it benefits the community. But there are still those who may not be familiar with Square One and its mission.

Special events are one way to help spread the word and engage new supporters. While labor-intensive and time-consuming, events are about more than making money. They are also about making friends.

“Events let us get in front of people and provide them with that personal connection to the people we serve,” said Allard. “They get to meet the people their money supports and hear their stories first-hand. It’s different coming from the person who lived it. Afterward, people walk away with a better understanding of their community.”

That awareness also gives Square One and other nonprofit organizations a platform to advocate for what they need to meet their mission. For example, Kagan cited the Kentucky Derby-themed event held on behalf of Square One on May 7 at the Colony Club. This event, she noted, provides an opportunity to talk about the early-education and family-support services the organization provides.

“From understanding comes compassion,” she said. “That’s a big part of what comes from hosting an event like this. It’s about funds, friends, and advocacy. And, of course, it’s about having fun.”

Kagan and her staff bring that philosophy directly into the classroom, promoting friendship and fun as well as education. This long-standing commitment to families and children’s education has resulted in a large, dynamic group of donors and supporters who are always willing to lend a hand. Kagan recalls how, after the tornado, when she and her team escaped with nothing more than the items in their pockets, they were setting up shop in temporary space all over the city. A local business heard about their plight and showed up on their doorstop with a big box of office supplies.

“It may not seem like a big deal, a box full of pens and notebooks, but it was a very big deal for us,” she said. “You take those things for granted until you don’t have them. We literally had nothing; we got out with our lives, but that was about it. So, for someone to think about that basic need and make their way to our door with that box? It’s just one example of how this community rallies around its friends and neighbors in need.”

Education Sections

New-school Thinking

Carlos Santiago says it would be one of those proverbial ‘good problems to have.’

He was referring to the possibility that so many individuals will seek to take part in the Commonwealth Commitment program — an ambitious, first-of-its kind initiative designed to incentivize more people to enter college and complete their degree — that there are potential logistical and financial challenges for the state’s four-year public colleges and universities.

Carlos Santiago

Carlos Santiago

Santiago, the Commonwealth’s commissioner of Higher Education, stopped short of predicting that would actually happen. But he didn’t hesitate to say he expected this program to address a number of concerns facing the state, its institutions of higher learning, and families faced with the daunting task of paying for a college education.

These include smaller high-school graduating classes, a demographic phenomenon that is certainly effecting recent enrollment, especially at the 15 community colleges; still-problematic graduation rates, or ‘completion rates,’ at the public schools; the spiraling cost of college, which is keeping many from entering or finishing a degree program; and, last but not least, a serious skills gap facing businesses in virtually every sector of the economy.

Commonwealth Commitment was blueprinted with all that as the backdrop, said Santiago, adding that he believes it can brighten each of those pictures.

“We think this is the right message at the right time,” he said, while acknowledging there are risks for the four-year colleges due to the financial incentives offered to participants. “The Commonwealth needs more people to enter into our institutions, and for more students to graduate with less loan burden. This is the right message.”

Here’s how it works: Students will begin their studies at one of the community colleges, enrolling in one of the 24 Commonwealth Commitment/Mass Transfer Pathways programs that will roll out this fall. That list includes (for September) biology, chemistry, economics, psychology, and history, and (starting in the fall of 2017) early childhood education, computer science, criminal justice, and others. Students must attend full-time and maintain a cumulative GPA of 3.0.

After earning an associate’s degree in two and half years or less, students will transfer to one of nine state universities or five UMass campuses to earn a baccalaureate degree. At the end of every successfully completed semester, students will earn a 10% rebate on tuition and fees, payable in the form of a check, or may opt to receive a voucher to use for books and other education-related expenses — the program does not discount room and board. And tuition is frozen for the duration of the duration of the degree program, which must be completed in 4½ years.

While there is no shortage of that proverbial cautious optimism regarding Commonwealth Commitment, no one is really sure what will happen. But they can speculate, and, when pressed by BusinessWest, they did.

Monica Perez, interim vice president of Academic Affairs at Holyoke Community College, said the program will likely become an effective incentive for students to not only enroll at a community college, but quickly harden their focus on a degree program and the path for completing it. She noted that, historically, students have lost time, credits, and money while trying to settle on a major. Commonwealth Commitment will likely expedite the process through its monetary incentives.

Monica Perez

Monica Perez

“Every time a student changes his or her major, especially if you’re going from something that’s relatively general, like arts and sciences, to something specific, like health, and then back out again, to criminal justice, you’re going to lose credits,” she explained. “And when you lose credits, you have to start again.”

What the new program will likely do, through its time-based incentives, is prompt students to think harder about a major, lock in it on it, and stay on that path.

Ira Rubenzahl, the retiring president of Springfield Technical Community College, agreed, and noted that STCC was one of the first schools in the Commonwealth to undertake a program similar in structure and mission. He said there is already evidence that they work as intended — meaning, to get people into college and reduce the price of that education by starting at schools like his.

“This will hopefully encourage more people to consider community colleges for the first two years of their college education,” he said. “And it will provide incentives to complete, which is important because, while getting people to start down this path is one thing, the goal is to get them to the end.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Commonwealth Commitment and how it could potentially change the landscape for the state and its public institutions.

Course Change

They become known as ‘$30K degrees,’ and that term goes a long way toward explaining what they are.

Yes, these are bachelor’s degrees that cost $30,000 (or less, in many cases) and involve earning an associate’s degree at one of the participating community colleges and then transferring, through a host of articulation agreements (such as the ones STCC and HCC have with Westfield State University) to a four-year institution.

Ira Rubenzahl

Ira Rubenzahl

These programs have worked out very well, said Santiago, adding that Commonwealth Commitment takes matters statewide and at least one step further with its rebates, locked-in tuition, and additional 10% off the total price.

They will take the sticker price of a college education down well below $30,000 in most cases, he went on, to $23,000 or even $22,000, and bring a higher level of sophistication to the model whereby students start at a community college and finish at one of the state’s public universities — with the accent on ‘finish.’

“As I saw what was developing, I said to myself, ‘this is great, if you live in one of these regions,’” he recalled. “I thought, ‘why can’t we do this across the entire system of higher education? Why can’t a student from any two-year campus follow a similar pathway to any four-year campus or UMass?’”

Starting this fall, they can, he went on, adding that, as this expanded program started coming together, the initial plan was to call it the ‘Commonwealth $30K Degree.’ But this was determined to be less than accurate, because there would be some cases where the cost would exceed that number, but a great many more where it wouldn’t reach it.

But a far bigger challenge than naming the initiative would be selling it — or so Santiago and others thought.

As things turned out, while Commonwealth Commitment presents some inherent risks for the four-year schools, Santiago acknowledged, noting that the tuition waivers and locked-in prices could pose challenges, it received what amounted to universal buy-in from those schools when this initiative was put on the table. It even came from the two specialty schools — Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Massachusetts College of Art and Design— which many thought would have reservations about the comcept.

“In Massachusetts, public higher education is a very decentralized system,” he explained. “Just because we have what we think is a good mean doesn’t mean everyone is going to buy into it. But the reality is they did — they supported it, across the board.”

Santiago believes there are many reasons for this buy-in, chief among them being those smaller high-school graduating classes, a trend expected to continue for at least another eight years, according to most experts.

These declining numbers of traditional college students has left colleges and universities across the country looking for imaginative ways to boost enrollment while at the same time keeping their standards high — methods such as the recent decision by the University of Maine to charge out-of-state students the rate they would be paying to attend their home state’s university.

And these discussion points bring Santiago to the contention that Commonwealth Commitment is about far more than affordability, although that is a huge part of it. It’s also about getting people onto a path toward a degree — and onto a path more likely to get them to the end than what existed previously.

Perez believes the program has a good chance of succeeding with that mission through the various incentives, or forms of motivation, that it provides to finish, finish quickly, and earn a degree in a field where job prospects are solid.

With that, she returned to her thoughts about how this program might sharpen a student’s focus and thus eliminate lost time and expense.

“Community-college students often take 80 or more credits to get a two-year degree,” she noted, adding that this number should be closer to 60. “At the four-year level, they’re taking anywhere from 130 to 134 credits to get a 120-credit degree.

“Part of the design of this program is to get students on the pathway they need to finish it,” she went on, “and guide them along the way so they can finish in a timely manner and not waste time or money.”

If Commonwealth Commitment can succeed in getting more people into college and through to a degree, it will help Massachusetts with another huge challenge, he said: the pending retirement of workers from the Baby Boom generation and the need to replace those talented individuals.

“One-third of our labor force is 55 years of age or older,” he explained. “It’s the most educated component of our labor force, and they’re going to be retired in 10 years. The Commonwealth must find a way to start replacing these individuals.”

Degree of Inspiration

Returning to the possibility of hundreds, or even thousands, of individuals taking full advantage of Commonwealth Commitment, Santiago added an adverb to his commentary.

“That would be a really good problem to have,” he told BusinessWest, adding that, if that scenario becomes reality, steps will be taken to address it.

“We’ll bring resources to bear — we’ll make it work,” he said, adding that, at the very least, he expects this initiative to prompt more people to take the path it lays out.

And if that happens, those individuals, their families, the colleges, and businesses across the state all stand to benefit.

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

Education Sections

The Language of Business

Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School

At the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School, puppets and other props help young students master the Chinese language.

Richard Alcorn has not forgotten the frustration he felt when he owned a business that imported goods from China and had to communicate with non-English-speaking customers on the other side of the globe.

“There were times when I spent 45 minutes or an hour with an interpreter only to realize they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about,” he told BusinessWest.

That experience, combined with the fact that Alcorn’s wife, Kathleen Wang, wanted their children and others to be prepared to work in a changing, global economy, led the couple to establish Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School (PVCICS) in Hadley. It was important to them because both Alcorn and Wang were involved in the Massachusetts Initiative for International Studies, a statewide initiative to instill more international focus into K-12 education.

The school opened its doors in 2007 to kindergartners and first-graders, and today boasts roughly 440 students from 39 communities in kindergarten through grade 11. The continued expansion led the couple to outgrow their space, and last year the school was enlarged with a 40,000-square-foot addition.

Next year, PVCICS will add grade 12, and the first class that will matriculate will receive international baccalaureate diplomas that will open the door to continuing-education opportunities in other countries, while providing students with skills needed to work for Chinese employers or companies that do business in that country.

Through dedication and hard work, Alcorn, Wang, and others who are passionate about their mission have established a new model for education: PVCICS is the first fully articulated K-12 Chinese-language and cultural-immersion public charter school in the country.

“In addition to learning the language, our students learn about cultural differences,” said Wang, the school’s principal, as she explained that small things make a difference; for example, in China, the proper way to hand someone a business card is with two hands, rather than one.

Knowledge of such customs is important to engender respect and good relationships while communicating with Chinese customers, suppliers, and business owners.

“The State Department has deemed Chinese as a language critical to the future of the country’s economic and national security,” Wang said, noting that more employers are looking for people proficient in this language and the country’s cultural norms.

Tricia Canavan, president of United Personnel, a temporary and full-time staffing agency in Springfield, agreed.

“We’re starting to see a demand for employees who speak Mandarin Chinese, and we are recruiting them for jobs,” she said. “It speaks to the global nature of commerce; China is the world’s second-largest economy, and there is a need for fluency in the language.”

Alcorn, executive director of PVCICS, pointed to Chinese-owned CRRC USA Rail Corp., which broke ground in September on a new, $95 million subway-car factory in Springfield, as an example of the presence Chinese companies are establishing in the U.S.

Richard Alcorn and Kathleen Wang

Richard Alcorn and Kathleen Wang, founders of the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School.

“From the time we started this school, it was clear to us that, if local companies want to conduct business with China and local communities want to encourage Chinese companies to make local investments, we need people who know the language,” he told BusinessWest.

“Massachusetts, like all of New England, is trailing the nation in developing language and cultural-immersion programs that offer students the opportunity to develop skills needed to compete globally,” he went on. “When we first opened, there were only 15 Chinese-immersion programs in the U.S., and now there are over 150 public-school programs like this.”

The vast majority of the student body at PVCICS knew no Chinese when they entered, which reflects the growing movement to make students who speak English at home bilingual.

New York City has about 180 dual-language programs where students are learning Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian-Creole, Hebrew, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. Delaware and North Carolina have joined their ranks, while 9% of public elementary-school students in Utah are enrolled in dual-language programs, and one in every five kindergartners in Portland, Ore. are in a dual-language program.

“These programs are economic-development initiatives,” said Alcorn. “People in the workforce who are employed in global businesses really need to be bilingual.”

Rapid Growth

PVCICS opened in 2007 with 42 students. Classes were held in a strip mall in South Amherst, and as the student body grew and grade levels were added, the school moved into a 26,000-square-foot former health club in Hadley. The space was completely renovated, and last year the building underwent that 40,000-square-foot expansion to keep pace with the growing number of students.

Growth continues, and demand for seats in this free public charter school is high. Students are chosen by lottery, and more than 100 applications pour in every year for 44 kindergarten slots.

Students can also enter in sixth or ninth grades, and those who do start in introductory Mandarin Chinese, while those who entered in elementary school are in a higher-level Mandarin class.

In grades kindergarten and grade 1, 75% of daily instruction is in Chinese, and 25% is in English. In grades 2 through 5, 50% of instruction is in Chinese, and 50% is in English. As the need for an expanded vocabulary and skills in English grow, the time spent in Chinese classes is decreased. Starting in sixth grade, 25% of daily instruction is in Chinese, and 75% is in English.

Research shows that early immersion in a foreign-language program makes it easier to become fluent. Mandarin Chinese can be especially difficult for adults to learn because the language is tonal and doesn’t have an alphabet.

And PVCICS ninth-graders are proud of their language skills.

Talia O’Shea entered the school in first grade and didn’t really understand what her teachers were saying until the middle of the school year, despite the use of drawings, puppets, and other props. But by the middle of second grade, she was speaking in Chinese.

Today, she does math in the language because she learned it initially in Chinese and says she sometimes finds herself thinking in the language, rather than in her native English.

But she regards the ability to do so as a bonus.

Ninth graders Talia O’Shea, Gabe Crivelli, and Amanda Doe

Ninth graders Talia O’Shea, Gabe Crivelli, and Amanda Doe enjoy learning subject matter in two languages.

“China is a very significant nation in terms of politics and economics on the world stage, so being fluent in both English and Chinese will be a benefit when I get a job,” the 14-year-old told BusinessWest, adding that her proficiency could help prepare her for a government career or allow her to work as a translator.

Amanda Dee also entered PVCICS in first grade, and although she had heard Chinese spoken at home, the language really didn’t take hold until she began conversing with her peers and interacting at school.

“When you learn to speak Chinese at a really young age, it gives you a deeper understanding of the language,” she said.

Ninth-grader Gabe Crivelli entered the charter school in sixth grade because he was seeking a challenging course of academics. He found it at PVCICS, and said the combination of rigorous standards and the challenge of learning a new language exceeded his expectations. He is glad he changed schools, and believes his bilingual skills will help him in the future since he hopes to own a business.

“Students in almost every other country learn a foreign language,” he noted, adding that his sister is also a student at the school, and they sometimes speak Chinese at home.

Parents also tout the school’s benefits. Canavan said she and her husband chose to send two of their sons to PVCICS and are happy they did.

“We felt it was important for our children to be fluent in another language so they could become global citizens,” she said, adding that they were also attracted by the focus on academic rigor and character building.

Ongoing Efforts

Alcorn and Wang tried to get a Chinese-immersion school program started in Amherst before they applied to the state to start a charter school in Hadley. And although their proposal was rejected, today they are happy with the outcome.

PVCICS has been highly successful and was a recipient of the 2015 Confucius Classrooms of the Year Award, which was presented to 10 schools across the world for excellence in teaching and learning, curriculum, cultural richness, community engagement, and extracurricular activities. Only three schools in the U.S. received the award, which Alcorn accepted from the Confucius Institute at its World Conference in Shanghai. In addition, last year its students received some of the highest MCAS scores in the Commonwealth.

Parental demand for the school’s program has fueled its continued expansion. Interest in Chinese has grown, and the school has enjoyed the support of the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development.

In short, this couple’s vision is yielding positive results as PVCICS helps to establish a pipeline of students whose fluency in Mandarin Chinese will enhance the local economy and give them the skills needed to flourish in a fast-changing world.

Education Sections

Now Friendly Rivals

Bill Messner, right, and Ira Rubenzahl.

Bill Messner, right, and Ira Rubenzahl.

Located just seven miles apart as the crow flies, Holyoke Community College and Springfield Technical Community College have always competed, and in vigorous fashion, for everything from students to press coverage to state funding for capital projects. But when they arrived at their respective campuses in 2004, Presidents Bill Messner and Ira Rubenzahl found the relationship between the schools to be a case not of healthy competition, but unhealthy animosity. So they set about changing that equation. And as both men prepare to retire, they talked about what would have to be considered a stunning new attitude that prevails at both schools.

Neither man recalls which one of them actually picked up the phone and called the other.

What they clearly remember, though, is that a call, the first of many, was made. And, considering all that’s happened since the conversation ended, it could only be described with the adjective ‘historic.’

Ira Rubenzahl and Bill Messner had been at their new positions, as president of Springfield Technical Community College and Holyoke Community College, respectively, for just a few months (Rubenzahl arrived a few weeks earlier) in that summer of 2004. And while they hadn’t learned everything about the challenges that lay ahead, they did know one thing — that the relationship between the two schools, located just seven miles apart, had to change, and soon.

“Let’s just say that the institutions had not been working well together,” said Messner, his tone blending understatement with a dose of sarcasm as he described what he found upon his arrival. “And that was really not productive.”

Added Rubenzahl, “it didn’t take long to figure out that there was this problem. And we basically said, together, ‘we have to stop competing and start working together.’”

Actually, the competition hasn’t stopped, and both presidents agree that it can’t and won’t because, as the old saying goes, it’s good for the parties involved. But the animosity that prevailed a dozen years ago is mostly gone. And it hasn’t been missed.

For evidence of this, Rubenzahl and Messner pointed to a number of initiatives involving everything from workforce development to adult basic education; from legislative get-togethers to initiatives to train workers for MGM’s planned $900 million casino in Springfield’s South End.

They even listed the fact that the two travel together to meetings in Boston and elsewhere, and did so with a note of wonder in their tone that speaks volumes about just how bad things were.

Perhaps the very best piece of evidence, though, is the Deval Patrick Award for Workforce Development, presented by the Boston Foundation, which the schools earned together in 2014 for their collaborative effort known as TWO (Training & Workforce Options); more on that later.

Getting from where relations (if one could call them that) were in 2004 to where they are now didn’t happen overnight and would never be described as easy, both men noted.

“There are areas in which we’re much better off collaborating than we are competing,” said Messner. “But it took us a couple of years to get our arms around what those areas were, and how we could collaborate effectively.”

Also, the mountain to climb in terms of the level of animosity to be overcome was high and steep, said Rubenzahl.

“Bill and I got comfortable very quickly,” he noted. “But it took a while for the troops to line up because it was so inbred.”

Eventually, the troops did fall in line, both men noted, but the movement clearly started at the top.

Which is exactly why BusinessWest met with both presidents in Messner’s office in Frost Hall earlier this month. They’ve both announced that they’re retiring, with Rubenzahl due to exit stage left in June, and Messner a month or two later.

Yes, the presidents who arrived in the Pioneer Valley together will be leaving it together. And they’re leaving behind a track record of collaboration that couldn’t have been imagined a decade and a half ago.

Perhaps the best news is that both believe this pattern of cooperation has become so ingrained — and so welcomed by the schools’ respective boards — that they find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which it won’t continue after they’ve left their respective campuses.

“It will probably change in some ways to reflect the personalities of the two folks who are going to be following us,” said Messner. “But I think it’s grounded enough that it will continue. And my sense is that, if those two folks don’t choose to continue to collaborate, they’ll pay a price of some sort.”

New Course of Action

To put the dramatic change in the relationship between the two colleges in perspective, both Rubenzahl and Messner took a quick trip back to last summer and a press event that was significant on a number of levels.

Gov. Charlie Baker was coming to Western Mass. to deliver good news for both schools: HCC was getting $2.5 million for much-needed renovations of its cramped, antiquated, and leaky campus center, and STCC was getting $3 million for design work on a planned $50 million project to convert the historic structure known as Building 19 — one of the oldest buildings on the Springfield Armory complex later repurposed into the community college — into a new campus center.

He would announce both awards in a single ceremony at HCC, an arrangement STCC quickly signed off on.

“Before we came, they would never have dared to do that,” said Rubenzahl, saying those words slowly for additional emphasis and using the word ‘they’ to mean both the institutions and their presidents. “There would have been huge objections to doing that.”

Messner agreed, and, like his counterpart, treaded lightly, and diplomatically, when asked about the root causes of the sentiments that prevailed when he arrived.

HCC’s Kittredge Center

The opening of HCC’s Kittredge Center is one of the highlights of Bill Messner’s tenure, which was defined by improved relations with STCC.

