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Springfield Takes a Bold Step to Bring Diversity to the Classroom

Daniel Warwick

Daniel Warwick says Reach to Teach is an imaginative effort to address the national problem of diversity in the classroom.

Like most urban centers in this country, Springfield struggles to have its teaching force match — or even approach — the diversity and demographic nature of the students sitting in the classrooms.

But unlike most of those cities, it is taking a unique, aggressive, and highly imaginative approach to addressing that critical issue.

It’s called Reach to Teach, an ambitious partnership with Westfield State University, renowned for its education programs throughout its 175-year history (in fact, it was once known as Westfield Teachers College). The program, launched in February, seeks to recruit, mentor, and train Springfield middle- and high-school students of color and eventually return them to the classrooms of their youth through guaranteed employment in the city’s public schools.

One of its primary goals is to attract people to high-need areas, such as math, science, and special education, said Springfield School Superintendent Dan Warwick, who called this a “grow-our-own” initiative. It’s a model he believes is unique, and one that comes complete with myriad benefits for Springfield schools and their future students, the young people recruited into the program, and Westfield State.

“Rather than trying to recruit minority teachers from elsewhere, when there’s a shortage everywhere, this was a way to grow our own kids and get them to come back to Springfield,” said Warwick, himself a product of Westfield State’s education program, adding that research has shown that, when students have teachers who come from the same racial and cultural background they do, they perform better academically, have higher self-esteem, stay in school longer, and graduate at higher rates. “If they do come back, they’re more likely to live in the city, and they’re more likely to stay in the profession.”

Cheryl Stanley, dean of Education at Westfield State and a classmate of Warwick’s at Springfield’s Cathedral High School, agreed, and noted that creating more diversity in the teaching ranks is now a national priority.

“We are now seeing this as a call to duty — for all institutions to start thinking about recruitment strategies to increase the diversity in our teacher-preparation programs,” she said, adding that WSU has been addressing this issue in various ways for years. “And it results from the increased number of students of color in the public schools.

“We’re being asked to be creative in our responses to this problem,” she went on, “and part of doing that is establishing partnerships with school districts, and the best school districts to partner with are in the urban settings because this is where these students are.”

Here’s how Reach to Teach works. The initiative will provide up to 20 eligible students from Springfield with automatic admission to Westfield State, technical support on the application process, available scholarship funding during junior and senior years, and, most importantly, a guaranteed job with mentorship for one year post-graduation in the Springfield Public School (SPS) system.

There are no firm quantitative goals for this initiative, said Warwick and Springfield’s assistant superintendent, Lydia Martinez, only a determined quest for “progress” in the current number of minorities among the ranks of faculty and staff members, and they believe this can certainly be accomplished.

But there is more to it than just diversity, said Martinez, a Springfield native who graduated from Westfield State’s Urban Education program and embodies the main thrust of Reach to Teach. She said SPS teachers who grew up in Springfield share more than a birthplace with their students.

“This program also helps us with the cultural piece, not just in terms of diversity of race,” she explained. “Through Reach to Teach, we can have more teachers who grew up in Springfield and are a part of the fabric of the city here, having come up through the system. It’s coming back home to what you know and helping the next cadre get to where they need to be.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at the Reach to Teach initiative and its potential to change the landscape in Springfield’s schools.

New School of Thought

Springfield Public School enrollment numbers underscore the need for more teachers of color.

Indeed, 88% of the system’s students are non-white, while only 11% of SPS faculty and staff are non-white, according to 2013-14 enrollment data published by the Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Similarly, at Westfield State for the 2014-15 year, only 11% of undergraduate, post-baccalaureate-certificate, and graduate-education-licensure candidates combined are non-white.

Reach to Teach was conceived to address this disparity, thus benefiting both entities, said Warwick, adding that discussions between the parties began last year and ended with a memorandum of understanding inked early this year.