However, it was well-known across the region, and even across the state, that the leaders’ predecessors — David Bartley, previously speaker of the Massachusetts House, at HCC, and Andy Scibelli, former Springfield city official and nephew of powerful state Rep. Anthony Scibelli, at STCC — didn’t exactly get along and were ferociously competitive, to put it mildly. And their institutions followed their lead — with a passion.

To explain the mood, Rubenzahl recalled some dialogue at a meeting he convened with several senior staff members at STCC not long after arriving.

“Someone referred to the ‘enemy,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘what enemy? Do you mean Holyoke?’ And he said, ‘yes, Holyoke.’ I was really taken aback by that, and said, ‘they’re not the enemy.’”

Rubenzahl believes that aforementioned phone conversation with Messner had already occurred by that point, but the chosen terminology cemented in his mind — actually both men’s minds, because similar language was being used in the campus off Homestead Avenue in Holyoke — that change was necessary.

And it came about, they said, partly due to those changes at the top, but also because it simply made sense.

Indeed, both presidents and their staffs had concluded that, while the schools would go on competing — “like Ford and Chevy do,” said Messner — they could also collaborate in many ways and, while doing so, achieve much more together than they ever could separately.

Examples abound, but TWO is clearly the most visible and perhaps the most impactful.

Messner described it as a “mechanism” for collaboration, the initiative that resulted from that somewhat time-consuming process he described earlier of determining in which realms the schools could collaborate, and how.

As the name suggests, the program involves creation of individually tailored programs to help solve workforce problems, specifically those related to the skills gap that has impacted virtually every sector of the economy.

Since its creation five years ago, TWO has assisted large corporations, small businesses, and broad economic sectors, said Rubenzahl, and it’s an example of something the schools could do with some success independent of one another, but to a much greater level of achievement together.

School of Thought

While TWO is the most visible manifestation of the new climate of cooperation between the two schools, there are many others, said the two presidents — starting with the meeting they were at just before sitting down with BusinessWest.

This was a gathering of state legislators to discuss matters involving public higher education, especially funding for the schools and individual initiatives. Years ago, there would have been two of these sessions, said Rubenzahl, one for HCC and one for STCC, because, well, that’s how it was done. (Actually, Greenfield Community College and Berkshire Community College had their own sessions as well.)

Now, there’s a single gathering — a practice that began the spring after the two presidents arrived — and it involves not only those two schools, but all seven public colleges and universities in Western Mass. Thus, the sessions are usually more productive because there are more people in the room, and far more convenient for legislators.

“I called Bill and said, ‘doesn’t it make sense to just have one?’” Rubenzahl recalled. “And for a lot of reasons; you’re more likely to get more legislators, and you can be more effective if you have several colleges saying the same thing as opposed to each one stating their individual needs.”

The legislative get-together is a simple yet effective example of collaboration, said Messner, adding that many others share its basic reason for being: common sense.

STCC

STCC President Ira Rubenzahl says his campus now looks for ways to collaborate with its competitor in Holyoke.

That list includes everything from faculty-development programs to the joint hiring of a consultant to create so-called wage grids; from adult basic education — something STCC has become more proficient at thanks to assistance from HCC — to the somewhat daunting task of training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of the individuals MGM will eventually hire.

When looking back at how the current partnership on casino training came about, both presidents said this is another example of something that wouldn’t have materialized 13 years ago because of the animosity between the schools.

“We have this trust … we have this agreement — we don’t do things separately,” said Rubenzahl, adding that, years ago, the two schools probably would have fought tooth and nail for the entire pie. In this new era of cooperation, they agreed to split the pie long before the Gaming Commission determined the winner of the Western Mass. license.

“It wasn’t clear where the casino was going. Was it going to go to Palmer? Was it going to Springfield? Was it going to go to Holyoke?” he recalled. “But before we knew where it was going, we said, ‘an individual campus is not going to get involved in the training; we’re going to do it together.

“It winds up going in Springfield, but instead of fighting over it, we had already lined up our ducks,” he went on. “We had already figured out that, because Holyoke is really strong in culinary arts, if there’s culinary training, they’re going to get it. They can do it; we can’t do it. And we’re going to do some of the IT training, perhaps.”

Whenever there’s a meeting with MGM officials, the schools go together, said Messner, adding that the casino project is a good example of how the schools work together to meet the workforce needs of the five major sectors of the economy — manufacturing, healthcare, technology, hospitality, and financial services — because neither school can do all that alone.

As still another example of something happening now that wouldn’t have happened years ago — this one involving geography, or territory, as much as anything else — Messner cited initiatives blueprinted by Holyoke schools’ receiver  Stephen Zrike for Dean Technical High School.

“He wants two programs connected to college work,” Messner explained. “One is going to be in healthcare, and we’ll do that one, and the other is manufacturing, and we’re going to do that in conjunction with STCC; we’re not going to try to do that alone.”

Added Rubenzahl, “because of this [new relationship], we can do things we couldn’t do otherwise. Before, you couldn’t do that — you couldn’t go into the other college’s hometown and run a public-school program.”

Class Act

As for those shared rides to Boston and other destinations for gatherings of public-school leaders, both men laughed as they talked about how the practice has evolved and how it never would have happened with their predecessors.

“I drive, and he talks,” said Messner, referring to how a typical journey unfolds.

But while they carpool to such meetings, they usually don’t sit together once they arrive — a tradition that is more strategic than any kind of statement about how the schools, and presidents, get along.

“We don’t want to look like a two-headed monster,” said Rubenzahl, adding that the two are usually of a similar mind on most matters and don’t want to appear to be delivering comments in stereo.

Messner agreed. “You can’t cluster your strength all in one part of the room — you have to spread it out.”

In truth, and despite those seating arrangements, the schools have indeed become a two-headed monster — of collaboration.

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

Education Sections

In Perfect Alignment

Sr. Mary Reap

Elms College President Sr. Mary Reap

When Sr. Mary Reap took the helm at Elms College in 2009, she arrived with a reputation for identifying needs and building the partnerships necessary to meet them. She has done all that and more at Elms, launching a number of new degree programs, expanding enrollment and employment at the Chicopee institution, and maintaining the service- and community-oriented character that its students have long valued.

Some might regard Sr. Mary Reap’s inauguration as president of Elms College in Chicopee as, well, a godsend.

After all, the former president of Marywood University in Pennsylvania had retired after serving at the first Catholic women’s university from 1988 to 2007 and establishing a wide variety of new programs at every level, including majors in physician’s assistant, art therapy, aviation management, biotechnology, information sciences, sports nutrition, and exercise science.

She came out of retirement to take the helm at Elms amid expectations that she could, and would, do the same for that Chicopee institution.

Indeed, soon after her 2009 arrival, Reap began to initiate positive change. But at that point seven years ago — as well as today — she simply viewed the position as an opportunity to put her honed skills to work.

“I arrived just in time; when I took office, Elms needed some updates, including new programs and structural work to the facilities,” Reap told BusinessWest. “Nineteen years of experience allows you to see things that can be changed, and the college was not only ready, they trusted me.”

From the first day she set foot on the Chicopee campus, she was highly impressed by the integrity of the staff and faculty and their willingness to do whatever it takes to help students succeed. In fact, it was one area where no improvements were needed.

“I viewed the job as a wonderful opportunity to take a very dedicated, caring group of individuals and move forward,” Reap said. “Our faculty is really dedicated to student success; we have a high retention rate, and it really amazes me to hear stories of what people here have done,” she continued, citing examples that include faculty members who have purchased books for students who could not afford them, cafeteria and housekeeping staff who know every student by name and give them “a little hug when they need it or make special food for them,” and others who have shouldered the expense of clothing needed by graduates for job interviews when they couldn’t afford it themselves.

Reap said these acts of kindness are done quietly behind the scenes, and she hears about them from grateful students. She attributes the altruism to an attitude that pervades the campus and its many new satellite locations and is passed from staff to students, infusing them with the desire to make an impact.

“Our students often begin their Elms careers with a passion for positive change and leave with the tools necessary to make change happen,” she said.

Her initial goal was to help individuals and the community by making it possible for more people to earn a four-year-degree in subjects that met the requirements of employers who were recruiting outside the area due to a lack of qualified local candidates.

“I looked at the demographics and found that less than 20% of the population in Western Mass. has a four-year degree,” she recalled.

These goals were bolstered by Reap’s belief that it is critical for her to be a good steward of the college and its resources — a commitment she takes seriously.

Her efforts to increase the numbers of graduates with bachelor’s degrees has been successful, and today, enrollment has increased by 400 students. Every building on the Elms campus has undergone renovations to keep up with the changing face of education, and 40 new jobs have been created, thanks to new programs at every level that resulted from collaborations and meetings with business owners, healthcare providers, representatives from the state’s community colleges, and data culled from the government and surveys that have been conducted in the community.

“Every new program has filled a need,” Reap said, using a word that surfaced repeatedly throughout the interview. For this issue’s focus on education, BusinessWest takes a look at the expansion that has occurred at Elms since Reap’s inauguration and how new collaborations have led to success.

New Programs

Reap said that, after she arrived in Chicopee, she met with Holyoke Community College President Bill Messner and was pleased to discover he shared her vision of helping more HCC graduates earn a four-year degree.

“We formed a partnership in 2010-11 and launched our first completion program in the fall of 2010 in psychology, management, and accounting,” Reap recalled. “It’s a cohort model in which students start together and finish together on their own campuses. Classes are held on Saturdays, which makes things easier, and since that time, the program has expanded into other community colleges across the state.”

It is a popular program, and more than 90% of students who enroll graduate. “Right now, 230 students are enrolled, and we believe we have done a great service by making it possible for so many people to complete degrees, which enhances the workforce and puts graduates in line for job promotions,” Reap said.

Another new program instituted after Reap arrived at Elms allows registered nurses who are working in the field to earn a bachelor’s degree in nursing. The RN-BS degree-completion program came about as a result of a partnership with Berkshire Health Systems (BHS) in Pittsfield, and was launched in 2007. Classes are held on the hospital ’s Hillcrest Campus.

Reap said more than 100 people have received their four-year degrees, enhancing the level of care patients receive, and since 2007, RN-BS programs have expanded and are in place at four community colleges.

Reap noted that the baccalaureate program at BHS led to a master’s program, then a doctor of nursing practice program that was launched in the fall of 2014. Students can choose from two tracks and become a family nurse practitioner or adult gerontology acute-care practitioner.

Center for Natural and Health Sciences

Sr. Mary Reap says the new Center for Natural and Health Sciences was built in response to needs for more graduates with science and nursing degrees.

The inaugural class included nine students from BHS and and nine from Baystate Medical Center, whose tuition was underwritten by the hospitals, and 22 additional students.

“We have helped fill the need for nurses with advanced degrees in a number of local hospitals,” Reap explained. “It was a natural area to grow, especially since the population here is aging. And these programs have an added value as many of the students are bilingual. It’s a great asset as there are so many Spanish-speaking people in the area.”

She noted that Elms received a $650,000 Health Resources and Services Administration grant to provide undergraduate scholarships for deserving, financially eligible Hispanic nursing students.

“We gave out eight awards last year, and 16 students will receive them this year in addition to other help they receive. It’s a wonderful way to meet the needs of the community,” she continued. “Last fall, we also began offering an undergraduate degree in Ethical Healthcare Management, which can be completed online or at some of our satellite sites.”

Elms College has also focused on expanding its science programs. “We know that more young people are needed today in these careers,” Reap said, adding that this knowledge spurred the construction of a new, $13 million Center for Natural and Health Sciences, which contains classrooms and laboratories.

And three years ago, the college responded to another need with a new post-baccalaureate science program for students who want to apply to medical or dental school. It can be completed in one or two years, depending on the student, and Reap said it attracts candidates from around the world in need of additional coursework.

“We’re drawing graduates from Ivy League schools, and they have been getting accepted at the best medical and dental schools in the country,” she noted. “It’s another area that was underserved where we think we are adding value.”

The needs of employers in the business community have also been addressed, and three years ago Elms launched an MBA program. Fifty students are enrolled this year, and they are taking classes on campus and online, which allows them the flexibility to work and earn a degree simultaneously. And, thanks to a generous gift from a benefactor, Elms is in the process of launching a new business center that will provide entrepreneurial and leadership programs at the certificate and degree level. Reap said the center will open officially next fall.


Download a PDF chart of the region’s colleges HERE


“There are many small businesses in the area, and more open every day, and we were getting requests from them for workshops,” she told BusinessWest, adding that slots in the MBA program filled quickly and the school felt it was important to provide other types of education to business owners and employees working in an entrepreneurial environment.

Elms has always had a strong social-work program, and in the spring of 2012, it launched a bachelor’s-degree program in criminal justice. It was created in response to requests from students and an increased need for people to fill crimina-justice positions in the area.

“We work closely with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department, local law-enforcement agencies, and the governor’s office, and have a nice relationship with the Soldier On program in the Berkshires,” Reap said, noting that Elms also has a strong legal-studies program and takes an interdisciplinary approach to these fields of study.

“The need is increasing for homeland security, and there are new approaches to criminal justice,” she continued. “Our emphasis is on helping to lower the recidivism rate of people released from prison, and the programs were driven by our mission to have a system of education with our philosophy and values. Respect for the individual is paramount, and it’s important to teach these people how to gain dignity as well as the skill sets they need to enter society again.”

Mirroring the Community

Reap said the student body at Elms and its satellite locations is representative of the community. About 20% of their students are Hispanic, and close to the same number are African-American.

“We also have a lot of religious diversity on campus, and most women feel very comfortable here because it’s a place where they feel safe and respected; plus, they like the idea of coming to a school with a value system similar to their own,” Reap said. “And we have been very entrepreneurial and flexible in adapting, maintaining, and enhancing our reputation for quality and excellence.”

Core values at Elms include faith, community, justice, and excellence, and part of the college’s mission is to educate students and inspire them to help others. It’s a practice that starts at the top and filters down to students who absorb the value, then pay it forward.

“Staff members take turns providing meals for students who can’t go home for the holidays or come back to campus early; I’ve had them in my own home on Thanksgiving,” Reap said, citing just one example of the support the students receive.

“It’s part of our culture, our expectation, and our environment, and we have nursing students who volunteered to use their spring break to serve the poorest of the poor in Jamaica rather than going somewhere like Florida,” she said, noting that they will pay their own travel costs.

In fact, community outreach is such an integral part of the Elms nursing curriculum that, in January 2013, a new program to serve the homeless was launched by Br. Michael Duffy, an assistant clinical professor in the School of Nursing.

It’s called the Elms caRe vaN, and free healthcare services are administered by students in the bachelor’s-degree program out of a 32-foot van that contains two treatment stations, a full exam room, and a five seat-waiting area, which doubles as a warming area. The care is offered in conjunction with St. Stanislaus Basilica’s Sandwich Ministry in Chicopee, and free lunches are distributed every week during the van’s stop in Chicopee Center. In addition, traditional undergraduate nursing students work with Duffy at Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen and Pantry every Tuesday.

Reap said the majority of majors at Elms College are service-oriented in keeping with the school’s tradition. For example, its communication sciences disorders program is very strong and was designed to serve the increasing number of children who are diagnosed on the autism spectrum or have speech-language problems.

“Every program we offer was developed in response to need,” Reap repeated. “Before we started our nursing-degree programs, Berkshire Medical Center was going to other states to recruit qualified nurses. We wanted to prepare young people who grow up here to take higher-level positions and raise their own standard of living, while meeting job requirements in the area.

“And we plan to add more flexible programs and formats,” she went on. “We will also continue to gather information from the Department of Labor and conduct needs assessments, surveys, roundtables, and talk to people, not only at the community colleges, but in the business world and at the Economic Development Council, which has been very helpful.”

Moving Forward

In short, Elms has done a good job keeping up with the times.

“We know where we are going, and I am confident that whatever we do will be done well and successfully because of our staff and the strong ethical and value-based approach to education that the college provides,” Reap said. “We continually seek out scholarships and grants for disadvantaged students as they comprise the majority of the population in our community; 90% of our student body gets some type of financial aid, and we’re always looking for assistance to help students, many of whom have financial challenges.”

She told BusinessWest that, when she asks students what makes Elms special, the answer is always the same. “It’s the strong sense of community we have here. Commencement can be difficult because this is a place they call home, and it’s hard to walk away from such a supportive setting.”

So, as Reap enters the spring semester of her seventh year at Elms, she feels satisfied with the growth that has occurred. It has aligned perfectly with her own goals, and she is confident that need-based growth will continue.

Which is, indeed, a true godsend to students seeking the education they need to get a job that pays well — and has helped establish a pipeline of new, local, well-educated graduates for employers.

Education Sections

A Winning Hand

Jeffrey Hayden

Jeffrey Hayden says HCC has expanded its hospitality and culinary programs to provide a needed pipeline of skilled workers to fill emerging jobs in Western Mass.

Robert LePage has lost track of how many times someone has told him, ‘I want to become a dealer.’

The pronouncements began long before MGM and Springfield were selected as the casino developer and city of choice in Western Mass., and LePage, executive director of Training and Workforce Options (TWO) at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), said they increase by the day.

His observation constitutes a reality check, because he knows that most people aren’t aware of what the job entails.

“I ask whether they like doing basic math, if they enjoy interacting with people all day, if it would bother them to stand on their feet for seven hours at a time, and if they realize they will have to work nights, weekends, and holidays because these are the busiest times in a casino,” said LePage.

STCC and Holyoke Community College (HCC) have formed a collaboration to provide knowledge about jobs, training, and qualifications that will be required by MGM Springfield when it begins hiring, and have joined forces with numerous local organizations that have a vested interest in filling the gap for the estimated 3,000 employees the casino will need.

Efforts began with TWO program, which was established by the presidents of the two community colleges with the goal of supporting regional workforce needs. Since its inception, a seemingly endless amount of work has been done to create custom-designed programs and provide employee assessments, skills training, and professional development, while strategically recruiting students for credit and non-credit programs.

“We have worked on joint projects in the industrial sector, manufacturing, IT, and hospitality, along with basic workforce literacy,” LePage explained.

Two years ago, TWO conducted a study with the largest hospitality/culinary employers in the area, including Sheraton as well Sodexho and Aramark, which provide food-service operations for local hospitals, schools, and colleges.

The study uncovered a significant finding: although the casino will need about 1,000 people to fill jobs in this sector, there is already a dearth of qualified individuals to meet the needs of local employers in the Pioneer Valley, where about 400 new positions open each year.

“We suspected this in the past and had talked about the need to expand our programs, but with the advent of the casino, the timing was finally right,” said Jeffrey Hayden, vice president of Business and Community Services for Holyoke Community College, adding that the hospitality/culinary field is one of the largest entry-level job markets in Western Mass. “MGM adds to the need, but it is the industry itself that is driving our new offerings.”

In the past two years, HCC has established a large number of new non-credit and credit courses in that field of study. In addition, as an offshoot of TWO, the colleges have taken the lead in establishing the Massachusetts Casino Training Institute, which will offer a gaming school in Springfield as well as hospitality and culinary training in Holyoke.

A tremendous amount of collaboration has taken place to get this off the ground between the colleges, the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County, the area’s one-stop career centers, and local nonprofits and businesses whose clientele or employees could benefit from earning a certificate or advancing their hospitality/culinary and customer-service skill sets.

“We have also worked with our sister community colleges in the East and Southeast, and are trying to create a casino-training model that will be replicated across the state,” LePage said. “We have done a lot to figure out how to build this system. People have no idea how complex it is, but this gaming scale-up is the largest that has been done in decades. When MGM Springfield opens, it will be among the top five employers in Western Mass.”

Chipping In

STCC and HCC are working closely with MGM and the Mass. Gaming Commission to create the curriculum for a certificate program in gaming-related occupations, and a workforce plan that has taken several years to complete will be submitted to the commission within the next three to six months.

“Our goal is to assist in providing a labor pool and ensure the availability of training programs that will provide general instruction for careers, and specific training for licensed occupations such as table dealers, slot attendants, slot-repair technicians, and surveillance,” LePage explained.

Informational sessions are expected to begin as early as this summer, which will allow interested people to gain critically important information about gaming jobs and what is required to work at them. The sessions will include talks by employees from operating casinos, who will likely share the pros and cons of their positions to ensure prospective candidates know what to expect.

LePage said an announcement is expected next month that will let people know where the school will be located in Springfield.

“The courses held there will run about 20 hours a week and for six to 14 weeks, and will include basic competency skills, as well as technical training. There will also be simulated hands-on training stations where students will learn to deal cards as well as how to deal with customers,” he told BusinessWest, adding that the colleges are working with the state to provide free tuition to qualified applicants.

Robert LePage

Robert LePage says a center will open in Springfield to teach people the skills they need for gaming-related occupations.

However, these sessions will not begin until about 90 days before MGM begins hiring to prevent a gap between learning and putting newly acquired skills to work.

Although these courses of study are still in the definitive stages, HCC has already begun to fill the existing gap of qualified employees in the hospitality/culinary industry that will grow when MGM begins hiring.

Hayden said the need is so great that HCC has been able to place close to 80% of its hospitality/culinary graduates into jobs, while incumbent workers who enrich their education have attained an 85% increase in pay, position, or responsibility.

“This is one of the largest occupational sectors in the Pioneer Valley,” he noted. “It employs about 30,000 people, so our goal is to provide basic training so people can get a job, get a better job, or be able to do their job better.”

New non-credit courses for restaurant, food-service, and hotel workers include “ServSafe Food Safety,” “Customer Service and Workplace Communication,” “Management and Leadership,” “Goal Setting and Productivity,” and a number of other professional-development offerings. There are also one-year certificate programs and associate-degree programs in hospitality and food-service management.

“We have the only post-secondary program for this field of study in the region,” Hayden said.

HCC plans to open a new Center for Hospitality and Culinary Excellence in January 2017 that will offer workforce and credit programs.

“It’s a highly anticipated investment by the college, the state, and the federal government because we recognize the need extends across the marketplace in Hampden County and the Pioneer Valley,” Hayden explained. “The new, 20,000-square-foot facility will have state-of-the-art hot and cold labs, a bakery, a dining area, a demonstration area, and a mock hotel room where people can learn skills like how to make a bed.”

Training is also ongoing in Springfield and Northampton, and may begin in Ware to accommodate people with transportation issues. In addition, two 14-week training sessions have been offered at Dean Technical High School in Holyoke in collaboration with the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s part of the sheriff’s effort to have people leave with workplace skills,” Hayden said, adding that, although former inmates might not be able to work in the casino, they can enter many of the positions available in the area.

A significant amount of effort has also been expended to help people pay for their education. Over the last three years, HCC has received Rapid Response grants from the Department of Higher Education totaling $182,000 that have allowed more than 250 people to earn more than 300 certificates in these fields, and the college recently applied for a Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund grant to provide more scholarships.

“There are more than 400 new job openings in the Pioneer Valley every year, and employers are looking for people who have some kind of training or experience,” Hayden said, noting that one local employer recently pledged to hire people who completed a ServSafe Food Safety course.

The Stakes Are High

STCC kicked off a new, 14-week advanced customer-service credit program last October to help build a stronger pipeline of employees.

“The casino will present a significant opportunity in terms of jobs, and a good body of work has already been done, which is important because, to capitalize on these opportunities, we have to get people prepared to move in and up in the workforce,” LePage explained. “It’s a pretty large project, and shovels are growing in the ground.”

Which means the time is right for people to begin researching gaming occupations or take part in hospitality/culinary training if they hope to embark on an entry-level casino career, change careers, or advance in their own workplace.

Education Sections

According to Script

Briana Santaniello

Briana Santaniello says a pharmacy degree opens up many more career doors than just retail or hospital settings.

Briana Santaniello can trace her interest in the pharmacy profession to an article in the local press about a local pharmacist working for Baystate Health, which her mother showed to her when she was 16 and contemplating what to study in college.

“She said, ‘you’re strong in math, you’re strong in science, you’re good with people … have you ever considered pharmacy?’ I hadn’t, and at the time, I was looking at college programs, and there weren’t any pharmacy colleges around here — and I really wanted to stay in Massachusetts.”

But a few months later, she came across a postcard announcing the launch of the Western New England University College of Pharmacy. By this time, she had thoroughly researched the field and decided it was for her. “The timing was perfect.”

That’s how Santaniello, in the fall of 2011, joined the very first class of pharmacy students at WNEU. Of the first cohort of 75 students, 69 graduated last spring and have found a diverse assortment of jobs, both in Massachusetts and far away, according to Evan Robinson, the college’s dean.

“Pharmacists are in demand,” Robinson told BusinessWest. “We have an aging population, which is going to tax the healthcare system. And we have a healthcare environment in which patients have to be more independent and autonomous more than ever before. To that end, the community pharmacist is a valuable partner and a valuable contributor to patient care and patient outcomes. For those reasons, I think there’s a very sunny future in this field.”

Those signals were already becoming evident when WNEU made pharmacy its fifth school in 2011, and earned an important accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education last spring.

“One of the reasons Western New England made the decision to open a School of Pharmacy was that we recognized strong job opportunities in a health profession with strong upside — one where people are able to really help others get better,” Robinson said.

In fact, he has long touted the school’s philosophy of “pharmacist as educator,” recognizing that clinical pharmacists are often a key link between patients and doctors, and sometimes the only professional an individual with a health concern may talk to.

“That’s not to say we’re not linked to the product — the product is key to our profession — but, beyond that, pharmacists really have an opportunity to be teachers of patients or their allied health partners in patient care, and serve as that therapeutic expert, if you will, working to help people feel better and move quality patient outcomes.”

Or, in Santaniello’s case, work in a managed-care setting in the Clinical Pharmacy Department at UMass Medical School in Worcester. Under the umbrella of the Commonwealth Medicine program, she helps provide services to a variety of clients, from MassHealth to Health New England, using population-health statistics and other evidence to help clients make coverage decisions. “It’s always changing, with new kinds of drugs and price changes,” she said. “Every day is different.”

Pioneering Idea

Statistically, pharmacy is a broad field with much potential for career seekers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 14% growth in jobs between 2012 and 2022, an increase of 41,400 positions. The annual median wage for pharmacists is more than $116,000.

“The pharmacy job market is showing some rebound, so that’s been good,” Robinson said, citing a recent wave of pharmacy-school openings and the recent sluggish economy as recent negative factors that, hopefully, will prove temporary. “It’s never been bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it tends to fluctuate.”

Grant Stebbins, another 2015 graduate, had previously enrolled in the Pharmacy Technician program and was working as a tech at Baystate Medical Center, but after a few years there, he decided to return to WNEU for his PharmD degree. Today, he works at Holyoke Medical Center in a role that greatly influences patient care.

“It’s not like a retail pharmacy; we don’t dispense to people who come in off the street,” he told BusinessWest. “We serve the inpatients in the hospital; we monitor antibiotics and other high-risk therapies, go on multi-disciplinary rounds with doctors and other members of the care team from the hospital, a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.”

And that’s not all. “We interview patients when they come into the emergency room about what medications they take outside the hospital. We also do counseling for a certain population of patients who have heart failure before they leave the hospital, make sure we educate them on the types of medications they’ll be taking. It’s very interesting. It’s not the same thing every day, which is nice.”

While he was never interested in a job in a commercial pharmacy, Stebbins said many of his fellow graduates had jobs lined at drugstores well before graduation. In fact, just over half the inaugural graduating class moved right into positions in retail pharmacies, while others found jobs in hospitals and other clinical settings. Others sought out residencies, from which they may explore more specialized niches in the pharmacy industry, Robinson explained. “It could be pediatric oncology, critical care, acute care, emergency departments.

“Interestingly enough,” he added, “we have two residency programs here at Western New England, one with Walgreens and one with Big Y. The idea is creating an environment in which someone who’s ready to be a licensed pharmacist can learn more about the practice at a high level, in a community-care environment, whether that means some clinical engagement or different types of health and wellness activities.”

WNEU was no stranger to pharmacy education before launching the School of Pharmacy four years ago. It had long boasted a pre-pharmacy program and had partnered with the Hampden College of Pharmacy and, later, the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy on joint programs until 1995.

Still, Robinson praises the recent class of graduates for taking a chance on a brand-new enterprise.

“We used to joke with them that they’re pioneers,” he told BusinessWest. “They came in with a lot of expectations, a lot of aspirations, and not a lot of tangibles. They took that leap in a new building with no classes ahead of them; we were still hiring faculty. It was a fascinating thing for them. I give them a lot of credit.”

Evan Robinson

Evan Robinson says today’s pharmacist isn’t just a pill dispenser, but a valuable part of a customer’s healthcare team.

Stebbins said the idea of making a day-to-day impact on a local pharmacy program as one of those pioneering students appealed to him.

“I’d worked with a lot of people would have stayed in Western Mass. if there was a pharmacy school here, but they went out to Worcester or Boston,” he explained. “I’m from the area, and I was interested in helping start something new in the area.

“When I interviewed,” he went on, “there seemed to be a real interest in having students be a really big part of the program. I was on a lot of councils asking for our thoughts on how the process was going. And they had a sympathetic ear; a lot of my friends had an impact on how the program is set up now.”

Growing Appeal

The initial class that arrived in 2011 has been augmented with a new roster of 75 students each year, bringing the program to around 300 students today. Some jump over from the pre-pharmacy program at WNEU, and others come from outside, with bachelor’s degrees in various fields. The curriculum is designed to produce generalists trained to handle any entry-level position.

The first three years of the program are spent on campus, while the fourth is entirely off campus, with a series of six rotations, each six weeks long, working in the field, guided by pharmacy ‘preceptors.’ That’s where the ‘learners,’ as Robinson likes to call them, start to apply their craft, learning how to fill prescriptions, make IVs, and — of course — educate patients.

Stebbins said those rotations essentially amount to six-week-long interviews, and are a great way for students to make key career connections before they graduate. “I had two rotations at Holyoke, and later, when they had an opening, they called me. I think pharmacy school is unique, in that it’s cooperative programming while still in school.”

There remains some concern among pharmacy leaders over a surge in new pharmacy programs that is producing 14,000 graduates per year after a trend of between 6,000 and 8,000 per year between 1974 and 2003.

Daniel Brown, a professor in the School of Pharmacy at Palm Beach Atlantic University and a nationally recognized thought leader on the pharmacy workforce, understands why those programs sprung up and why they are attractive.

“The pharmacist job market in the 1990s and up to about 2007 was characterized by a significant shortfall of pharmacists, fueled largely by a marked increase of community pharmacy positions in chain stores, supermarkets, and mass merchandisers,” he told Medscape.com recently.

“This made jobs plentiful and caused salaries to rise above six figures, understandably making pharmacists a very hot commodity. The lure of a guaranteed job with a high salary attracted many people to pharmacy, and the growing number of applicants created opportunities for new schools of pharmacy to be established and for existing schools to expand,” he continued, adding that he wonders whether that academic growth has exceeded the need.

Still, the reports of WNEU’s first graduating class of pharmacists finding jobs in a variety of workplace settings is encouraging to Robinson.

“With an aging population and the fact that, in many instances, the community pharmacist is a uniquely accessible and available member of the healthcare team,” he told BusinessWest, an assertion driven home by the fact that more than 3.5 billion prescriptions are written each year, medications are involved in 80% of all treatments, and Medicare beneficiaries with multiple chronic diseases take 50 different prescriptions per year.

One of the pluses of the WNEU College of Pharmacy was its dual-degree track allowing students to simultaneously earn a PharmD and MBA, said Santaniello, who, like Stebbins, relished being among the first cohort of graduates. “A lot of pharmacy schools don’t offer that, and it gave me the chance to be where I am now. I’m very grateful to be one of those trailblazers.”

An MBA certainly makes a pharmacy graduate more attractive to an employer, depending on the field, but employability can still differ depending on what job setting a graduate prefers and whether they’re willing to travel.

“If staying on a traditional career path, they might not easily find a job unless they consider relocating, but there’s so much available to pharmacists now with a doctor of pharmacy degree, as opposed to a bachelor’s degree that limits you to a retail or hospital setting,” she said. “There’s managed care, medication therapy management … the possibilities are endless. People realize the value a pharmacist adds to the mix, and there are plenty of opportunities. You just have to find the niche that works best with your qualities.”

Positive Outlook

In its 2014 National Pharmacist Workforce Survey, the Midwest Pharmacy Workforce Research Consortium predicted that demographic trends and others — such as the high number of pharmacists, especially men, approaching retirement age — will continue to create opportunities in pharmacy-related careers.

“We’re living in dynamic times as a health profession,” the report notes. “We have shifted from a male-dominated to a female-dominated profession. Male pharmacists will continue to retire in large numbers, given that almost 50% of actively practicing pharmacists who are over 55 years old are male.”

Meanwhile, it adds, “more pharmacists are reporting their pharmacies are providing direct patient-care services. As coordination of care for patients with chronic conditions grows, the number of opportunities for pharmacists in new roles is likely to increase.”

Robinson has noted that fact as well. “This is an important role that benefits patients,” he concluded. “The pharmacist can serve not only as an educator, but an advocate.”

That’s why Western New England University is busy training more.

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections

Rock Solid

Head of School Brian Easler

Head of School Brian Easler

Growing up, Brian Easler said he was anything but the proverbial ‘prep-school guy.’ He attended public high school and then went into the Army, serving in Desert Storm. But he always had what he called a fascination with the private-school life, or the world presented in Dead Poets Society. Today, as head of school at Wilbraham Monson Academy, a role he assumed after 16 years in various posts at the school, he’s leading roughly 500 students, faculty, and staff now living that life. More importantly, he’s working diligently to keep the school on a long run of growth, increased diversity, and vibrancy.

There’s an intriguing tradition at Wilbraham Monson Academy.

It’s called the ‘senior stone,’ and it dates back to when this 211-year-old institution was known as Wilbraham Academy, and with the class of 1947.

It was with those individuals, all young men (the institution went co-ed years later), that the school began the practice of giving each graduating senior a stone, which would then be placed in the Rubicon, a stream that runs through a portion of the campus, where it remained until it was soft enough for the student to chisel his name and class year on it. The stone would then be placed atop one of the many stone walls on campus.

In recent times, maybe the past 20 years or so, students have taken to trading that soaking and chiseling work for bringing their stone to a professional engraver for some more elaborate messages, noted Brian Easler, head of school at WMA, adding quickly that the old method is still practiced by some and, by most accounts, is staging what amounts to a comeback.

“Over the past four years, there’s been a real movement back to people chiseling their own stones,” he said, “to the point where the dean’s office has set up a half-dozen canvas tool bags with a hammer, a chisel, and safety goggles, and students can sign out a kit.”

Both engraving practices are certainly in evidence along the low wall placed across the front of Rich Hall, the main administration building named for one of the school’s early trustees, Isaac Rich. There, one will find simple names or even initials obviously hand-chisled, as well as detailed, professional engravings, many mixing words with ornate images.

In many ways, that front wall, and the Senior Stone tradition itself, speaks to how this respected preparatory school balances tradition with changing times, technology with time-honored practices, and evolution with history.

In most respects, it is a delicate balancing act, one that Easler has led since becoming head of school in 2014, and been a part of since arriving on campus 17 years ago to lead alumni affairs and the school’s annual fund.

He would quickly move on to the role of dean of students, and later add the title associate head of school. When Rodney LaBrecque announced he was stepping down from the corner office, a search for a successor commenced. It wasn’t a long search — or as long as most — because the movement to place Easler in that position took on a life of its own.

Indeed, a Facebook page created by a member of the class of 2000 called ‘Brian Easler for WMA headmaster’ had more than 1,200 members within three days. “That roughly accounts for almost every student who graduated during my time as dean of students,” he noted. “And also some of the kids I kicked out.”


Download a PDF chart of the region’s private schools HERE


Roughly 18 months into the job, Easler admits that he’s still growing into it, something he certainly didn’t expect (more on that later). And as he sliced through his many responsibilities and worked to sum them all up, he said the assignment comes down to simply maintaining what has been a lengthy and healthy run of growth, continued diversity in all its forms, increasingly global reach, and overall vibrancy at WMA.

But there’s nothing simple about that broad task.

Indeed, this is in many ways a challenging time for prep schools and colleges alike, as they grapple with declining populations of young people, immense competition for top students, global economic turmoil, and the need to maintain high standards of quality when it comes to admissions in the wake of these issues.

Couple these factors with ever-rising tuition costs, and the mission for WMA and all schools like it is to make sure value is among the assets it has to offer.

“We know that birth rates are declining, and that means school populations are declining, which means that competition is getting tougher for schools,” he said in describing the current operating climate. “And we’re also in an environment where tuition is going up. In order for us to balance what we cost with the value of what we provide, we need to have the most effective and most intentional financial plan — and focus on our mission — that we can.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Easler about the many kinds of balancing acts going on at this institution, and his vision for this school with a future that appears, well, rock solid, and in a number of ways.

School of Thought

Easler has taken a rather intriguing path to the large office at Rich Hall assigned to the head of school, one that he probably couldn’t have imagined when he was in high school himself. And that’s because that setting was at the opposite end of the spectrum from where he is now.

“I went to public school in Maine, and was not a private-school guy,” he explained, adding quickly that, for a variety of reasons, he became fascinated, for lack of a better term, with the private, boarding-school realm.

The senior stone

The senior stone has been a tradition at Wilbraham Monson Academy since 1947.

“My first experience with private schools came when I was lifeguarding at the University of Maine,” he explained. “There was a gentleman who came in to swim every day who graduated from Eaglebrook (in Deerfield). He would tell me stories about his middle-school days there, and that created this fascination for me with boarding schools.”

It would later be fueled by Dead Poets Society, the movie starring Robin Williams about the fictitious Welton Academy, and other factors, including a chance encounter with the WMA campus while Easler and his wife were travelling from their new home in Springfield to Palmer.

But despite this evolving fascination, Easler seemed in no way destined for the career that would eventually take shape.

Indeed, upon graduation from high school, he joined the Army and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division’s Long-range Reconnaissance and Surveillance Detachment. As a Ranger team leader of a six-man squad, he would be awarded the Bronze Star for actions while engaged in combat operations behind enemy lines during Desert Storm.

After his stint with the Army concluded, he attended the University of Maine at Farmington, where, in a nod to Dead Poets Society perhaps, he majored in literature and minored in philosophy.

Easler noted that he first applied to Wilbraham Monson to be an English teacher — at the suggestion of one of the school’s retiring English teachers, who became the subject of one of his assignments at Springfield College, where he earned a master’s degree in Education.

He didn’t get the job, he explained, at least in part because he seriously lacked the skills necessary to coach field hockey, which was part of the job description.

But he certainly made some kind of impression. That became obvious a while later, as he was mulling where to go next, when the phone rang.

“It was the head of school, Richard Malley,” said Easler. “He said, ‘have you ever considered serving education in a role other than teaching?’ — and I had no idea what he was talking about.”

What Malley had in mind was the job as director of alumni affairs and running the annual fund, a job Easler wasn’t sure he could handle, but accepted anyway.

“He took a chance on me because I had no experience, and I took a chance because I didn’t know how to be alumni director,” he explained, adding that, 17 years later, he’s still at WMA because, as he put it, “I never had any desire to leave.”

As mentioned earlier, he would soon be promoted to dean of students, and in 2005, he became assistant head of school. He told BusinessWest that he thought those positions and their myriad responsibilities — everything from creation of a new evaluation system for teachers to leading students on educational trips to the Amazon jungle, to working with the town to install a new street-crossing light system — would adequately prepare him for his new role.

It turns out he was right. Well, sort of.

“I felt like I knew the job, that I had it all figured out,” he told BusinessWest. “As it turned out, I had no idea.”

School of Thought

What Easler said he’s learned over the past year and a half is that this job entails wearing many hats and assuming many roles.

“In one day, I can be dealing with parking-lot-assignment issues, auditors and lawyers, happy parents, billionaire alumni, and international dignitaries,” he said, adding that those in that latter category are often also alums. “At various times, you have to play the role of counselor and mayor, judge, priest — not in a particularly religious sense, but in terms of providing counsel to people when they’re at a time of need — and more.”

He’s taken on all those roles and others as he’s undertaken the twin challenges of maintaining the recent momentum at WMA and coping with the myriad challenges facing all private schools at this time. And they are, of course, interrelated.

“Our student body has grown in size and quality to the point where we’re full,” he said, describing his tenure at the school specifically. “And our school culture has changed significantly over the past 14 years.”

Elaborating, he said there are now students from 31 different counties and 11 states, escalation of a pattern — one that has earned WMA the nickname ‘the global school’ — that began in 1854, when the school became the first institution of its kind to admit a Chinese student.

International students now comprise one-third of the current student population of 420, which is a percentage the school embraces. But the term ‘diversity’ applies not only to countries of origin, Easler stressed, but other realms as well, including socio-economic status.

And maintaining this diversity is critical because it provides a rich learning experience that goes well beyond the classroom, one that students appreciate long after their stone is placed into a wall, he explained.

“It’s very important to the students to have a diverse campus because, when they come back from college, they tell us that even their college communities are not as diverse and inclusive as ours,” he explained. “My guess would be that this perception of theirs is not a statistical perception — the breakdown of the student populations are not dissimilar to ours. But the perception of it is different, because we’re much smaller.

WMA

Brian Easler says WMA provides students with diversity and an opportunity for “social engineering” that that they miss when they move on to college.

“On a college campus, they have more of everyone, so it’s much easier to isolate yourself with whoever’s like you or whoever’s from where you’re from,” he went on. “We’re such a small community that that becomes virtually impossible. What students experience here is like social engineering or forced inclusivity, so that students, by nature of our program, and in a totally healthy way, find it necessary to engage with others who are not like them. And what they learn from it as a result is that they enjoy this, and they miss it when they go to college.”

Moving forward, the mission is obviously to continue this social engineering while also providing students with a high-quality education, and overall experience, that will prepare them not only for college but everything that life can throw at them afterward, said Easler.