In many ways, Reach to Teach is an effort to take an already-strong relationship between the Springfield Public Schools and Westfield State to an even higher level. Indeed, for decades now, WSU has been the lead source of teachers for not only the Springfield system but many others in the region, said Warwick, adding that the entities have partnered in many ways over the years, including a program that brings WSU students into the city’s schools for experience in an urban setting.

“This was a natural affiliation — Westfield State has a history of a great educational program, and that’s still true today,” he said, adding that Reach to Teach will tap into that relationship to address what has been a persistent and nagging challenge.

Indeed, as he talked about the need to recruit more people of color to the teaching ranks in the Springfield Public Schools, Warwick stressed repeatedly that the problem is hardly unique to Springfield.

“Like all other urban districts, we face a huge challenge recruiting and retaining a diverse, highly qualified staff,” he explained. “If you look at most school systems in the country, especially urban districts, there’s an under-representation with regard to minority teachers — and they’re all trying to do something about it.”

Thus, every major urban center is working hard to recruit minorities to its classrooms, he went on, adding that they are generally fishing in the same pond — schools with both education programs and high percentages of minority students.

“Every other major urban center is trying to do the same thing,” he said. “And they’re probably going to the African-American colleges, to Puerto Rico, and other areas; they’re all recruiting from the same places, and the competition for qualified candidates is intense.”

Cheryl Stanley, seen here with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno

Cheryl Stanley, seen here with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, says the key to achieving diversity in the classroom is partnerships with urban school districts like Springfield’s.

In a way, Reach to Teach is creating a new pond, said those involved with the initiative, although there are still plenty of challenges to overcome when it comes to achieving the desired diversity at the front of the classroom.

Indeed, there are many reasons why there is a distinct shortage of minorities in teaching roles, ranging from the difficulty with attaining a degree and becoming certified to teach both a specific subject and at a specific level, to the comparatively low rate of pay in this field, at least when compared to other professions requiring college degrees.

“The low rate of pay to start is certainly an issue, and there’s also the testing protocol that kids have to go through now to qualify as education majors — there are a lot of barriers to people pursuing education today, said Warwick, adding that Reach to Teach will encourage young students to pursue that profession and then mentor them and assist with clearing the many hurdles involved.

“The problem with the minority teacher shortage is that not enough minority students are going on to college to pursue education,” he explained. “We want to really encourage young people to enter this field, so Westfield State has put together a framework to offer them assistance to get through college, and our head of guidance is providing some assistance in high school, encouraging them to pursue this.

“And we said that, if we can bring our kids back, and they complete Westfield State’s program, we’d be glad to hire them,” he went on.

This guarantee of employment is one of the program’s best selling points, said Martinez, adding that the process by which Springfield will seek to grow its own will begin with recruitment of students while they’re still in middle school, although for the first few years the targets will obviously be high-school students and those already in the workforce seeking a possible career change.

“We want to identify potential candidates as early as possible, ideally in middle school,” she explained, adding that, by doing so, the SPS can mentor the students and help prepare them for the road ahead through participation in the Future Teachers of America program and other initiatives. “We want to teach them as they enter high school so we can mentor them, track them, help them get to Westfield State University, and then help them come back.”

While those involved hoped to have some students enrolled in the education program at WSU this fall, they expect the initiative to really get rolling in the fall of 2016.

There is a need for minority teachers across the board, said Stanley, but the need is especially acute in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), mostly because of the rugged path to attaining licensure to teach those subjects, the perception that such positions are beyond one’s grasp, and the immense competition across several fields for students who develop such aptitudes.

“When you think about the best and the brightest, we’re competing against many other occupations for those individuals,” she told BusinessWest. “This includes corporations that can offer much more in terms of dollar signs. So the world has really opened up, and all fields are looking for people of color, and they have choices. And teaching doesn’t appear to be as rewarding as other fields where you might get a bonus up front, a full scholarship right up front, and a guaranteed job right up front. That’s what teaching is competing against.”

Despite all that competition, Stanley said the Reach to Teach initiative is already garnering some interest within the community — primarily because of the guaranteed jobs for students who successfully complete the program — and noted that some potential career changers are making inquiries.