And, in these times of declining populations of young people, heightened competition for top students, and rising tuition rates, schools like WMA are challenged to maintain their high standards, become ever more efficient, and focus their resources on programs and initiatives that will advance the institution and improve the overall student experience.

And this brings Easler back to that word ‘value.’

“It’s all about aligning ourselves, our mission, and our expenses so that our budget reflects our mission,” he told BusinessWest. “You can tell what an institution’s real mission is by looking at it’s budget; people spend their money on what’s important to them — and so do institutions.”

And at WMA, what’s important is the learning experience, he went on, adding that, over the past two years, as part of what could be described as strategic planning, the school has identified what’s important and adjusted the budget accordingly.

“We’ve become more lean and efficient as an institution, and more responsive to our parents and alumni,” he explained, adding that the school has boiled what’s important down to three basic criteria: the student experience, the mission, “and what keeps us attractive to our current or potential customers.”

No Stone Unturned

Looking ahead, and far down the road, Easler said WMA has plenty of sidewalks and roads near which to build walls to display the stones of graduating seniors for decades to come.

Beyond that, it has the other necessary ingredients as well — history, tradition, diversity, a willingness to adapt to changing times, and the ability to balance all of the above.

That, and a head of school who may not have been a prep-school guy growing up, but has forged a successful career leading and mentoring those who are.

That’s one reason, from nearly all accounts, why this venerable institution will weather the many challenges facing it and remain rock solid.

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

Education Sections

A New Front Door

Bill Fogarty

Bill Fogarty shows off the water-collection apparatus in G-313.

The number outside the door is G-313. But everyone knows it as the ‘digital video studio.’

It’s a well-equipped facility — done over as part of a $2 million renovation of the media center in Holyoke Community College’s campus center in 2008 — and, in most respects, it looks like a modern classroom.

Except for the black tarpaulin positioned just below the ceiling near the middle of the room.

This is an elaborate apparatus, actually, with the tarp hung so that the water leaking from the ceiling flows down and to the center, where it then passes into a hose that empties into a five-gallon bucket sitting on the floor.

“Pretty attractive, huh?” asked Bill Fogarty, HCC’s vice president of Administration and Finance as he offered a tour of the campus center, something he’s done quite often lately, but not for the reason he’d like.

Indeed, he’s certainly not showing off the facility, also known as Building G, hence G-313. Instead, he’s pointing out what the HCC community has had to put up with since … well, pretty much since the day the sloping, concrete facility opened its doors in 1980.

Fogarty’s not sure what month or day that was, but from what he’s heard anecdotally, the building has leaked since just after the ceremonial ribbon was cut — or at least the first day it rained.

Efforts to remediate the problem have continued for the past 35 years, mostly with stopgap measures like those in G-313. Funding for a permanent solution has come only after innumerable tours offered by Fogarty and others and countless “dog-and-pony shows,” as he called them, featuring color photos of the digital video center and several other facilities with water-collection systems of varying levels of sophistication.

The wait (for funding, anyway) finally ended last summer, when the state announced it was awarding $2.5 million for a massive renovation effort, the final monetary piece needed for what will be a $43.5 million project that will — in 30 months or so, according to current estimates — lead to tours of a much different kind.

When it’s over, the project to square off the campus center, thus eliminating the angles contributing to the water-damage problems, and add roughly 8,000 square feet will yield a facility that is in many ways state-of-the-art, student-friendly, and doesn’t leak.

It will in many ways give the school a new feel — and entry point, said its long-time president, Bill Messner.

“This will allow for a front door, which is something we’ve never had before,” he explained, adding that, despite its importance, the campus center is accessible only from a series of stairs leading down from the Frost Building, the main administration building, or from the adjoining Kittredge Center for Business & Workforce Development.

Plans call for an elaborate makeover of the dining-services facilities; a new home for the campus bookstore, which is currently housed in cramped, and, yes, leaking space on the ground floor; a new admissions office; and improved traffic flow to all those facilities.

The renovation project will create some headaches and logistical challenges — books will be sold only online for the length of the construction project, and dining facilities will be temporarily relocated to the already-crowded Frost Building next door, for example.

But the end result will be a facility that will certainly help the college as it works to attract students — HCC competes across many programs with Springfield Technical Community College, only eight miles away — and greatly enhance the experience for those who choose to attend.

Leaking Information

The campus-center project is the latest in a number of projects over the past decade or so that have in many ways transformed an HCC campus that first opened in the mid-’70s, and has been showing its age in many respects.

The 57,000-square-foot Kittredge Center, which opened in 2006, was a major addition to the campus, as was the new Center for Health Education, which opened its doors this past fall in the former Grynn & Barrett Studios building on Jarvis Avenue, just a few hundred yards from the campus (see story, page 22).

In the planning stages is a major renovation of the Marieb Building, which will house the HCC Center for Life Sciences on its first floor.

These and other projects have been undertaken to improve the student experience, create new learning opportunities, and improve student-recruitment efforts, said Messner, adding that the campus-center renovations were blueprinted for all the same reasons.

But at its core, this project was undertaken — and it’s been years, if not decades in the making — to eliminate design flaws, and thus water-infiltration issues and resulting building-material failures, that have plagued the building literally since the day it opened.

Indeed, as he offered his tour of the campus center, the last of what’s considered the “original” buildings on the campus, Fogarty showed BusinessWest several facilities with leaks and various forms of water-collection equipment, including other classrooms, the storage area in the bookstore, and a room just off the dining-services facility which, because of persistent leaks, has been used only for storage over the past several years.

“It’s been a chamber of horrors,” said Fogarty, adding that the college community has essentially had to live with the problem. And in recent years, that became increasingly difficult, creating a sense of urgency that culminated in more of those dog-and-pony shows, which helped prompt the state to include $2.5 million for the project as part of a larger package for capital projects. The balance of the cost is being funded through state bonds.

In a nutshell, the project calls for, well, building a new nutshell.

Holyoke Community College

Officials at Holyoke Community College say the campus center has leaked since the day it opened in 1980.

“To solve the problem, we’ve explored a number of options,” Fogarty explained. “And it’s been determined that the best way to approach this is not to simply over-clad the building, but to square it off — to actually build a new exterior of the building.

“The idea is to square it off and have it look more like the Kittredge Building,” he went on. “That’s because the campus center is not a very attractive building. And while it’s more consistent with the rest of the campus, it’s the building that’s in the worst shape.”

Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2017, and it will require closing down the structure for the duration of the project. That reality will force some imaginative responses, said Fogarty, because the campus is already cramped.

But the end product will be well worth the inconveniences, he went on, because it will give the college a campus center that is far more welcoming, student-friendly, and easy to access.

“We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for new students and new families coming to the campus to find this parking lot and then have a straight shot to admissions,” said Fogarty, citing just one example of how the renovated Building G will represent a substantial improvement over existing conditions.

Messner agreed. “Admissions is currently buried down on the second floor of this building [Frost, the main administration facility], and it’s a very unappealing situation,” he explained, “particularly when you’re trying to attract and impress and serve potential new students.

“So this is not only going to be much more attractive and conducive to a welcoming environment,” he went on, “it’s also going to cluster an array of services around admissions that lend themselves to serving potential new students — the testing, the advising, and more.”

Another example would be the plans for the new bookstore, to be relocated from its current basement home.

“Right now, you have to make an effort to find the bookstore; it’s just not conveniently located,” said Fogarty. “What we want to do is bring the bookstore to the second floor, and have that facility, the dining services, and the student-activity services all on the same floor, and all opening up to a common corridor.”

Dry Subject Matter

Fogarty said he’s essentially done giving tours of the campus center — at least for the next two and half years or so.

But he expects he’ll doing a lot of them afterward, showing off a facility that will be modern, accessible, easy to use, and, best of all, dry.

Indeed, G-313 will look like a modern classroom — without the water-collection apparatus.

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

Education Sections

HCC enhances the learning experiences for students in a number of programs

Michelle Sherlin

Michelle Sherlin with ‘Noelle,’ the obstetrics simulator at Holyoke Community College’s new Center for Health Education.

They named her Noelle.

She is the “obstetrics simulator” used by students at Holyoke Community College, and by Michelle Sherlin’s count, she’s given birth 16 times this semester, give or take a few deliveries.

Noelle has long been part of the curriculum, if you will, for students in various health and science tracks at HCC, but since she and the Health Sciences Department moved into the former Grynn & Barrett Studios building on Jarvis Avenue, she’s been playing a bigger part.

Indeed, in the new facility, Noelle has her own spacious hospital bed (a significant upgrade over her previous digs), which is visible from a larger, better-equipped screening room, from which students’ performance can be watched and assessed.

The simulator is now more mobile, said Sherlin, a registered nurse and simulation specialist within HCC’s Health & Natural Sciences Division. By that, she meant that it’s easier for Noelle to get to students and for students to get to Noelle, which means she can take part in more learning experiences — from those aforementioned deliveries to a late-term X-ray administered recently by students in the Radiologic Technology program.

In many respects, Noelle’s story captures the essence of the Health Science Division’s move into the 22,000-square-foot facility, acquired by the college in late 2012 and repurposed through a $7.6 million initiative that culminated in a ribbon cutting last fall.

There is more room, yes — considerably more room, and that’s a big part of the story. And there’s also new equipment, more than $600,000 worth it, which is usually defined with the term state-of-the-art.

Kathy Hankel

Kathy Hankel says the new Center for Health Education has greatly enhanced the educational experience for HCC students.

But the real story, said Kathy Hankel, dean of the Health Sciences Department, is how all of the above has enhanced the learning experiences for students in a number of programs, and how it has made HCC better able to compete for students seeking entry into the region’s large and diverse healthcare sector.

“We’ve been able to greatly enhance the educational experience for our students,” she explained. “We simply have the ability to do so much more than we could before.”

When the Grynn & Barrett building went on the market in 2012, Hankel said, college administrators saw a tremendous opportunity to substantially upgrade the Health Sciences facility then housed in the Marieb Building, one of the original structures on the HCC campus.

To describe those quarters, Hankel first summoned an adjective, then an adverb for some additional effect.

“It was cramped — horribly cramped,” she explained. “We did a lot of things over there (at Marieb) with our labs and simulators, but it was so difficult for all the students to get the true benefit of the simulation and lab experience we offered because we were so cramped.”

The new Health Sciences Center now houses the school’s two-year RN program, its LPN program, the Medical Assistant program, and the “Fundamentals in Health” class that has served as a feeder program for the various health disciplines.

The building houses staff offices and conference facilities, as well as a wide array of simulation rooms — all equipped to mirror what would be found in a hospital — as well as classrooms, labs, screening rooms, and more.

To say that the new quarters would retire that term ‘cramped’ is an understatement. Indeed, four months after officially moving in, Holly Martin-Peele, program chair of the Radiologic Technology Department, says she’s still having a hard time getting used to all the space.

Indeed, as she gave BusinessWest a tour of her facilities, she referenced a classroom; a radiology simulation room, or mock X-ray room, as she termed it, which recreates what would be found in a hospital; the so-called QC area, or ‘image-critique’ facility, which also doubles as a lab and study area; and a storage room.

“Before, in the old building, we had basically a big classroom that had a couple of antique X-ray machines in back that we couldn’t find parts for anymore,” she explained. “We can do so much here.”

Sherlin concurred, and successfully quantified the improvements in addition to qualifying them.

She said there are now eight simulators in use at the facility, double the number at Marieb, and more students are using them, and in myriad ways.

“We’ve done more than 360 simulations since the beginning of September,” she explained. “Previously, that was about what we did in a year and half; we did as many simulations in one semester as we used to do in three.”

More important than those numbers are what they mean in terms of the learning experiences of those performing the simulations.

“The quality of the educational experience has grown dramatically,” she told BusinessWest, “because students are really able to get comfortable with the technology, deepen their skills, and do a lot of critical decision making, because of simulation, that they didn’t have the ability to do before, because there was just no space.”

 

— George O’Brien

Cover Story Education Sections

Building an Education Hub

Downtown Colleges

It all started three years ago, when Cambridge College, after surveying a number of potential sites for its regional campus, settled on some former retail space on the ground floor of Tower Square. Now there are four colleges and universities with what could be called a presence in the central business district. That constitutes a “hub,” according to many we talked to about this development, one that has the ability to bring additional energy and vibrancy to the downtown area.

When Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke at the MassMutual Center on Sept. 9 as part of the 2015 Springfield Public Forum series, there were more than 2,500 people in the hall.

A good number of them represented the area’s many colleges and universities, including students, faculty members, administrators, distinguished alums, and supporters. Springfield College, for example, had roughly 40 people in attendance, and prior to Sotomayor’s talk, most of them were gathered at a reception in unique community space set aside for tenants and their guests on the third floor of 1350 Main St., just across the street from the convention center.

The college wasn’t officially in the building yet, said its president, Mary-Beth Cooper, but lease papers had been signed for space on the second floor just a few days before Sotomayor came to Springfield, so the school took full advantage of a huge opportunity.

Mary-Beth Cooper

Mary-Beth Cooper says Springfield College leaders wanted to be part of the downtown revitalization in the city, so an address in the central business district made sense.

“I called and asked if we could we use that space,” said Cooper. “There’s a deck, it’s right across the street … we had a nice reception.”

Gaining the ability to host such a party wasn’t the reason why Springfield College became the fourth area institution of higher learning to add a downtown Springfield mailing address over the past few years.

But it may well have been one of the reasons.

There are myriad others, said Cooper, who told BusinessWest that, to make a somewhat long story short, the college wanted to support the city it is named after, and, perhaps more importantly, it wanted to be part of what’s happening downtown — be that a revitalization, comeback, renaissance, or whatever term may be deemed appropriate.

Thus, Springfield College is now part of what would have to be called a movement involving higher education and Springfield’s central business district.

It all started in 2012, when Cambridge College, looking for a replacement for tired and insufficient facilities for its Springfield Regional Center in an industrial building on Cottage Street, settled on long-vacant retail space on the ground floor of Tower Square. Two years later, Bay Path College, bursting at the seams on its Longmeadow campus and in search of a home for its American Women’s College, chose the spacious seventh floor of 1350 Main St. from several appealing options.

And in September of 2014, The University of Massachusetts opened the UMass Center at Springfield, a 26,000-square-foot facility on the mezzanine level of Tower Square that is now hosting classes involving roughly 700 students this fall.

By comparison to those other facilities, Springfield College’s investment is small by any measure — its offices total less than 2,000 square feet, and only a few people are actually in those offices at any given time.

But there is room for growth, and in the meantime, this latest addition only adds to what Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno called an infusion of “positive energy and brainpower.”

“Eds and meds are an important part of economic development,” he said, using the term to connote the education and healthcare sectors. “And when you couple what’s happening with the colleges downtown with efforts to promote entrepreneurship, the innovation district we’re building, and the efforts of groups like Valley Venture Mentors, it generates additional momentum.

“Years ago, people laughed at us when we said we were going to bring colleges and universities into the downtown,” he went on, adding that no one is laughing anymore.

Instead, they’re undertaking some speculation and analysis — on the impact of all this proliferation of colleges along Main Street, and about how and in what ways this momentum can be built upon.

Lynn Griesemer, assistant vice president of Economic Development at UMass and executive director of the UMass Donohue Institute, has been doing some analysis herself. She told BusinessWest that what’s developing downtown could certainly be termed an “education hub,” one that has the potential to attract additional businesses, non-profits, people, and vibrancy to the area.

“It’s starting to create a magnet,” she said, emphasizing those words ‘starting to.’ “With patience and ongoing support from the community, the city, and the state, I think that you could see this magnet growing into something that brings a lot more vitality into the downtown.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at how this hub, or magnet, came to be, and also at what its potential forces of attraction might become.

Course of Events

Hot Table restaurant on the ground floor at Tower Square is now open until 8 p.m. on weekdays, several hours later than its old closing time.

Teresa Forte, director of Cambridge College’s Springfield Regional Center, located just a few dozen feet away, knows that prodding from her and many of the students who attend classes into the early evening played a big part in that decision.

Overall, she believes that’s only one relatively small example of the impact that Cambridge and the other colleges are having downtown, an influence she described with the same phrase Greisemer summoned.

“Whether we call it that or not, the downtown is becoming an educational hub for Springfield,” she told BusinessWest. “I’m proud that Cambridge College started the trend; the true benefactors are the students who can now use downtown as a one-stop shopping zone when they are considering educational opportunities.”

Looking back over how this hub came together, it becomes clear that, while the schools involved had somewhat different motivations and goals behind their respective decisions, the common denominator is that they reached a decision that they wanted — and in many respects needed — to be downtown.

Retracing the steps that led to Cambridge becoming urban pioneers, if you will, or at least next-generation pioneers, Forte said the school looked at a number of options as it went about the task of replacing the Cottage Street facilities, which it called home for more than 20 years.

At the time, the school wasn’t really focused on being part of a revitalization effort — although that was certainly part of the equation — as much as it was centered on making a move that simply made sense from the perspectives of visibility and convenience for all constituencies involved, and would enable the school to ultimately grow enrollment, she explained.

“I described us as the best-kept secret in higher education in Springfield — even our sign didn’t light up,” she said of the Cottage Street facility. “Our lease was up, and the decision was made to search for a new, upgraded location. After many months and many visits to locations all over Springfield, it became clear that the best options for us were in downtown.

“It would not only provide us with better transportation options for our students — on a bus line and close to 91 — but also give us an opportunity to become a stronger contributor to the Springfield community,” she went on. “The search was narrowed to three locations in downtown, and Tower Square was chosen for a few very important reasons. First, it had the street-level site available, which was important for signage. Second, it was one of the most secure locations in all of downtown.”

Elaborating, she said Tower Square has a very responsive security staff which conducts patrols on the hour both inside the mall and outside the perimeter of the building, and there are also cameras everywhere, including the garage.  Meanwhile, in terms of parking, students are given the option to park in the Tower Square garage, meaning they can take the elevator to class.

With that package of amenities, Cambridge thought it could grow its Springfield Regional Center, she continued, and in reality, that’s exactly what has happened.

Teresa Forte

Teresa Forte says Cambridge College’s location in Tower Square — which offers students solid security, parking, and transportation amenities — has spurred an increase in enrollment.

“Cambridge College has a very unique mission — we cater to a diverse population of students for whom educational opportunities may have been limited or denied; we were one of the first colleges to specialize in assisting non-traditional students,” she explained. “And the interesting trend that has happened since we moved downtown is that we seem to be attracting a larger number of traditional students who have never been to college before. We’ve been in downtown for almost three years, and our enrollment in Springfield has been steadily rising for the past five years.”

For UMass, meanwhile, its arrival downtown, while certainly part of ongoing efforts to become more of a factor in Greater Springfield economic-development efforts, was actually sparked by a statewide study of potential growth opportunities for the university apart from its five campuses, said Griesemer.

That analysis identified several such locations, she went on, including Brockton, Southeastern Mass., Springfield, and the Marlboro area in the eastern part of the Commonwealth.

“There is a whole wedge in that area that has no higher-ed institutions — it’s between Routes 128, 495, 2, and 90,” she said of what amounts to Greater Marlboro, adding that most of the sites identified were in so-called Gateway cities (many of its existing campuses are in different ones) such as Springfield, and the university decided, after an in-depth market research study, to first pursue a project in the City of Homes.

What eventually emerged was the UMass Center at Springfield, which was announced in the fall if 2013 and opened less than a year later. It now hosts classes for several UMass Amherst programs, including the College of Nursing, the Isenberg School of Management’s part-time MBA program, the University Without Walls, and others. It also hosts programs offered by or in conjunction with UMass Boston, Springfield Technical Community College, Holyoke Community College, and Westfield State University.

Griesemer didn’t have a specific number when asked how many people are at the Springfield facility on a given day, but pegged student enrollment alone at between 600 and 700, a number that has gone up each semester.

Schools of Thought

As for Bay Path, its move downtown in the fall if 2013 was generated by a basic need for additional space for the online American Women’s College, said President Carol Leary.

“We spent a good amount of time looking at various locations, but Springfield was at the top of our list because we have our roots there going back to 1897,” she said, adding that school administrators fell in love with the culture at 1350 Main St.

And by culture, she meant everything from its focus on the arts — there are several galleries there — to its eatery to its eclectic mix of tenants.

“You have a feel, when you enter this place, that it’s more than an office building,” she explained, adding that the 11,805 square feet now in use hosts roughly 40 full-time employees.

And they are certainly contributing to the health of the local economy, said Leary, who attended college in Boston, understands and appreciates how higher education adds vibrancy to a city, and enjoys being part of that equation locally.

“I love the energy of a city, so I’ve enjoyed it, and our staff enjoys it,” she noted. “And we’re definitely pumping some money into the economy.”

Cooper said Springfield College’s ties to the City of Homes obviously run even deeper, and they certainly played a part in the school’s decision to lease some space at 1350 Main St.

She said she was having lunch downtown with trustee vice chair Jim Ross, when the discussion turned to the city, it’s central business district, and the many things happening there. “We talked about MGM, the rebirth of the city, transportation … everything,” she recalled, adding that the conversation eventually evolved into a discussion about if and how to become part of it — or a bigger part.

Actually, Cooper says she’s been asked several times since she arrived in the fall of 2013 about the school establishing a presence downtown. She was intrigued by the questions, in part because, in many ways, she thought the school was already downtown.

It is only a few miles as the crow flies from Main Street, she acknowledged, adding quickly that, through her lunch talk with Ross, she came to the conclusion that a direct presence in the CBD was an appropriate step.

Bay Path University President Carol Leary

Bay Path University President Carol Leary says the school’s space at 1350 Main St. has plenty of room for expansion.

Fast-forwarding a little, Ross and the college are now essentially sharing space on 1350’s second floor. The former conference room for a bank has been converted into a conference room and two offices, one for Cooper and one for Ross.

It’s not a big presence, certainly, and its specific uses have yet to be determined, but the college is now a part of what is becoming an increasingly larger and more impactful whole, said Cooper, who, when asked what she has in mind for the space besides receptions, told BusinessWest the same thing she told her board.

“I want people to think about the possibilities,” she said, listing everything from candidate interviews to leadership team sessions to subcommittee meetings involving the many boards she’s on.

But she wants that’s phrase ‘think about the possibilities’ to extend well beyond how the school’s physical space may be used.

Indeed, she said the expanding higher-ed presence downtown may well inspire and facilitate additional collaborative efforts involving a host of area schools, and eventually generate more opportunities to pair area students with downtown businesses through internships and other programs.

“Part of my agenda is to facilitate a move toward collaboration between the colleges and universities,” she said. “I think that would be good for individual schools, better for all our students, and better for the community.”

Class Acts

As she gave BusinessWest  a quick tour of the Bay Path suite of offices, Leary, who spends two full days a week downtown, stopped at the spacious kitchen. It is very well-stocked and outfitted with every necessary appliance.

There are also several round tables and chairs arranged café-style. They get a decent amount of use, said Leary, but many of those working at the downtown location prefer to eat out, and do so quite regularly.

Many are also members of the gym upstairs, she went on, adding that membership was paid by the landlord the first year (another perk of tenantship), but several employees are staying on even though the cost has shifted to them.

Meanwhile, Hot Table’s hours have expanded; the store that UMass operates on the ground floor at Tower Square, the UMass Marketplace, has expanded its food offerings; and Griesemer said there have been more than a few conversations lately about the lines at most downtown eateries getting longer — and how that’s a good thing.

But the more serious talk is about how the proliferation of colleges downtown will have a much deeper impact than a bottom-line bounce for downtown dining establishments.

Indeed, those we spoke with talked about the potential for more and deeper collaborations and of that aforementioned ‘magnet effect.’

Griesemer relayed some recent discussions that more than suggested that the schools are helping to foster an environment that may draw more draw more employers — and employees — to the central business district.

“We’ve had a few nonprofits say to us, ‘we’re interested in moving into downtown Springfield because you have,’” she said. “There are already several in the tower and room for many more.”

Sarno agreed, and noted that the critical mass of students, employees, and administrators created by the movement of higher education into the downtown area will only facilitate efforts to create more market-rate housing there, which is considered one of the keys to generating more vibrancy and additional retail.

“I think this will help in our push for market-rate housing,” he explained. “And the more pedestrian traffic you can have matriculating from the North End to the South End, the more beneficial it will be to bringing in spin-off businesses.”

When asked if there was a model for a larger, more sophisticated education hub that Springfield could aspire to, she said there are several, including Phoenix.

“There are examples of places where you had a single higher-education institution put down a footprint and others followed, like Arizona State,” Griesemer explained. “There is still room for considerable growth in Springfield when it comes to this hub.”

While the current picture is one defined by enthusiasm, and there is considerable optimism about what might come next, the immediate forecast is at least somewhat clouded by two concurrent, and massive, construction projects that will certainly impact access to the downtown — MGM’s South End casino and reconstruction of the I-91 viaduct.

“We absolutely are concerned about that,” said Forte, noting that accessibility is a key factor in the success of the downtown location. “But we’re also hopeful that the city and highway department will be considerate of our population and create traffic alternatives that will not cause great impact for us.”

Sarno said the city — not to mention the contractor handling the I-91 work — is certainly incentivized to do just that, and also get the project done on time.

“So far, so good — communication has been great, and they’re ahead of schedule … and there are 9 million reasons why this contractor wants to get phase one done ahead of time,” said the mayor, citing the bonus put in place by the state for accomplishing that feat. “This had to be done, and we’re hoping to keep the disruption to a minimum.”

Study in Possibilities

As she wrapped up her tour of Bay Path’s facilities, Leary spent a few moments in the cluttered, currently unused space on the seventh floor into which the school could, and likely will, expand.

“I can see us filling all of this someday,” she said, sweeping her arm across the area. “We’re not done yet down here.”

With those sentiments, she spoke for seemingly everyone that is now part of this education hub in the central business district.

In fact, by almost all accounts, those within this key sector are just getting started.

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

Education Sections

A Second Chance

Angela Gonzalez and Eboni Lopez

Angela Gonzalez and Eboni Lopez say Phoenix Academy Charter School in Springfield has helped them become successful.

Kayliana De La Cruz was quite candid as she talked about what her freshman year of school was like at Commerce High School.

“I had put a hard shell around myself and stopped caring,” said the 18-year-old from Springfield. “I kept everything inside; my face was like stone.”

Her attitude was reflected in her academic track record: she missed 100 out of 180 days and received horrible grades. “They kept me putting me in credit recovery, which meant sitting in front of a computer, and I just didn’t care,” she recalled.

Everything changed when a representative from Phoenix Academy Public Charter High School in Springfield gave a presentation at Commerce and her guidance counselor suggested she fill out an application.

She took the advice, albeit reluctantly. And although she initially found the stringent rules at Phoenix “really annoying,” today De La Cruz is — in her opinion and that of those around her — a much different person.

The transformation — very much still in progress — results from a combination of small classes, endless support, and the feeling of family generated within the school, which has has broken through her barriers and motivated her to succeed.

“Phoenix is a place where people rise from the ashes and get the chance to start again,” she told BusinessWest, as she wiped tears from her eyes and spoke about the help and personal attention that have led to her laudatory achievements.

“I’m a little softie now. I am doing really well. I’m running for student president, and I help a lot of other students,” she explained. “Everything is just coming naturally now.

“I passed the MCAS exam, and I really want to go to college,” she went on. “And if I see other students leaving the building, I tell them they better have a good excuse. Phoenix has made a real difference in my life. If I hadn’t come here, I don’t know where I would be right now.”

The teen’s high praise is mirrored in stories from other students who told BusinessWest they felt like failures and were ready to drop out before they found a safety net in the new downtown charter school, located within the Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College.

“Our mission is to challenge students with rigorous academics and relentless support so they can recast themselves as resilient, self-sufficient adults in order to succeed in high school and beyond,” said Head of School Mickey Buhl.

He said the key to the school’s success is not just small classes, but the multi-faceted support and encouragement students receive from teachers so dedicated that many are there until 7 p.m. each night helping young people master their assignments.

“Their economic futures would be bleak without a high-school diploma, and our school creates an opportunity for them to move into a middle-class life; it’s our reason for being,” he said, adding that students cannot graduate from Phoenix until they have a letter of acceptance to a college, and groups have been taken to visit Boston University, Salem State University, UConn, Yale, and other institutions of secondary learning.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest goes inside the recently constructed walls of this unique facility to discover the reasons for its success and why it is worthy of the name on the door.

Network of Hope

The charter school, which opened its doors in September 2014 in temporary quarters, is part of the Phoenix network. Its first school was founded a decade ago in Chelsea; the second was an alternative public high school in Lawrence, which Phoenix was asked to run when the town went into receivership; and the third is its Springfield location, which serves students in Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke.

Students wear uniforms and are given a free Pioneer Valley Transit Authority bus pass to get to school, where the day runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the exception of Fridays, when the hours are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“We serve students ages 14 to 22 who need a second chance because they have not been successful in a traditional school,” said Buhl. “I was working today with a student who dropped out six years ago.”

He noted that many of these ‘scholars,’ which is the name given to all students, either left school or planned to due to continued failure and frustration.

Operations Director Angela Gonzalez is a graduate of Phoenix’s flagship school in Chelsea. She did well as a public high-school freshman, but lost interest in her sophomore year. Her mother was extremely strict, and once she discovered she could leave school or skip it entirely and they wouldn’t call her home, she began taking advantage of the newfound freedom.

That changed when a truant officer saw the teen on the streets. When she was taken back to school, she was told she would have to repeat the year because she had been absent 75 times, which meant she wouldn’t graduate with her class.

Gonzalez was referred to, and signed up for, Phoenix Academy, and although she had no plans to attend classes, a school official came to her house if she didn’t show up to change that equation.

“My mother would send him into my bedroom, and he told me I had 20 minutes to get up and get ready. And it worked,” she said, adding that the support she received and the knowledge that people cared so much about her was inspiring.

Mickey Buhl and Corey Yang

Mickey Buhl and Corey Yang say the support and personal attention scholars receive at Phoenix inspire them to achieve more than they thought possible.

“I could sit with the principal at lunch and share how I felt,” Gonzalez said, adding that the school’s leader was instrumental in keeping her on track when she got pregnant during January of her senior year.

“I thought I had ruined my life, but there was never any judgment — it was all about moving forward,” she recalled, adding that she is happy to be working at Phoenix, where she can give other students the same encouragement she enjoyed.

The school has a no-excuses policy, and Buhl said the staff has very high academic expectations. “We need the students to establish a new image and think of themselves as scholars,” he told BusinessWest, adding that society has labeled his students failures, and they feel that way when they arrive.

“But they do become scholars here; they are smart and have abilities and talents,” he noted. “Just because they have hard things knock them off track doesn’t mean they can’t achieve the same academic outcome as other students.”

By the Book

To meet that goal, classes are kept small by design, and many students stay after school for extra help. In addition, there is a voluntary Saturday session established by a teacher who conducts the sessions without pay.

“Our teachers really buy into the mission that we’re here to help students, and they are committed to helping them recast themselves as successful academically and personally,” Buhl said. “Our goal is to break through obstacles and change the scholar’s direction, and our teachers’ patience and extra effort are really remarkable. They invest heavily in their relationships with the kids.”

For example, many conduct home visits, even though it’s not required, and some go to appointments with students that range from court to counseling, while others take students shopping.

“We don’t succeed with every kid, but we do hold them to strict academic, behavioral, and attendance standards because we know they will have to overcome obstacles if they want to go to college and get a job to support themselves and their families,” Buhl explained. “They have to be resilient enough to overcome their pasts.”

He added that some students dropped out last year, but returned in the fall. “We tell them we will never lower our standards, but if they fail they can come back and try again.”

Community support also plays heavily into the equation.

“I have been a principal for 15 years in elementary, middle, and high school, and have never had support like this,” Buhl said. “There are at least 50 community agencies that we have partnered with to serve our scholars.”

They include organizations like the Young Parenting Program, the Department of Youth Services — some students are on probation or involved with the court system — and Springfield Public Schools. The latter works with Phoenix very effectively, and guidance counselors and principals frequently refer parents and their teens to the charter school.

Healthy Families is another nonprofit that connects with teachers and staff to coordinate services such as counseling, home support, and transportation. And the school has received a tremendous amount of help from STCC and the Technology Park.

“They’re a big reason why we are here; they wanted a school in this building, and the Technology Park has been integrally involved in our development,” Buhl said, explaining that, when Phoenix opened last year, classes were housed in a variety of rooms in the park while a building was renovated for it.

The school was completed in time for a September opening and includes its own day-care center, which is important because many students drop out because they get pregnant and have no one to watch their baby or children.

“We call it the Little Scholar Center,” Buhl said, adding that everyone in the school — staff, students, and the little scholars (if their parents choose) eat lunch together at the same time, which allows them to form close relationships.

Americorps volunteers also spend time at the school, tutoring students for the MCAS exams. And although staff members understand that the young people they are working with have a wide range of experiences, which can include being expelled or suspended from other schools, standards are rigid, and no exceptions are made.

Change of Heart

On a recent day, Anaeishly De Jesus sat in the principal’s office and proudly pulled an exam out of her book bag.

“I just got this back; it’s my history midterm, and I got an 89,” she said, wiping joyous tears from her eyes, as she spoke about her newfound academic success. “I’m getting A’s now. I was never like this before, but this school has changed me. I feel at home; the people are my family.”

It’s a far cry from where De Jesus was when she started at Phoenix; she cried bitter tears when she was told she was being sent to the charter school.

“I had been making bad choices, skipping classes, and disrupting teachers,” the 17-year-old said. “But I didn’t care because I was going to drop out.”

Anaeishly De Jesus and Kayliana De La Cruz

Anaeishly De Jesus and Kayliana De La Cruz say they are doing well in school thanks to the second chance Phoenix offered.

That changed as soon as she sat down in her first class at Phoenix. She felt comfortable and said the support since that time has been amazing. “If I do something bad, they don’t throw it in my face,” De Jesus noted, explaining, however, that students get demerits for things like chewing gum, having their phone out, or cursing.

“I didn’t ask for help at first, but my algebra teacher kept telling me she knew I could do the work,” she said. “I told her over and over that I couldn’t, but she insisted I could, and she sat down and showed me how.”

To her astonishment, she was able to follow the teacher’s instructions and completed the assignment.

“After that, I started finishing all my work, and also did my homework. It gives me energy to know that people actually care and want me to be successful in life,” she went on. “They give you a lot of chances here, and if you make a mistake, they still stand by your side. Kids can come here until they are 22, and you don’t get a GED; you get a real diploma.”

The belief that students can and will change if they are repeatedly encouraged and given another chance to do well is exemplified by Eboni Lopez, who transferred to Phoenix from Commerce High School.

“I used to skip classes, skip school, and was hanging out with the wrong crowd,” she said, adding she was going through some difficult life situations, which included being bullied.

She attended classes at Phoenix last year but remained unmotivated. However, this year, the 17-year-old has set ambitious goals for herself.

“I didn’t want to be here when I was 20, and knew I needed to change, so I put my foot down. I’m getting good grades, and my attendance is good now, too,” she said, adding that she is looking forward to graduating next year, enjoys playing soccer at school, and is interested in a career as an athletic trainer.

“I feel like I fit in this building,” Lopez said. “The people here push us to do everything we need to do. You have to meet the standards, and I don’t want to waste time. I am trying to get back on top.”

Corey Yang also attended Commerce before starting at Phoenix in September. At Commerce, he said, he was frustrated because he wasn’t making any progress and his teachers weren’t offering him extra help, even though he needed and wanted it.

The teen felt alone and unsupported, so he left school early each day or skipped it entirely, and was failing as a result. “I like learning new things, but I wasn’t getting anything out of school,” he told BusinessWest.

But that has changed since he entered Phoenix.

“I’ve met new people and am working hard,” he said, noting that he has attended the Saturday sessions because the teacher is a former wrestling coach and sets aside time for teens to wrestle under his supervision if they choose to do so, which Yang enjoys.

“I wanted to change and start trying; I wanted to see what would happen if I pushed myself,” he said.

And he has done exactly that, thanks to unprecedented support. “People want to help me with my work here and will also help get me into college,” the 16-year-old said, adding that his goal is to study computer engineering after graduation.

Expanding Opportunities

Last year, Phoenix accepted 125 students. This year, it has 175, and next year, it plans to accept 250 young people who need and want a second chance.

It’s a place where encouragement never ends. Twice a week there is a community meeting with the entire school body, and students and staff give each other shout-outs, recognize each other’s work with beads, and even publicly choose to apologize for inappropriate behaviors.

“Phoenix symbolizes rising after you have been burned, so students who have been kicked out of other schools always get a second chance here,” De La Cruz said. “To me, it’s a really amazing symbol.”

Education Sections

Storehouse of History

Building 19

Above: an architect’s rendering of a renovated Building 19. Below left: a late-19th-century shot of the structure, which served primarily as a warehouse for the Armory.

Building19-1865

It’s called Building 19. That’s the number the federal government attached to the structure at the Springfield Armory that eventually grew to 660 feet in length and was used to store hundreds of thousands of rifle stocks at a time. Despite its historical and architectural significance (its first portion was completed 14 years before the Civil War started), the building has essentially been lost to time, serving as a storehouse for unwanted equipment that those at Springfield Technical Community College, which moved into the Armory complex in 1967, can’t simply throw away. But plans have been blueprinted to make ‘19’ the new center of the campus.

Springfield Technical Community College President Ira Rubenzahl likes to say the school moved into the historic Springfield Armory site back in 1967 … “and it’s been moving in ever since.”

Elaborating, he said the process of converting former Armory manufacturing buildings, office space, officers’ quarters, and other structures into classrooms, administration areas, and assorted other academic facilities hasn’t really ceased since it first began back when Lyndon Johnson patrolled the White House.

And the latest, and perhaps most ambitious, example of this phenomenon in the college’s nearly-50-year history is the planned conversion of the structure known as Building 19, which was once a warehouse that held more than a half-million rifle stocks at any given time, into the home for a host of facilities ranging from the library to the financial-aid office to the bookstore.

“It’s going to be the centerpiece of the campus,” said Rubenzahl, who took the helm at the school in 2004 and has overseen several projects involving reuse of old Armory buildings. He noted that, while there are still some hurdles to clear, especially final appropriation of the $50 million this undertaking will cost, the project is rounding into shape.

Gov. Charlie Baker visited the region late last month to announce $3 million in state funding for what amounts to final designs for the project, which will make use of all 660 feet of this intriguing structure, which is historically and architecturally significant, said Rubenzahl.

Indeed, Building 19 is the only standing structure in this country that can be called a caserne, a French term for a combination military barracks and stables, although it was never actually used for that purpose. From the beginning, which in this case means 1846, when the first of four sections of the building was completed, it has served primarily as a storage facility.

“It wasn’t used as a stables, but it looks like one,” he explained, “because it’s built on the model of a caserne, which had the cavalry horses on the first floor and the cavalry officers living above them. It’s not a replica; it’s the U.S. Army’s version of what this might look like in the United States.”

The building’s ground floor has dozens of arched entrances, or openings, which will allow for a great deal of creativity when it comes to design of the spaces inside while dispensing a huge amount of natural light, said Rubenzahl. Meanwhile, the second floor features an equal number of large, slightly curved windows, which can be used to shape unique, desirable working and studying spaces.

“We’re told that 40% of the exterior walls are entrances, which is very unusual,” he said. “We have all these arches, so you can make an entrance anywhere you want. And then you can do some nice things with light; it’s going to be very dramatic.”

The renovation of Building 19 is likely to commence sometime next year, said Rubenzahl, and while it won’t be ready for the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2017 that are now being blueprinted, it should be open for business the following year.

STCC President Ira Rubenzahl

STCC President Ira Rubenzahl says that, if renovated as planned, Building 19 would become the new center of the campus.

Overall, the ‘new’ Building 19 will reorient the campus, with the focus shifting from Garvey Hall to the renovated structure, and centralize it as well, in a way that will add needed convenience to students and staff alike.

“This will help organize the campus in a way that it’s never been organized before,” he explained. “From the beginning, the college took this space, then it took that space, and said, ‘we need something for this … we’ll put it over here.’ There was never a master plan to organize the functions in a coherent way that would help the students.

“That’s what we’re doing with Building 19,” he went on, “and it will be a huge step forward.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at the ambitious plans for Building 19, and how they would change the landscape at STCC — in every sense of that word.

Blast from the Past

In recent years, Rubenzahl told BusinessWest — actually, since the day the college opened — students could spend their entire time at the school and never really notice Building 19, as large as it is, other than to walk by it on the journey from the parking lots off Pearl Street to the classroom buildings in the center of the campus, constructed in the ’80s on the site of former Armory buildings.

All that will change if funding is approved and construction starts as scheduled, he went on, and by September 2018, the structure would be the undisputed hub of the campus.

This startling transformation has been decades in the making, he went on, adding that discussions concerning what to do with Building 19 have been ongoing — at different levels of intensity, to be sure — since the college’s earliest days, when it was known as the Springfield Technical Institute (STI).

That was in the fall of 1967, roughly three years after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announced that the federal government would decommission the Armory, built in the late 18th century on a site chosen by George Washington, and about 18 months after city officials lost a pitched battle to keep it open.

Soon after those efforts failed — or years and even decades before that, depending on whom one talks to — officials began eyeing the site as a possible home for a college, especially the west side of Federal Street, with its long brick buildings and large courtyard.

In those early days, STI and the Armory actually co-existed as the latter was decommissioned, with the school gradually occupying more of the Armory buildings in the years to follow. Building 16, as it was called, the Armory’s main administration building, served the college in that same capacity, and eventually became known as Garvey Hall in honor of the school’s first president, Edmond Garvey.