Learning Curves

As he talked about the demographic disparity in the SPS between the students and those teaching them, Warwick said he didn’t have any hard numbers when it came to percentage of teachers who would be considered minorities.

“Let’s just say it’s not what we want it to be and we need it to be,” he told BusinessWest. “I think inroads have been made, but there’s certainly more opportunity there.”

To realize those opportunities, something bold and imaginative is needed, he went on, adding that Reach to Teach certainly fits that description.

If it succeeds as planned, other urban centers may have an effective blueprint to follow. Meanwhile, and more importantly, Springfield will have a base of faculty and staff far more reflective of the community being served.


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

Education Sections
Businesses Help Link to Libraries Carry Out Its Critical Mission

Susan Jaye-Kaplan says the Business Book Link Project

Susan Jaye-Kaplan says the Business Book Link Project is about far more than monetary donations.

When Susan Jaye-Kaplan and Janet Crimmins founded the Link to Libraries program in 2008, their mission was simple: to put free books in the hands of needy children who might not otherwise have them in their homes.

Their success has been laudatory, and since that time, more than 225,000 new books in seven languages have been distributed to students in preschool through grade 7 through schools and nonprofit organizations. But it would not have been possible without help from local businesses, whose generous contributions of time and money have made a significant difference in the lives of local children.

To that end, Link to Libraries launched its Business Book Link project in September 2013 to raise awareness about the program, and 51 companies signed up and agreed to two requirements: to perform some sort of volunteer service at the school they adopt and make a donation of $1,200 a year for three consecutive years, with the guarantee that the school or group will receive 250 to 400 books each year to give away or put in their library.

“It’s important to build home libraries because 60% of the children we serve have never owned a book,” Jaye-Kaplan told BusinessWest, adding that more than 85% of the children in schools Link to Libraries works with qualify for free lunch.

Businesses that join the program visit the school they adopt, where they meet the principal, are taken on a tour of the building, and receive a plaque as well as a wish list of intangible and tangible things the school needs but cannot afford.

However, Jaye-Kaplan said they are not mandated to provide anything on the list. Instead, they talk with the principal and figure out what they can do to help that is mutually agreeable, which can be as simple as sending someone to read a book to a classroom.

Jaye-Kaplan said a business with six employees decided to knit hats, mittens, and scarves for children who needed them, while others have taken students on tours of their workplaces or purchased a computer, TV, or picnic tables for a school’s playground.

But the most critical component of the program is the relationships that are forged. “This program is about far more than making a monetary donation,” said Jaye-Kaplan, explaining that, when a business professional takes time to interact with children in a way that promotes literacy, it encourages them to read and lets them see that people in the community care about their future.

Crimmins says the experience is rewarding for volunteers.

“It’s easy for our community business partners to get hooked when they realize the program is an opportunity to put their resources to work by offering children exposure to their world,” she said. “Whether they send an employee to a school to provide computer tutoring or take students on a field trip, the activity ignites the children’s natural curiosity. And once their interest is sparked, they are encouraged to read a book about the topic.”

Unexpected Benefits

David Kalicka told BusinessWest that being involved with Link to Libraries, which provided 70,000 new books and 3,000 gently used tomes to children in fiscal year 2014 alone, is a gratifying experience. He’s a partner at Meyers Brothers Kalicka, CPA, and his wife is a guidance counselor at Sullivan Elementary School in Holyoke, which the firm adopted.

“I have a deep connection to Holyoke schools; I graduated from Holyoke High and believe literacy is critical to children and businesses have an obligation to give back to the community,” he said. “Although this is not the only organization we are involved with, it’s very rewarding to see the excitement on the children’s faces when I visit the school, read to them, and give them books to take home.”

Bill Trudeau concurs, and said that when he made the decision to have the Insurance Center of New England join the Business Book Link project, he had no idea his wife and children would become involved and that he would find the program so rewarding, he would convince another business to sign up and adopt a school.

But that’s exactly what happened.