Meanwhile, Building 27 became home to the school’s library; Building 20, one of the youngest structures on the property, dating back to the 1940s, would house most health programs; and a series of buildings on the east side of Federal Street, first home to GE and then Digital Equipment Corp., became the Technology Park at Springfield Technical Community College, now home to dozens of businesses and, most recently, a charter school.

As for Building 19, well, it has been used almost exclusively for storage, said Rubenzahl, adding that, over the decades, all manner of equipment and supplies have wound up there — and remained there for years.

Indeed, as he offered BusinessWest a tour of the facilities, he walked past everything from long-obsolete computers to rusting air conditioners to an old phonograph.

“We’re a state agency, and that means we’re not allowed to throw things out,” he explained, adding that disposing of all equipment or identifying other potential users is a laborious, time-consuming process that certainly helps explain why such items accumulate.

Building 19, seen in the background

Building 19, seen in the background in front of Armory buildings torn down to make way for new classroom buildings, has historical and architectural significance.

Soon, these objects — and their numbers have been dwindling recently — will have to reside somewhere else because Building 19 will be getting a serious interior facelift and new lease on life.

As he talked about it on a hot summer’s afternoon, Rubenzahl walked the length of both floors and pointed to the third, a windowless, loft-like area, talking about how each will be repurposed.

The ground floor, with those arched entrances, will become home to a number of offices, including admissions, registration, financial aid, and others, and also the bookstore, currently located in Building 20, he said, adding that the space throughout the building is dominated by columns, which makes it far more suitable for offices and student uses than for classroom space.

The second floor, meanwhile, will house the library and other student services, he said, adding that facilities will be placed toward the center of the spaces, generating maximum benefit from all those windows.

Overall, the building is in good condition, he noted, and while the older structures pose challenges, they were in many ways overbuilt because of their intended uses, and have stood the test of time.

“They were built by the Army, they were built for weapons storage in some cases, and they’re just very solidly constructed,” he explained. “Structurally, these buildings have great integrity, so in many ways, they’re good buildings to renovate.”

Building Momentum

When the renovation project is complete, Rubenzahl said, the campus will have tens of thousands of square feet of space to repurpose — in Building 16, the library, and other structures — and these developments create opportunities for the college, the Commonwealth, and perhaps the community as well.

Meanwhile, there are other projects to tackle, including Building 20, the largest structure on the campus, which is partly in use (the first three floors are occupied), but there are a number of infrastructure issues.

A master plan is being developed for the entire campus, said Rubenzahl, adding that the Armory complex offers a wealth of opportunities but also myriad challenges.

And that explains why the college that moved in 48 years ago is still moving in.


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

Education Sections

A New Test for a Turnaround Specialist

Stephen Zrike

Stephen Zrike says he’s still in the “listening phase” of the process of turning around Holyoke’s schools.

From the start of his career, Stephen Zrike has had a fascination with what would be called ‘urban education.’

He got a strong taste of this genre, for lack of a better term, while working in a number of positions in Boston, including principal, leadership coach, and ‘turnaround principal,’ and developed a real passion for it as chief of elementary schools in Chicago, where he led instructional-improvement efforts across 26 K-8 schools with 18,000 students, 92% of whom were from low-income families.

He was a finalist a few years ago for a job he coveted — superintendent of New Bedford’s school system — but didn’t prevail in that search, settling instead for the superintendent’s post in Wakefield, which is near home (the Boston area) but wouldn’t exactly be considered urban.

But this past spring, Zrike landed a different version of his dream job, and perhaps an even sterner challenge, when he was appointed receiver for the Holyoke Public Schools by Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester.

The appointment puts him in a place he wants to be, both literally — one of the Commonwealth’s so-called gateway cities (Boston and New Bedford are also in that group) — and figuratively, in a position to lead a turnaround.

“This was the kind of opportunity I was looking for,” he said. “My heart and passion has been in urban education, and from a young professional age I wanted to be a superintendent of a gateway city — these communities are very intriguing to me.”

Holyoke’s situation is uncommon. Only two other Massachusetts systems have been in receivership: Chelsea, which saw its schools turned over to Boston University and its School of Education in a landmark case, and Lawrence, now in its fourth year under receiver Jeff Riley. But, unlike those other two communities, officials in the Paper City did not exactly embrace this move.

In fact, they did quite the opposite, with most elected leaders, including Mayor Alex Morse, strongly opposing a state takeover of the system.

Overcoming this resistance is in many ways Zrike’s first challenge, and be believes he’s making considerable progress in achieving a buy-in.

“There was certainly skepticism coming in, but I believe there’s more optimism now — cautious optimism, to be sure,” he noted. “I knew coming in that it was important to build relationships with people who have a lot of pride in this city, care deeply about Holyoke, and have lived here for a long time.”

The next steps in the process will be much more difficult — creating an action plan for turning around the city’s schools, and then executing it. The first part of that assignment is well underway, he said, adding that the plan will be multi-faceted in its approach and address everything from high-school graduation rates to the role of preschool programs.

As for the latter, Zrike said there is no set timetable on the project, and he has made at least a three-year commitment to achieving the ultimate goal — returning control of Holyoke’s schools to the city.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length about the means to that end, and how Zrike — and Holyoke — intend to pass their respective tests.

Study in Determination

Zrike told BusinessWest that his wife’s family has roots in Holyoke. In fact, her grandfather was one of the founders of the city’s fabled St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

He said much of what he knew about this planned industrial city and its schools was gleaned through conversations with those relatives.

“They conveyed a lot of pride in the community, and they had a lot of questions about the schools, which they had seen as being very successful for their children, now in their 40s,” he said, adding that his unstated job description is to restore that pride.

And, as mentioned earlier, he will bring to that assignment a diverse résumé dominated by experience in urban settings.

A graduate of Dartmouth University, where he majored in history, Zrike would later enroll in the Urban Superintendents Program within the Graduate School of Education at Harvard, earning both his master’s degree and doctorate there.

He focused on administration in urban settings after starting out as a fifth-grade teacher in the Andover public-school system, and later became principal of John D. Philbrook School in Boston.

From there, he was assigned the task of orchestrating a turnaround at one of the Hub’s largest elementary schools, William H. Ohrenberger School, and a year later was given the same challenge (this time in the official capacity of ‘turnaround principal’) at William Blackstone School.

Only eight months into that assignment, though, he left for the Windy City, a job as an assistant superintendent, and his broad role with its elementary schools. In that capacity, he said he worked with school leaders and their instructional leadership teams to assess the needs of their schools through the analysis of student outcomes, and then “develop goals, a targeted theory of action, and a school-improvement plan.”

In simplistic terms, he’ll be doing much the same thing for Holyoke’s two high schools, its middle school, a lone K-3 facility, seven K-8 schools, and an early-childhood center.

He arrived in July, and when he talked with BusinessWest as school was set to start this fall, he said he was very much still in what he called the “listening stage,” while working to soften the strong resistance to Holyoke’s receivership status.

“There’s a strong sense of urgency, but it’s also important to acknowledge the enthusiasm people feel about the schools and this city,” he said, adding that, in addition to that enthusiasm, he has encountered considerable frustration and a desire for progress.

In addition to his diverse background, Zrike brings to the job a fascination for the state’s gateway cities, mostly older manufacturing centers, and their school systems. In Andover, he gained an appreciation for the challenges in neighboring Lawrence, and his roles in Boston and Chicago offered myriad opportunities to learn and hone his skills.

Wakefield offered a different kind of experience, he said, adding that, when the state forced Holyoke into receivership early last year, he sought out the opportunity to lead the comeback efforts here.

School of Thought

Zrike noted that Holyoke’s schools didn’t arrive at this state — what’s known in education circles as ‘level 5,’ the lowest level of performance it shares with only Lawrence — overnight, and they won’t achieve turnaround status that quickly either.

Elaborating, he said there are many factors that contribute to a school system declining to level 5, ranging from ineffective use of resources to failure to meet the needs of some students.

“I think our population has shifted, and as a system we need to adapt to the needs of our students and our families,” he explained. “I think our families are really disconnected, in general, from the educational process, and if you talk to many of our parents, particularly low-income parents, they don’t have a lot of confidence and trust in the school system, and that doesn’t bode well in terms of performance outcomes.

“If they would rather send their kids to a different school … that’s not the level of investment and confidence that we would want in our schools,” he went on. “We need to do better with regard to supporting children who are developing English, and we have many students who come with social and emotional needs, and I think our system needs to continue to improve when it comes to meeting those needs. It’s hard for a child to learn if they don’t feel safe or comfortable, or if there are social or emotional challenges getting in the way of their learning.”

While focusing on students and their needs, Zrike went on, the system must also do a better job of working with teachers and staff to improve morale and involve them in the decisions regarding how the schools will be run.

“I think we’ve disempowered our educators,” he told BusinessWest, “and if you look at successful school systems, urban or suburban, educators have a voice in the change process, and I’m a big believer that morale is critically important in the success of any organization.

“And, unfortunately, I believe the teaching profession has been much maligned across the country and across the state,” he continued, “and we have to do a much better job of not only recruiting strong teachers, but retaining, supporting, and developing our quality people. We have some really quality educators in Holyoke, and we have to make sure we hang on to them.”

The process of returning the schools to the city begins with a strategic plan, Zrike noted, adding that such a plan is now being drafted with the input of a stakeholders group and should be ready by early October at the latest. He has also met with a host of groups and constituencies, including the School Committee, now acting in a purely advisory role, to gain input.

Overall, that plan is designed to enable the system to hit the quantitative targets necessary for the schools to be returned to city control. There are targets for everything from graduation rates (Holyoke currently has the lowest rate among gateway cities) and dropout rates, attendance, reading proficiency, and other student outcomes, he said, adding that the basic mission is to achieve continuous improvement.

One key measure is something called the student growth percentile, he said, adding this is a metric that compares how students do relative to peers that perform similarly the prior year across the state.

“Are you adding more growth than the average teacher or school?” That’s what this measures, he said, adding that Holyoke has obviously lagged in this realm in recent years.

Zrike noted that the strategic plan isn’t likely to identify any problems that Holyoke hasn’t been addressing for years. But it will provide a firm blueprint, and the receiver will have the requisite power to carry out that plan in a quicker, more effective manner.

“The receivership allows for greater acceleration of what can take a long time in districts,” he explained. “It allows for greater flexibility and leverages more resources. I do think the district had put some measures in place that were important to move the needle with regard to performance, but the receivership allows for an acceleration of that.”

Stern Test

When asked to pinpoint what will ultimately allow Holyoke to effectively send him off to his next challenge in urban education, Zrike said that, in many ways, it comes down to leadership — not in his office on Suffolk Street in the heart of the city’s downtown, necessarily, but in the city’s 11 school buildings.

“A big part of my theory of change involves strong leadership at the building level, the school level,” he told BusinessWest. “A district is only as strong as the teacher leaders and the principal leaders at the respective buildings. If you build that critical mass of people, then the system can sustain itself.”

Zrike’s unofficial job description is to build that critical mass. it will be a stern test, but one he believes he has the power — and, more importantly, the passion — to pass.

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

Education Sections

Root Geometry

Daniel Montagna says the UMass Center

Daniel Montagna says the UMass Center at Springfield is looking to build on the momentum gained during a solid first year.

Dan Montagna says he can easily quantify the success enjoyed by the UMass Center at Springfield during its initial year, as well as the momentum it gained for the second, which started earlier this month.

Indeed, the number of classes offered at the 26,000-square-foot facility in Tower Square increased from 20 in its first semester of operation a year ago to more than 25 this fall. And while he didn’t have an exact count when interviewed by BusinessWest — the so-called ‘add/drop period’ for many classes was still ongoing — he was quite certain that the number of students enrolled in classes in the state-of-the-art facility had increased markedly as well.

“Going from fall to spring, we saw a sharp increase in both the number of classes and programs, as well as enrollment,” said Montagna, who assumed the role of director of Operations at the center last spring. “And for the fall, it looks like a little bit of an uptick in the number of classes, but a potentially greater number of students who will be attending classes here.”

There were other measures of success, he went on, including the 275 or so community events of varying sizes staged at the center’s diverse facilities.

As for the other assignment put to him by BusinessWest  — qualifying how the center has fared with its mission of helping to bring vibrancy to downtown Springfield and provide new levels of convenience for area students — he said that was slightly more difficult, especially the first part of that equation.

And it will certainly take more than 12 months to effectively answer that question.

But he felt very confident saying that the center has established a firm foothold downtown, forged several strong working relationships with other area colleges, and already become a huge asset for the region.

“From our measures, it’s been a very successful start for the center,” he said, adding that the obvious goal is to build on that momentum. “It’s about growth, expansion of the academics, and seeing what other courses we can bring in and focus on concentration areas.

“As for the other side of the equation, the community-engagement side,” he continued, “the fact that we’ve been able to plant roots in the heart of downtown Springfield and host perhaps 300 community events has been outstanding, and something we continue to build on.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes a quick look back at the UMass Center’s first year in operation, and then puts the focus on how this facility can continue to gain momentum.

Course of Action

Montagna was on hand when the center opened its doors a year ago — and actually well before that — in the capacity of assistant director of operations.

He had taken that role after stints as a project manager for a private consulting firm that specialized in work with nonprofits, and, before that, as a program manager for the so-called Bay State Roads program, a state- and federally funded transportation initiative that provided technical assistance to officials in area communities. He said he joined the team at the UMass Center because he was intrigued by the center’s role with the university — and with the city of Springfield — and wanted to be a part of it.

“What attracted me to it was the concept of UMass bringing a campus to the downtown Springfield area,” he explained. “That immediately grabbed my attention, and as a local native, growing up in Agawam and living in the Pioneer Valley my whole life, I have a personal investment in the surrounding community.

“I’ve always been a cheerleader for Springfield doing better things,” he went on. “And the timing around the developments in the downtown, the revitalization efforts, along with the university making this investment and wanting to bring some of what they’re known for to the downtown area, was really exciting to me.”

He would take on a much bigger part last spring, when William Davila, the center’s first director of Operations, left to take a position with the Center for Human Development.

Montagna said his job description has a number of moving parts — from keeping the proverbial lights on to being a liaison to Tower Square management to being the face of the center within the community — but at its heart it’s fairly simple: to continually broaden the center’s impact in downtown Springfield and within the region’s higher-education sector. And, he said, a successful first year has provided a solid foundation on which to build.

“We want to focus on all aspects of our mission, building not only the scope of academic programs here, working with the campus communities,” he explained, “but also the community-engagement component; we want to be much more than a satellite campus.”

Elaborating, he told BusinessWest that the center can be classified using a number of nouns, starting with ‘facility.’

Indeed, it serves as a central location from which UMass Amherst and other colleges and universities can offer classes and other programs.

That location, as well as the large inventory of facilities — from large classrooms to varying-sized conference rooms to large study areas — also makes the center a resource, another of those nouns, said Montagna, adding that a wide array of nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and economic-development groups have staged meetings and other types of events there.

That list includes Springfield Public Schools, the United Way, the Department of Homeland Security (which staged a training program for local law-enforcement officers there), and the Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield.

As it carries out those roles, the center also serves as a “partnership,” he went on, adding that UMass Amherst collaborates with Westfield State University, UMass Boston, Springfield Technical Community College, and Holyoke Community College to provide convenient access to courses in a number of fields.

The center now hosts classes for several UMass Amherst programs, including the College of Nursing, which has a large presence there, as well as TEACH 180 Days in Springfield, the Isenberg School of Management’s part-time MBA program, and University Without Walls. Meanwhile, it also hosts UMass Boston’s Addictions Counselor Education Program; Adult Career Pathways, Adult Basic Education, community health training, and workforce-training programs from STCC and HCC; and a Community Planning course, which is a collaboration between the STCC, Westfield State, and UMass Amherst planning departments.

All of the above assures a steady flow of students and instructors into the center, which offers both day and night classes, said Montagna, adding that this critical mass inspires use of another term to describe the facility — catalyst.

And while there may be some objective gauges of the overall impact of the center — such as in the number of additional lattes sold at Dunkin Donuts or paninis at Hot Table on the ground floor at Tower Square — this is more of a subjective analysis at this point, he told BusinessWest, although those at the center continue to look for more ways to measure its impact.

“One of the things I’m really working on with my staff is the quantifying component,” he explained. “We’re trying to measure as much as we can; we’re trying to work toward more cohesive, more comprehensive tracking of our usage and our impact downtown.”

Overall, he believes the center is certainly contributing on the micro level — with receipts at area downtown restaurants, for example — and will eventually be impactful on the macro level as well, being one of a host of new facilities, businesses, and initiatives that make downtown a true destination.

Branching Out

Summing up the UMass Center’s first year of operation, Montanga said the initiative (there’s still another noun used to describe it) returned to that notion of putting down roots, noting that they have certainly taken a firm hold.

What develops from those roots remains to be seen, obviously, but he believes the center will grow into a vital contributor to the region’s economy, its ongoing efforts to create a large, capable workforce for the future, and the vibrancy of a downtown in the midst of a comeback.

In many respects, he said in conclusion, it is already all of the above.

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

Education Sections

An architect’s rendering of the planned Pope Francis High School.

An architect’s rendering of the planned Pope Francis High School.

Many of the decisions hanging over Cathedral High School — and Catholic education in this region — since the tornado ripped through Springfield in 2011 have been answered. The diocese will rebuild, it will merge Cathedral with Holyoke Catholic, it will name the new high school after Pope Francis, and it will build the new facility for a population of roughly 500 students. But much work remains, principally the task of generating momentum for Catholic education at all levels, and creating a system that is truly sustainable.

Paul Gagliarducci says it’s likely ground won’t be broken for the new Pope Francis High School — the institution resulting from the merger of Springfield Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic High Schools — until September 2016.

While the location for the school (the site of the old Cathedral, destroyed by the 2011 tornado) has been chosen — after months of weighing various options — as has the name and nickname (Cardinals), and a working architect’s rendering of the facility has been circulated, much work remains to be done before a shovel can be put on the ground, he noted.

Indeed, administrators must decide how many classrooms to include, the nature and size of those facilities, and myriad other specifics before architects can begin, let alone finalize, designs, said Gagliarducci.

And from the big picture perspective, administrators involved in this endeavor have much more to do than construct a new school, he went on. They are also building enthusiasm — and a student body — for this facility, while also ensuring its long-term sustainability.

And all this is reflected in the unofficial title Gagliarducci, former school superintendent for the Minnechaug region and Somers, Conn., and long-time education consultant, now carries with regard to this endeavor.

That would be ‘interim executive director of the Pope Francis High School project,’ an assignment of indeterminate length — “I’m here as long as it takes to get the job done” — that will involve everything from coordinating the merger of the two schools to building the new facility, to designing a new governing structure for the diocese, all at a time when there are huge question marks hanging over the institution of Catholic education in this region and around the country.

Those question marks are reflected in statistics kept by the National Catholic Educational Assoc. (NCEA), based in Arlington, Va. They show that enrollment is not only down considerably from the peak years for Catholic education in the early ’60s, when there were 5.2 million students enrolled in 13,000 schools across the nation, but that the decline is an ongoing phenomenon, with no apparent bottom in sight.

Paul Gagliarducci

Paul Gagliarducci says the unofficial goal for Pope Francis High School is to make it one of the few Catholic facilities that has a waiting list for students wishing to enroll.

Indeed, total Catholic enrollment was 2.42 million for the 2004-’05 school year, less than half what it was 40 years earlier; 2.12 million for ’09-’10; and 1.94 million for ’14-’15, a roughly 20% falloff over a decade. The rate of decline was even more severe for pre-school and K-8. Enrollment for that constituency was 1.8 million for ’04-’05, 1.52 million for ’09-’10, and 1.38 million for ’14-’15, a nearly 25% drop.

There are many reasons for this decline, said Sr. Dale McDonald, PBVM, Ph.D., director of Public Policy and Education Research for the NCEA, who cited everything from the recession that came near the middle of this statistical period, to a sharp drop in the number of priests and nuns who once taught in Catholic schools, to the financial woes facing a number of dioceses across the country.

Overall, though, sharply falling enrollment comes down to a continuing decline in the number of people both willing and able to pay the tuition ($9,000 on average nationwide at the high school level, and $3,800 at the elementary school level) for a Catholic education.

Over the past decade, decline in enrollment has averaged between 1.8% and 2.5% per year, and 21% of the schools have closed, McDonald went on, and there is little, if anything, to indicate that this trend will slow, let alone stop.

“Unless we have some serious interventions, enrollment will continue to decline and schools will continue to close,” she said, adding that by interventions, she meant actions that would enable more families to afford those tuition figures mentioned earlier.

Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic have certainly not been immune to these trends. At Cathedral, for example, enrollment was at or near 3,000 in the early ’70s, and stood at merely 400 when the tornado tore across Springfield on June 1, 2011.

The current trends and uncertainly concerning the future certainly played a factor in the lengthy discussion about whether to rebuild Cathedral, where, and how — and also in the preliminary design of the school and projected capacity — roughly 500 students.

That’s about 115 more than the combined enrollment of the two high schools at present, said Gagliarducci, adding that this number reflects both realism and confidence moving forward.