“Reading is so important, and it’s easy to see the results of this program. It strengthens the Pioneer Valley in many different ways,” Trudeau said as he spoke about children at the Martin Luther King Charter School of Excellence in Springfield, which his firm adopted.

But despite the altruism of many local businesses, Link to Libraries still has 28 schools on its waiting list, and the need for help continues to grow.

“Getting sponsors is a big challenge for us, so we are thrilled when a business wants to visit our site and learn about our grassroots organization,” Jaye-Kaplan said, adding that making a large financial donation is unnecessary. “Having heart and soul and a commitment to the community is what is important.”

She noted that 90 cents of every dollar donated is used to purchase books, and the $1,200 businesses donate to the program annually does not cover the cost of the tomes the school they adopt receives.

Grants and private donations make up the difference, and she has forged strong relationships with publishers who provide discounted pricing, and with educators who provide lists of books appropriate for different age groups.

“We also work very closely with the Irene and George Davis Foundation, as they are the leaders in education in Western Mass.,” she continued.

Limitless Possibilities

Link to Libraries has a Read Aloud Program for elementary-school students, one for homeless children, and another that provides every kindergartner in Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke with a welcome bag containing a bookmark, books, and educational materials from the Davis Foundation and Big Y.

“The children we serve today are the leaders, parents, and employees of the future,” Jaye-Kaplan said. “Books are food for the brain, and the Business Book Link project allows local companies to give children a gift that is truly meaningful.”

Businesses or individuals who want to learn more about the Link to Libraries Business Book Link program are invited to call (413) 224-1031 or e-mail [email protected].

Education Sections
Cultures Connect with a Purpose at International Language Institute

Alexis Johnson

Alexis Johnson says she emphasizes using a new langage immediately and not stressing over every detail.

In 1984, Alexis Johnson was a language teacher without a job. But she didn’t lack for vision or passion.

“Thirty years ago, another teacher, Janice Rogers, and I were working for a school that closed, and we said, ‘what are we going to do now?’” Johnson told BusinessWest.

The answer they settled on was a language school, one that would meet the needs of myriad clientele, from local non-English speakers aiming to improve their workplace communication to student visa holders preparing for college stateside, to Americans skilled in other languages seeking training to become teachers overseas.

“We said, ‘let’s go for it,’” Johnson went on. They expanded a language program Johnson had already begun at Hampshire College and opened the International Language Institute in Northampton in August 1984. “We had both taught for a long time. I’m passionate about teaching — but especially good teaching.”

That drive for excellence has helped her lead the International Language Institute (ILI), now located in Northampton, for three decades. She takes pride in comments like the one she heard after a Spanish class at the South Deerfield offices of Dr. Hauschka Skin Care, which wanted its employees to better communicate with the region’s large Hispanic population.

“I started a Spanish class with Dr. Hauschka,” Johnson said, “and a woman told me, ‘I learned more in the first five minutes than I did in high school.’”

That’s no accident, but a direct result of ILI’s teaching style, which ditches rote memorization for an immersion approach where constantly putting language into practice, student to student, trumps getting every word perfect.

“You’re not memorizing things; you’re not talking about stuff that doesn’t interest you,” she said. “We have wonderfully trained teachers getting people to use the language rather than memorizing it. I want people to have fun; I want to hear laughter coming out of the classes. People are coming here after work, they’re tired, the roads are lousy … at the end of class, we want people saying, ‘what time is it? It’s over?’ We want it to go by quickly because they’re having fun.”

Thirty years have gone by quickly at ILI, but Johnson anticipates no slowdown in the need to communicate across cultures.

Worldly Concerns

Perhaps the most well-known of ILI’s programs is its World Language Program, which teaches a number of languages to students with a variety of goals. Some have a son or daughter marrying someone from another country. Others want to boost their communication skills on the job — or their employees’ skills — in an increasingly multi-cultural world, from the Spanish-language learners at Dr. Hauschka Skin Care to a midwifery practice in Framingham that brought in an ILI instructor to teach Portuguese.

“In our World Language Program, we have taught a lot of Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese,” Johnson said. “We’ve also taught Swedish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Catalan, and Esperanto. People take classes here, and we can also do these on site.”