“Looking at the group of freshmen coming in, the class of 2019, has just over 100 students, and that’s a pretty good number,” he said, adding that this is the combined enrollment for both schools, “If we can maintain that 100 to 125 students, and I think we can, we’ll have our 400-500 students and something we can build on.” Such confidence, he went on, stems from everything from the impact of a new facility on those weighing their education options, to efforts to emphasize the value and benefits of a Catholic education.

But making the school accessible to families of all income levels will be crucial, and for this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest looks at that challenge and how it might be met.

Setting a Course

As he talked about his assignment, the Pope Francis High School project, moving forward, Gagliarducci said that while it doesn’t say as much on any formal or informal job description, his mission is to make the new facility one of those Catholic high schools that actually has a waiting list for enrollment.

Doing so will accomplish many things, he went on, listing everything from fiscal flexibility to greater prestige to long-term sustainability.

plan for the property on Surrey Road

While designs for the new school are still being finalized, the plan for the property on Surrey Road is coming into focus.

“Right now, people know we want them,” he said, referring to the current, and aggressive, recruiting efforts. “But if we can get to a point where we get 175 to apply and we only take the top 100 to 125, that’s going to bring some competition, and that’s going to be good for us; that’s what our hope is.”

Such an eventuality would have seemed impossible a few years ago, especially after Cathedral was relocated into a shuttered elementary school in Wilbraham months after the tornado — and this scenario still seems like a real stretch of the imagination to many.

But Gagliarducci and others involved with this endeavor believe such a fate is possible, if the school can focus on those two parts of the enrollment equation mentioned earlier, and put more people in those categories of individuals willing and able to pursue a Catholic education for their children.

Essentially, it will come down to the laws of supply and demand, and reversing the picture that has defined the scene both regionally and nationally for years — where demand doesn’t come close to approaching supply.

And that assignment will come down to a host of factors, said Tom Brodnicki, senior partner with Partners in Mission, a consulting firm specializing in Catholic education that has been hired by the diocese to help coordinate the merger of the high schools and raise money for the endowment fund.

He listed listing everything from building a market for Catholic education to growing the endowment so more students can attend; from broadening enrollment among certain demographic groups, such as the Hispanic population (more on that later), to convincing area parents that the sticker price for Pope Francis is a relative bargain; from building what he and others called a “culture of philanthropy” in the region, to convincing parents of the need to start saving early for a Catholic education for their children.

All of those action items would fall into that category of ‘interventions,’ as described by McDonald. The question is whether they will be enough to stem the current tide.

Indeed, creating a waiting list for Pope Francis will certainly be a challenge, said those we spoke with, noting that while there are, in fact, schools where demand exceeds supply (often where the supply has been reduced through a merger), there are many more that are closing their doors or merging with others, as has happened with the Springfield diocese.

Statistics from the NCEA show that while 27 new Catholic schools opened over this past school year, 88 consolidated or closed. And those numbers have become the trend over the past few decades, said McDonald, adding that the rate of closure and consolidation has actually slowed considerably because there are simply fewer schools left to take such steps.

And while the economy and even demographic trends have had something to do with these developments — the decline of many cities in the Rust Belt/Bible Belt has resulted in falling Catholic school enrollments in that traditional stronghold — tuition, the inability to meet it, and the fiscal difficulties that ensue, are the primary reasons.

“As tuition moves higher, fewer people are able to afford it,” McDonald noted. “But schools facing lower enrollment still have expenditures, or operating costs, and many of these costs are fixed or increasing dramatically, such as health insurance for teachers and staff.”

Per-pupil costs generally far exceed tuition and are met through fund-raising efforts by the diocese in question, she went on, adding that there is help available to families facing those tuitions costs ranging from scholarships to tax credits made available in many states.

But the burden is proving too steep for many, especially those families with several children in school at the same time, McDonald noted, adding that, overall, there is little prospect for improvement.

“Without programs that will provide help for families, it’s not a happy forecast in many respects,” she said, “when it comes to the ability of parents to continue to pay the tuition that’s required to have a quality education.”

One of the serious, and ongoing, challenges for those in Catholic education is attracting members of the Hispanic population, said Patricia Weitzel-O’Neill, president of the Barbara and Patrick Roche Center for Catholic Education at Boston College.

Hispanic populations are growing in most urban centers, including Springfield and Holyoke, and, overall, Hispanics comprise roughly 60% of the nation’s Catholic-school-age children (those ages 3 to 18), but only 2.3% of those children are enrolled in Catholic schools.

“This is the crux of the problem in Catholic education today,” she told BusinessWest, adding that there are several reasons behind that statistic, including the fact that many Hispanic parents did not attend Catholic schools, and doing so is not a “part of their culture.” But the inability to meet tuition costs is also a huge factor.

“One of the issues facing Catholic education today is the inability to recognize the need to diversify what we’re doing, to be much more welcoming, and to be more open to introducing and welcoming the second culture and the second language,” she said, adding that there is movement nationally to address the problem.

Crosses to Bear

It was in this environment that the Springfield diocese was forced to make critical decisions after Cathedral was essentially destroyed by the tornado.

And it took all of four years to make most of those decisions, including whether to rebuild, under what circumstances (eventually via a merger with Holyoke Catholic), where to build, and how big to build.

After surveying the landscape and analyzing the data, officials decided to build a 120,000-square-foot school that can handle a population of 500 students. That is a small fraction of the total number of Catholic high school students in this region from a typical year decades ago — and a figure smaller than many alums of those schools think is possible — but it is quite realistic, said Gagliarducci.

“Some people think we should be doing much better — some of the critics said earlier that this area should be able to support four high schools,” he said. “Dream on … that’s just not going to happen.”

But Gagliarducci stressed that the facility can, and hopefully will, be expanded to accommodate more students in the future.

Facilities such as the auditorium, gymnasium, and cafeteria are being designed for closer to 700 students, he went on, adding that they cannot be expanded later, and thus must be built accordingly. But additional classrooms and facilities can be added later.

Tom Brodnicki

Tom Brodnicki says that one challenge for the diocese is to convince parents that their tuitions costs are a sound investment.

When asked how the diocese intends to arrive at the point where Pope Francis will need to be expanded, Gagliarducci and Brodnicki went back to the laws of supply and demand.

By building a first-class facility — not only a new building, but one outfitted with the latest technology and offering attractive programs of study — they hope to build demand. And it will take more than a new structure, because several area communities, including Longmeadow, West Springfield, Wilbraham (Minnechaug), and Chicopee (two facilities) have opened new state-of-the-art high schools in the past decade.

“The key is to develop a program that parents can get excited about,” Gagliarducci explained. “But ultimately, if I’m deciding as a parent to send my child to Pope Francis High School, I’m doing so because I believe in a strong religious education for my kids, so that has to be the paramount thing that’s going to attract people.

“But then you have to follow that up with a rich academic program,” he went on, “one where, at the end of four years, students are getting into the college of their choice; that’s very important.”

By growing an endowment, meanwhile, they intend to increase accessibility. Also, with economies of scale gained through the merger, they expect Pope Francis to be an efficient operation, one better suited to manage through the time it will take to build the endowment and grow enrollment.

“We believe that with the new facility and some of the excitement that it builds — along with this endowment fund, which will help with the affordability factor for some families — that a school with a projected enrollment of 500 is within reason,” said Brodnicki. “The real key is the level of academic excellence that’s provided, and convincing people that they are making a valuable investment in their children’s future.”

Elaborating, Brodnicki and Gagliarducci said Catholic education has not gone out of favor — it has simply become a less-appealing option for many families due to its cost.

The initial goal for the endowment, set by Bishop Timothy McDonnell, who retired last year, was $10 million. But Gagliarducci and Brodnicki want to set the bar higher to broaden accessibility and therefore meet demand.

Approximately one third of the 200 students now attending Cathedral receive a substantial amount of financial assistance to attend, said Brodnicki, adding that a large endowment and other forms of philanthropy will enable more low-income families to attend the school.

But to achieve sustainability, the new school must be able to attract students across all income levels, said Gagliarducci, adding that the goal is to continue the current breakdown — where roughly one third of the students pay full tuition, another third get some support, and the rest get substantial assistance — only with a larger student population.

Building Momentum

Surveying the national Catholic education scene, Brodnicki, who has had a front row seat to the changing landscape and has worked in a number of major metropolitan areas, said most cities are experiencing declines consistent with the statistics quoted by McDonald.

The Boston area is a notable exception, he added quickly, noting that most Catholic schools there are thriving, in part because the economy is more robust, but more so because of strong philanthropic support from wealthy individuals, many of whom are graduates of those schools and now serve on their boards of trustees.

“A few things happened in Boston,” said Brodnicki. “First, the economy took off; second, there is incredible wealth and a strong tradition of philanthropy. There are a number of Catholic individuals who have come together and made a firm commitment to Catholic education, especially the inner-city schools.”

The Western Mass. Catholic community can’t expect to approach that level of support, he went on, but it can — and, in essence, must — build a stronger base of philanthropic generosity if it hopes to create a sustainable Catholic education system.

And he said Cathedral, and to a lesser extent Holyoke Catholic, has a large alumni base, with many individuals in a position to provide support. The diocese must be more aggressive in reaching out to alums and making its case for support, he went on.

“Cathedral has a reputation for having many well-known graduates who have achieved wealth,” Brodnicki explained. “We’re going to go and visit those folks and lay out the case for support.”

While building a stronger base of support through its endowment and other forms of philanthropy, the Springfield diocese must also more aggressively promote Catholic education and convince current young parents, as well as those that will follow them, that it is a viable option and worthwhile investment.

Part of this equation involves making Catholic education more of a K-12 phenomenon, said those we spoke with, who again cited the more-rapid rate of enrollment decline at the elementary school level.

Springfield is a good example of that trend; not long ago there were five Catholic elementary schools in the city, but by the time the tornado touched down, they had been merged into one — St. Michael’s Academy.

Meanwhile, the diocese, as it goes about selling the new high school, must also sell a Catholic education, and this one in particular, as an investment, rather than as an expense that must somehow be met.

“People often view that $9,000 as tuition, not necessarily as an investment, Brodnicki explained. “We have to show someone who’s looking at spending $40,000 on their child’s education that, on average, graduates of Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic are receiving scholarship opportunities that average in the $80,000 to $90,000 range; people have essentially doubled their money in four years. Give me a stock that will do that, and I’m all over it.”

Grade Expectations

How well Gagliarducci, Brodnicki, and the diocese fare with the many aspects of the Pope Francis High School project remains to be seen. With some elements of the equation, such as the endowment, real progress may not be realized for years.

One thing that all agree on, though, is that given the many changes and challenges confronting those in Catholic education today, this will certainly be a stern test.

Ultimately, though, they believe this is a test they can, and will, pass.

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

Education Sections

Life Lessons

Vincent Maniaci

Vincent Maniaci says AIC has a three-pronged plan for growth that includes programs to help students become prepared to enter the workforce.

American International College President Vincent Maniaci has been studying the booklet for weeks.

It contains quick snapshots of each member of the incoming freshmen class. His goal is to commit them all to memory so he can greet every student by name when classes begin this fall. Although it’s a small measure, Maniaci believes it’s important for him to make students feel special, especially since 44% of the student population is aiming to become first-generation college graduates.

“We try to get to know our students on a personal basis, and first- generation students always struggle more than those who come from an affluent background and have parents who have gone to college,” Maniaci explained, adding that understanding a student’s history helps staff give advice that is pertinent to each individual’s situation and aspirations.

Susanne Swanker agrees, and told BusinessWest that AIC has been successful in developing a sense of community between staff and students.

“It’s uncommon to walk anywhere on campus without having people greet you,” said the school’s acting chief academic officer and dean of the School of Business, Arts and Sciences. “It doesn’t matter whether you know them or not; it’s part of a culture in which everyone is supported and encouraged to do their best.”

That culture has been carefully cultivated by Maniaci and stems from his personal experience. Indeed, his path to success differs greatly from most people in his position, and he said it has made him aware of the importance of providing students with exposure and access to college, as well as what it takes to keep them there.

“I come from a blue collar background and had no plans to attend college; it was very alien to me,” he said, adding that no one in his family had a college degree and the only reason he enrolled at City College of San Francisco, a community college, was because he and a friend wanted to continue playing football after they graduated from high school.

So he signed up for courses, but didn’t attend a single class and had no plans to do so until he injured his knee during the third game of the season. At that point, Maniaci realized that the only way he could continue interacting with other team members was to show up for class.

“I’ve always been competitive, and once I started I did well,” he said, as he outlined the rest of his educational career.

But he will never forget his first day on campus.

“Adjusting to the environment is especially difficult for students from socio-economic backgrounds where college attendance is not a given,” he said, explaining how intimidated he felt when other students began quoting famous people he had never heard of.

Today he believes that mixing students from different backgrounds adds depth to the curriculum and helps prepare them for the world of work.

“The diversity that results from a population with mixed backgrounds is one of our strengths; we’re very student-centric and believe a college education is more than academic and intellectual growth,” he noted. “It includes personal, spiritual and professional development entwined with emotional intelligence, which takes place both inside and outside of the classroom. We all see things through a different prism based on the environment we come from, so being culturally diverse leads to deeper discussions.”

Course of Action

AIC has a strategic plan for growth that is focused on three areas, said Maniaci.

“Our first goal is to build the demand curve — we need to give parents and students a better reason to come here, give them a reason to borrow money or pay out of pocket for schooling; education is expensive, and they need to know what the return on their investment will be,” he explained, adding that students and their families need to understand that in addition to the fact that college graduates earn $1 million more over their lifetime than non-graduates, valuable lessons result from dealing with social, interpersonal, or political issues on campus.

The second pillar of the plan is to increase capacity, an initiative that runs the gamut, from the quality of the dining experience to student safety and course offerings, while the third component is to identify new programs that would benefit students.

“The world is changing so quickly that it’s important to identify future trends as we develop new programming,” Maniaci said.

Susanne Swanker says AIC’s new master’s program in Resort and Casino Management will help individuals take full advantage of opportunities in that industry.

Susanne Swanker says AIC’s new master’s program in Resort and Casino Management will help individuals take full advantage of opportunities in that industry.

Initiatives have been established to meet these goals, and for the past two years Dean of Students Brian O’Shaughnessy has worked closely with his staff to make sure that what is taught in the classroom correlates to students’ outside activities, something he said employers are looking for.

To that end, AIC also has a new four-year career-development program. Students in the federal work-study program, which comprise the majority of the population, apply for positions on campus during their first semester by working with career development staff members who help them to create a preliminary resume and teach them interviewing skills. Students receive assistance in applying for campus positions suited to their interests or major.

“In the past, students walked into different departments and asked if there were any job openings,” O’Shaughnessy said, adding that they are also bridging classroom connections by inviting underclassmen to attend sessions in their residence halls on topics such as using social media as a tool to market themselves, while upperclassmen are offered classroom presentations specific to their field of study.

The way housing is assigned has also changed, and the assumption that seniors are entitled to better options is not the rule of thumb. Every freshman on campus lives in a residence hall with a roommate and shares experiences and common spaces, including bathrooms.

“If they develop a sense of community and pride in their residence hall and feel safe and secure, it reduces the likelihood of damage or student-on-student crime,” O’Shaughnessy told BusinessWest, adding that for some students, feeling pride in the place they live in is a new concept.

During their sophomore or junior year, students can move into a suite which gives them more space. “A bathroom might be shared by four people instead of 30,” O’Shaughnessy said. “And seniors are eligible for full kitchens which provide them with opportunities to shop and maintain a household.”

Each student is also assigned a professional academic advisor who works with them during their freshman and sophomore years. They are experts in the college’s shared general-education requirements, which is helpful because many aren’t sure about what they want to major in. Swanker said they transition to a faculty advisor in their field of study during their junior year, a model adopted in 2013 that helps them focus on specifics that will help them find employment.

She added that the support they receive is especially important to first-generation college students who are highly motivated but often under a great deal of pressure if their family has invested everything they have into their education.

There is also a Center for Student Engagement and Leadership Develop-ment linked to clubs and organizations on campus.

“I tell all incoming freshmen that what they are learning is not specific to textbooks,” said O’Shaughnessy. “They’re learning how to think critically and solve problems whether they are a member of a club, dealing with an issue with their roommate, or in a leadership role on campus. We also stress that the skills they learn here can be applied to careers that haven’t even been invented yet.”

And since AIC works to respond to student’s individual needs, a number of new programs have been added to its Center for Academic Success. Today, they include the ACE (AIC Core Education) Program, a federally-funded initiative for first-generation college students as well as those with limited financial means. Services range from personal mentoring to academic support, career counseling, disability referral services, financial aid assistance, graduate school preparation, and specialized workshops and activities.

AIC also has a Supportive Learning Services program, which operates under the umbrella of its Curtis Blake Learning Services. It’s a fee-based program that provides students with one-on-one tutorial assistance to help with goal-setting, note-taking, time management, study skills, test taking, written expression, and self-advocacy.

Keeping Pace With the Times

Over the past few years, AIC has developed a number of new majors, and last November, officials finalized a decision to create a master’s degree program in Resort and Casino Management. Although it had been talked about when casino legislation was passed in 2011, Swanker said the school waited until voters cast ballots last November that ensured casinos would become a reality.

“The program will start this fall, and include courses in business specific to resort and casino management,” she said. “We’ve worked with executives at MGM to review the curriculum and make sure we’re covering topics that are relevant. We see career possibilities for graduates locally and in the region.”

Meanwhile, seven students were awarded a bachelor of science degree in Public Health for the first time during the commencement ceremonies in May.

“It’s a new, four-year program. We started it two years ago, but had some transfer students move into the major,” Swanker explained, adding that graduates have a wealth of opportunities in the growing healthcare field.

Another new offering is a graduate Family Nurse Practitioner degree. “We launched the program last fall; it’s very exciting because it’s an area of tremendous growth relevant to the direction in which healthcare professions are moving,” she continued.

AIC’s doctorate in Physical Therapy program also continues to thrive, and enrollment in its master’s program in Occupational Therapy is growing, thanks to its excellent reputation and the increase in students interested in health services.

Swanker said people employed in that field typically take part in team meetings that address specifics to a patient, so to prepare them for that aspect of a job, AIC began holding day-long workshops two years ago to mirror what they will experience when they begin their clinical rotations.

There are also new undergraduate majors, and last year a Visual and Digital Arts degree was offered for the first time. “It allows students with an artistic bent to combine their interest with technology,” Swanker said. “It was something that was missing because we didn’t have a major for people interested in the arts.”

Some students in the program are minoring in business or taking a double major in both fields, which will be beneficial if they want to run a small theater or an art gallery.

“The beauty of this degree is that it can be tailored to a student’s interests, because it includes writing, directing, acting and costume design. It has increased our enrollment and we have students coming here just for this major,” Swanker said.

Another new offering is a minor in Fraud and Financial Crime, which includes courses in criminal justice and accounting. “Students can take an exam when they complete the course and become certified in the field, which increases their chances for employment,” Swanker said.

Forging Ahead

Ground was broken in May on an $8 million renovation to the dining commons. The new, state-of-the-art space will include a wide variety of seating options as well as food choices and services, including customized preparation, an open concept kitchen with a Mongolian grill, a wood-fired pizza oven, and more.

“The dining commons is an important student and academic hub on campus,” Maniaci told BusinessWest. “The new facility will give students a more comfortable and modern place to come together and was designed to serve their needs and expectations.”

It’s part of a larger effort to create a campus that caters to the needs of students today, and will enhance the new programs that are helping students succeed and integrate lessons they learn inside and outside of the classroom.

“We’re teaching them that everything they do here can play a role in their future career, which ranges from how they present themselves to how they speak or how they conduct themselves as a member or leader of an organization on campus,” O’Shaughnessy explained in summation.

The changes have all been positive, and Maniaci is optimistic about the future. This sentiment is backed by facts: The Chronicle of Higher Education named AIC as one of the fastest-growing colleges from 2002-2012, due to a growth rate of 127%, which more than doubled their enrollment in ten years.

And the upward trajectory is expected to continue, thanks to the welcoming culture and the efforts to create new programs and majors that meet the changing needs of students today.

“I expect to make as much progress in the next 10 years as we’ve made in the last decade,” Maniaci said.

Education Sections
Banks, Schools, Colleges Team Up to Boost Financial Literacy

Roosevelt Charles

Roosevelt Charles says financial-literacy programs at STCC help level the playing field for students in need.

Janet Warren has seen the statistics, and met many of the people behind them.

“Thirty-five percent of households in Massachusetts have less than three months’ worth of savings, and 48% of Massachusetts consumers have subprime credit,” she said, citing a study conducted by the Corporation for Enterprise Development. “These statistics show that we have a real problem, and they illustrate the need for financial education.”

Furthermore, said Warren, vice president of marketing at Monson Savings Bank, “it’s worth noting how these statistics work together to create a cycle of debt and worsen financial insecurity. If someone with less than three months of savings faces an unforeseen expense, such as a broken-down car or a medical bill, they have to borrow to cover the tab. If that person also has subprime credit, the only option may be to take out a high-cost — often predatory — loan. It’s difficult for them to get a loan at an affordable rate.”

As a community bank, Monson has encountered many people in just that circumstance. While life’s circumstances are different for everyone, Warren said, many of them graduated from school and entered adult life without truly understanding the importance of credit, debt, savings, and many other facets of finance.

That’s why MSB is one of many area banks that have teamed with schools to reach young people with lessons in how to handle money.

“By teaching financial literacy in the schools, we can teach kids early how to become better savers, spenders, and money managers — so that, maybe, they won’t find themselves in that situation,” she said.

During the annual Statewide Summit on Financial Education — staged recently at the UMass Center at Springfield and sponsored by the financial-education coalition MassSaves — state Treasurer Deb Goldberg, the event’s keynote speaker, talked about how today’s students don’t grow up with the same exposure to financial education as she did, and how it needs to be reintroduced in public schools, as early as the primary grades.

“I believe we can embed into the curriculum financial skills that kids will need,” she said, recalling the bank passbook she received as a child. “Once in a while, my parents would drive me to an actual bank so I could see what’s going on. That’s how you learn. Kids today can program any iPhone, download any app, but ask them to look at these pieces of money and explain to me a penny, nickel, quarter, they can’t do that. It’s fascinating. My feeling is, let’s step back and start with the basics again.”

Polish National Credit Union has a well-established branch at Chicopee Comprehensive High School that doubles as a way to help students — both those who use it and those who work there as part of their education — learn about finance.

“We employ students — we go through the process just as if they’re going to apply here at the main office — and we train them,” said Jennifer Gallant, the credit union’s chief financial officer.

“Then, once the summer comes and the school branch is closed, we bring the employees over here as summer interns,” she continued. “A lot of the students who have worked at the school branch have enjoyed it and stayed on with us in a greater capacity when we’ve had openings at other branches. Some have even gone on to finance in college.”

Even for students who are casually exposed to the Chicopee Comp branch, she told BusinessWest, “it’s an eye-opener to how finance and banking works. I think it also helps encourage all of the kids in the school to at least look into a savings account, a checking account, what else the credit union has to offer, and how it benefits them — to get them on the right road economically.”

Between efforts like the summit — which drew representatives from many banks, schools, colleges, and financial-education organizations — and efforts by community banks and nonprofit entities to reach out to both students and adults, increasing focus is being placed on the broad issue of financial literacy.

After all, “when we talk about financial literacy and educating kids about what they need to understand these decisions they will be making, we are creating an economic foundation in the state that is stable, breaking down inequality,” Goldberg noted. “Through financial education, we see that, when we invest in people, we’re empowering people to invest in themselves.”

Education for Life

It’s not just happening at the K-12 level, said Kelly Goss, associate director of the Midas Collaborative, a statewide organization that focuses on financial literacy and connecting people with a range of financial resources.

“Our bread and butter is our matched savings account programs,” she noted, referring to a number of different programs that, in partnership with public and private organizations, provide low-income individuals with savings accounts and match their contributions. Clients generally use the funds for one of three purposes: home buying, small-business development, or post-secondary education.

Chicopee Comp students Chad LePage and Ludmila Kaletin

Chicopee Comp students Chad LePage and Ludmila Kaletin work as tellers in the school’s Polish National Credit Union branch.

One of those — a program being conducted at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), Bunker Hill Community College, and Northern Essex Community College — establishes a savings account for participants, where up to $750 in savings is essentially tripled to $2,250 through matching grants by the college and the federal government. The resulting money must be put toward future post-secondary education expenses.

During the one- to two-year period of the matched savings program, the students also join peer groups, attend workshops, and participate in individual coaching sessions to build their financial skills, rectify financial issues, learn about the economy, and engage them in planning for the future.

“Students receiving the matched savings are required to take eight hours of finance education outside of their course work,” Goss said. “The school provides workshops — teaching them what is credit, what is debt, what is the significance of having a bank account? Some of these students have never had a bank account before.”

Roosevelt Charles, director of access and student services at STCC, said the college ramped up its financial-literacy initiatives — including its partnership with the Midas Collaborative — about a year and a half ago, when administrators noticed students dropping out for financial reasons, who didn’t have the knowledge to access different public benefits or navigate the financial arena, period.

“We’ve done a few other things to level the playing field as related to financial literacy,” he added. “We collaborate with Single Stop USA, a national community-college initiative that provides space on campus where students can go for a variety of public and community benefits. Students can apply for food assistance, housing, fuel assistance — all these benefits, all those resources, in one area. We do have a large percentage of students seeking those benefits.”

The school has also teamed up with MassMutual through that corporation’s LifeBridge program, which offers free term life insurance to families in need. These programs and others, Charles said, represent an effort to offer students both tangible financial resources and education and guidance in putting them to use.

“Once we get students talking about their knowledge — or lack thereof — as related to accessing resources, they realize there are other things out there — ‘did you know MassMutual is offering free life insurance?’ It’s amazing for us; we didn’t expect to get this granular in terms of community support. But, over past two semesters, these conversations have motivated us to go back out into the community and seek out additional resources to offer.”

On the state level, Goldberg said, the recently created Office of Economic Empowerment, led by Deputy Treasurer Alayna Van Tassel, is seeking to create more such partnerships between the state, schools, and businesses. Goals include expansion of Credit for Life fairs and more matched college savings accounts like those pioneered by Midas.

Goldberg said studies have found clear correlations between financial literacy at a young age and college enrollment, or vocational or technical training, after high school.

“Why is that important here in Massachusetts? Well, where is our economy? Biotech, high tech, higher education, healthcare — so we need to make opportunities available to kids,” she explained. “If we provide opportunities to educate, kids will seize upon it.”

Breaking Barriers

In short, Goldberg claimed, financial literacy may be the key ingredient to financial stability across Massachusetts, because it affects so many areas of life.

“All the work we do around teaching kids, teaching women, teaching veterans how to empower themselves is not a partisan issue; it’s an issue that creates opportunities for folks, and candidly, if we can empower people to take care of themselves, they don’t need [as many] safety nets,” she told the summit attendees. “Financial challenges impact every one of us — children to adults, students, teachers, advocates, and policy makers.”

MassSaves, which was created in 2011, complements its work in schools and colleges with financial trainings — “train the trainer” sessions, Goss called them — with the United Way and other community-based organizations that deliver financial-education services. But it all starts with those outreaches into schools.

“The reality is, we need financial education to be taught at every level,” she said. “We want to see it in the curriculum as early as possible, so people grow up with it as an early tool, like math. Why would you not? Particularly in this day and age, it’s really difficult to function without a knowledge of finance and access to a bank account. It’s certainly a barrier for those who don’t have that access.”

Warren, who serves on the steering committee of MassSaves, said Monson Savings Bank became a strategic partner with the organization a little over a year ago, in an effort to help members of the community become more financially confident and capable.

“Here at the bank, we do have people coming through the doors on occasion who can’t get a loan, who may not even be able to get a checking account because they have outstanding balances with other banks,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s why we’ve gotten involved in this. We’re a community bank, which means we’re here to help the community, and we want to help everyone who comes through our doors.”

Now, the bank can direct those customers to MassSaves, which can hook them up with a financial coach by phone, e-mail, or Skype, and connect them to other financial resources they might require.

“It’s definitely needed, and that’s why we’re working on this issue in this manner, in this broad collaboration with lots of different partners,” Warren said. “Really, the more, the merrier. Everything we do collectively is a positive thing.”

Starting with a child’s first introduction to pennies, nickels, and quarters.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Springfield College Enhances Its Image with New Logo, Branding

SpringfieldCollegeMasterLogo0515Springfield College’s basic role hasn’t changed since the institution was established in 1885.
“Our mission has always been to educate young people in mind, body, and spirit for leadership in service to others,” said Stephen Roulier, the school’s executive director of Marketing and Communications, adding that this includes engaging in community service while enrolled at the school.
Indeed, the percentage of students who volunteer time and energy to a wide variety of local and national nonprofit organizations is a hallmark of the college that sets it apart from its competitors.
“Market research that was done by the branding and marketing agency Ologie a year ago showed that this is the tie that binds us,” Roulier told BusinessWest. The research, conducted in conjunction with the college, included roundtables, online surveys, and phone interviews with faculty, staff members, students, graduates, prospective students and their parents, and local business partners.
That research helped officials at the school conclude that this ‘tie’ is not effectively communicated in the college’s marketing and branding efforts, a shortcoming that might have historically hindered efforts to attract students with similar mindsets.
The school’s official seal has doubled as a logo and been used on everything from stationary to paychecks to promotional materials. But components on it, such as the lamp of knowledge, are used by other schools.
In addition, many people view Springfield College primarily as a place to get a sports-related education, due to its renowned reputation in that area, which means that many students interested in fields such as business or psychology may not consider it.
The combination of these factors led Roulier, who previously helped Western New England College rebrand itself as it became a university, to approach President Mary-Beth Cooper with the idea of creating an official logo and consistent branding message.
“I told her we needed to put out the right message so we could become more recognizable and broaden our recruitment reach,” he recalled. She was in agreement, and the work that has been done to develop new branding included the recent study by Ologie.
Since that time, a new logo has been created — a simple inverted triangle, without the words and outer circle that are part of the seal. “We retained the image as it speaks to balance in mind, spirit, and body,” Roulier said.
For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at this rebranding effort and what it might mean for this venerable institution.

Altruism in Action
The college’s new branding will focus in part on the volunteer work done by students, who learn to live balanced lives long before they graduate.
“We want each department to showcase their strengths, but also align them with our greater mission,” Roulier said. “We’re all about teamwork, which is very important to the Springfield College student or graduate.”
He told BusinessWest that a large number of students participate in the college’s Humanics in Action Day, held each year during the fall semester. Classes are cancelled, and students sign up to volunteer at a wide variety of nonprofits. “It’s not mandatory, but close to 100% participate,” Roulier said, “and it’s a great experience for everyone because they work alongside staff members and coaches.”
Last year, noted Shannon Langone, program director for Americorps, students and staff worked on more than 100 projects during the day, which included reading to schoolchildren, removing graffiti from buildings, and cleaning the yards of more than 60 elderly residents as well as a number of vacant lots.
“What’s great about this is that the students are working with the community and its diverse population, and by utilizing their skills, they are much more prepared to go out in the world, get a job, and contribute to their neighborhood,” Langone said.

Steve Roulier

Steve Roulier says the new logo and unified branding message reflect Springfield College’s mission.

Last year, 49% of freshmen in undeclared majors chose to register for “First Year Seminar,” a one-credit, half-semester course in which they learn about the importance of community service while they decide what their focus of study will be. During the class, they visit a nonprofit with their professor, gain knowledge about it, and then engage in a service project.
Spring break is another time when students are given the opportunity to work with charitable groups such as Habitat for Humanity or the college’s Americorps program. “Some return year after year,” Roulier said. In addition, many academic departments incorporate experiential learning into the curriculum beginning in freshman year.
Langone said Springfield College boasts more than 3,000 students who perform some type of community service every year, which accounts for more than 97,000 hours of unpaid time. Another 400,000 hours are donated through unpaid internships and field hours.
As strong as this track record is, and as much as it is synonymous with the school, it is not accurately reflected in the college’s look and marketing efforts.
“There is a misconception about Springfield College. Some people believe if you are not interested in sports, you would not fit in here socially or academically. We are well-known for our physical education programs, but our struggle has been to let prospective students and parents know that we offer a wide variety of majors,” Roulier said, adding that, in addition to its main campus, the school has nine satellite campuses across the country. In the past, they offered only majors in human services, but beginning July 1, the program offerings will be expanded.
Meanwhile, he noted that past marketing efforts have used mixed messaging to promote the college.
“Some recruiters have touted Springfield as the birthplace of basketball or used that as a tagline,” Roulier said, citing an example. “But the study showed that students and staff members who come here really care about humanity, which identifies more about who we are than the majors we offer. I was really amazed when I took this job to find that students really live the mission; they not only know it, but live and breathe it.”
Roulier believes the school’s new look will convey that message and is hopeful that it will resonate in the same way that other corporate images do.
“Some people claim they smell french fries when they see the Golden Arches,” he explained, “and the Apple symbol is associated with high-quality technology.”

Brand New
Roulier expects it will take a year to create a consistent, unified branding message, which includes redesigning the college website to reflect it.
“But it will help admissions counselors recruit new students. In the past, they used different methods to promote the college, but now, everyone will be on the same page, although different departments will take different approaches,” he told BusinessWest.
Overall, the process of rebranding the school appropriately has been an eye-opening process. “We needed to discover what really makes our institution unique,” he noted.
The school’s leaders have done exactly that, and their hope is to become known, as Roulier said, as “a college community that cares deeply about its humanics philosophy: the importance of mind, body, and spirit and service to others.”

Education Sections
MassMutual Partners with Smith, Mount Holyoke to Advance Data Science

WomanDataAnalystsDPartGareth Ross says a pipeline of data scientists, or people who possess skills related to the emerging field, is critical to the future of every company. But he also knows it’s difficult to find, attract, and retain qualified job candidates.

“It’s a very, very specialized area. The analytics involved are very complex and require a doctorate in statistics, computer science, or both,” said Ross, MassMutual’s senior vice president of Data Analytics and Target Markets.

Indeed, studies show there are not enough qualified individuals to analyze, interpret, explain, and make use of the enormous amounts of data spawned by modern technology, which range from the online behavior of Facebook users to outcomes of medical procedures, to the purchasing habits of shoppers. The information has merit because it can be used to increase sales, save money, and anticipate the products and services that consumers need, want, and are likely to buy.

“About two years ago, MassMutual hired four data scientists from Boston to determine whether they would be useful,” said Ross. “And within six months, it became absolutely clear just how valuable they were.”

However, when the company began to seek more people proficient in the field, it quickly became evident that it was extremely difficult to compete with Internet giants such as Google that were scooping them up and paying them six-figure salaries. After thinking about the problem, MassMutual officials realized that the machine learning, statistics, and computer science programs at UMass are among the top 10 in the nation, and the Five Colleges are renowned for their education, so they made the decision to resolve the quandary by hiring seven graduates with bachelor’s degrees related to data science and put them in a special training program.

“We told them, if they came to work for us, we would pay them to become data scientists over a period of three years,” Ross told BusinessWest. “It is a different path than students would normally take to get a master’s or doctorate degree, but we are sending them to classes and supplementing their skills with projects here. They are incredibly bright, and we have paired them with our data scientists and built an office for them in Amherst.”

The program is so innovative that it has attracted national attention, and students from as far away as California have expressed interest in it. However, Ross said the female graduates from Mount Holyoke and Smith have done exceptionally well, and since the data science field is male-dominated, MassMutual decided to form a partnership with the two women’s colleges and create a pilot program that will begin in the fall to help more women become versed in statistics and other data-science-related disciplines.

To that end, the company has allocated $2 million that will be given to the colleges over a four-year period. It will be used to pay for five new, non-tenure track positions and will also help support the development of classes associated with data science. Smith will get two new professors, and Mount Holyoke will hire three, but students can take classes from any of them as part of the five-college exchange program.

“We believe strongly in promoting women in science and engineering. There are not enough of them in these fields, and this program will increase the pipeline of students available to us and give us a way to tap into the talent at these two schools, which are among the best in the country,” Ross said, adding that the new professors will also provide week-long training modules during the summer for students already in the MassMutual program, which include a second group hired several weeks ago.

From left, Martha Hootes, Sonya Stephens, and Amber Douglas

From left, Martha Hootes, Sonya Stephens, and Amber Douglas say 23 faculty members at Mount Holyoke College have been working to create a program that will allow more students to gain knowledge in data science.

Ross said the company is building algorithmic procedures to help underwriters determine what products their clients should purchase, based on information that includes their health and family histories, which is collected whenever a policy is sold.

“There is an enormous push to enhance profits with computer-generated recommendations,” Ross told BusinessWest, noting that their data scientists assign scores to the leads the company purchases, with the goal of determining who is most likely to buy life insurance, an annuity, a 401(k) product, or a long-term-care or disability policy. “We hope to build models that will predict what the customer will need next, and data gives us an efficient way to know our customers deeply in the same way that Google does.”

Numbers Game

These goals are in line with demand across the nation for data-science specialists. In fact, a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute reveals that the U.S. needs to increase the number of graduates with skills to handle large amounts of data by as much as 60%, and predicts there will be close to 500,000 new jobs associated with the field in the next five years and a shortage of up to 190,000 qualified data scientists, along with a need for 1.5 million executives and support staff with an understanding of data.

The report adds that the use of big data will become a key basis for business growth, and companies will begin leveraging data-driven strategies to innovate and compete as they capture real-time information.

Those numbers — and those sentiments — underscore the importance of MassMutual’s initiative with the two women’s colleges.

Ben Baumer, a visiting assistant professor and director of the program of Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College, is enthusiastic about the initiative.

“It’s a huge win for us because our goals are perfectly aligned,” he said. “Five years ago, we weren’t talking about this, but today virtually every industry or company is probably collecting data about something or believe it will be useful to them.

“But the problem they face is finding someone to analyze it,” he went on. “They must be rooted in statistics, be a good programmer, and be able to link data of different styles and sizes. Just creating an informative graphic can be enough to make a difference if it can be easily digested.”

He explained that the term ‘big data’ refers to the problems people have when the volume of data they have is too large to manage, and that, unlike information collected in a clinical medical trial, almost all of it is observational and obtained from places ranging from cash registers to web server logs.

Students are recognizing the importance of the subject, however, and Smith College has created a minor in applied statistics that is overseen by its department of Statistical and Data Sciences. “Enrollment in statistics and data-science classes has doubled over the last decade,” said Baumer. “It’s a national trend, and although the tech industry is a male-dominated field, we have an opportunity to change that. It’s the right time to do it, and the job market is exceptionally strong.”

Charles Staelin agreed, and said data scientists must be well-versed in math and statistics as well as computer science.

Gareth Ross says MassMutual wants to create a pipeline of female college graduates

Gareth Ross says MassMutual wants to create a pipeline of female college graduates well-versed in the field of data science.

“The tech industry is desperate to find people with these skills and is gobbling them up,” the Smith College professor of Economics told BusinessWest. “The demand for these courses has grown tremendously, and we are seeing students enroll in classes from six different departments. All of these courses are overenrolled because students realize they need to have some familiarity with statistics, as it’s a skill they will need in the workplace.”

Smith had already begun to focus on adding courses before MassMutual approached the institution, but funding that will pay professors’ salaries will make a significant difference. “It will help us to get this off the ground more quickly than we could have otherwise,” Staelin said.

Amber Douglas, associate professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College, said the school is vested in the same goal, and the merger between statistics and computer science is helpful to professors as well as students.

“We have 23 faculty members from different backgrounds who have been collaborating to develop a curriculum across a variety of disciplines, and as we speak, data is being analyzed across genres in different time periods,” she said. “So, even if students aren’t going into data science, they need to take an introductory course in the subject so they can take part in conversations and consider the ethical implications of using it in the workplace.”

She noted that Mount Holyoke had been moving in a parallel direction with MassMutual before they collaborated to pilot the program. “Data science is the fastest-growing industry, and although some larger universities have undergraduate programs, they tend to be focused without the breadth that only liberal-arts colleges can bring to it,” she said.

Mount Holyoke hopes to create a minor and standalone major in data science, and has two pending proposals to establish internships through its Nexus Curriculum to Career Program.

Sonya Stephens, Mount Holyoke’s vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of faculty, agrees that learning about data science at a liberal-arts college yields myriad benefits.

“One of the things we do well is create flexible thinkers who can work collaboratively. That’s important, as data science involves a lot of collaboration because statistics, economics, computer-science skills, and communication skills are involved,” she said.

“We want to increase the number of women prepared to use this science, as everything we do is data-driven due to the increasing amounts of information becoming available,” Stephens added. “It is a critical skill in almost every domain and is about collaboration, creativity, and analytic ability.”

She added that the college has been extraordinarily successful in producing women scientists in a variety of fields.

“We’re thrilled to be working with MassMutual, because we have a similar agenda,” Stephens noted. “We want to advance understanding of the field and empower faculty to do their best with it, and we see this as an opportunity to work with not only a local firm, but one that has a national presence that will further our goals.”

Bright Futures

Since colleges and universities can’t turn out data scientists fast enough, creating a local pipeline of women in the field is a sure pathway to success.

Ross says MassMutual will use graduates to create ways to inspire people to purchase insurance products they need.

“Everyone wants to retire, be secure, and make good financial decisions, but 50% of Americans are underinsured, and 30% have no retirement. So, data science will help us to know our customers well enough to custom-tailor recommendations for them,” he said. “We want to drive people to take action, and having access to incredible pools of talent will help us make real progress. Our focus is to get the best scientists we can working for us.”

As the two women’s colleges and UMass continue to move forward on a parallel track with MassMutual, the hope is that graduates in this emerging field will help not only the financial services giant, but all companies in Western Mass. thrive in a world increasingly driven by technology.