Again, she stressed the open, interactive nature of the classes, where students are encouraged to seek connection and broad understanding above nailing the details, which invariably come later.

“We’re passionate about this, and we want people to love it and want them to feel confidence,” she explained. “Are you going to make mistakes? Yes. Is that OK? Of course. We want people to use language, do things with language. We want people to travel if that’s what they want, or get better at their job.”

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

Chris Elliott

Chris Elliott says many people coming to America to study need a “soft place to land” to acclimate to the language and culture.

“The program has become increasingly academic to meet the needs of aspiring college students — young 20- and 30-somethings who plan to attend American universities, and come here with variying English levels,” said Chris Elliott, the program’s coordinator. “Some are Fulbright scholars with basic English proficiency for college; they just need a soft place to land to acclimate to American culture. Some have English proficiency but don’t know how to write essays. At the other end of the spectrum, some students come in as true beginners. They know this is a long-term plan, and we help them over a year or two to develop their English.”

ILI boasts partnerships with colleges and universities like Bay Path, Elms, Western New England, and Springfield College, added Caroline Gear, the institute’s director. “We help prepare the students so they can transition to life in the university. We are their landing place so they can make a smooth transition and be successful.”

That academic group, with the goal of English proficiency for college, comprises about half the Intensive English Program enrollees, while another 40% or so are career professionals who want to improve their English to advance in their companies, Elliott explained. A third, much smaller group are tourists who want to improve their English for travel.

“What all of these people have in common is, they need to come into a classroom where English is the only language spoken, so they can learn to use it in an effective way.”

Another popular ILI option is the Free Evening English Program, or FEEP, a partially grant-funded initiative that provides free classes for immigrants and refugees. The institute also relies on fund-raising events to support the program (it will be the sole recipient of the silent auction at the Paradise City Arts Festival over Memorial Day weekend), and would like to expand it soon.

ILI also offers a volunteer tutor program that trains English speakers to help students studying English. Other initiatives include private tutorials, workplace training in English and Spanish, and programs in Spanish, French, Italian, and other tongues at area colleges, including Hampshire College and Springfield College. “On other campuses,” Johnson said, “if they don’t have a program, we can help set them up.”

Training the Trainers

The other major component of ILI’s programs is teacher training, specifically the World Learning SIT TESOL Certificate program, which becomes the graduate’s ticket to teaching language, both in the U.S. and internationally.

“The program has people focus on ‘how do I do it, and how can I do it better?’” Johnson said. “It’s a wonderful program. Some people are looking for a new career. Some people got into teaching through the back door and didn’t think they needed training, but realized they did when they came here. It’s an opportunity to reflect and have people observe you, so you can improve.”

Susan Redditt has a doctorate in special education and has been teaching in that field for many years, but began to see a need for more comprehensive language instruction, so she enrolled in the certificate program to broaden her career opportunities.

“As someone who has been teaching a long time, to sit down and think deeply about my teaching … I don’t get that chance often with colleagues,” she told BusinessWest. “I realized, maybe I can do better.”

It helps that Redditt has a passion for helping people communicate across cultures. “Often, language is power. If you don’t have language, then you’re marginalized.”

Johnson, who speaks Spanish, Catalan, and varying degrees of French, Italian, and Esperanto, and has studied Arabic and Chinese — and would like to add other languages to her repertoire — helped initiate several of ILI’s key programs right at the start in 1984, including the Intensive English Program, the World Language Program, and FEEP. Today, the institute boasts 10 full-time employees and between five and 10 part-timers, depending on the month.

“What almost killed us was 9/11,” she said, noting that enrollment in the Intensive English Program, in particular, all but dried up in the months following the terrorist attacks. “People were afraid to come to the United States. A number of language schools closed after that — big ones, too. After that, of course, we were hurting financially. We had debt, and I was using credit cards.”

Thirteen years later, however, “we have no debt. It took a long time. We’re proud of that.”

She also continues to be proud of an interactive, student-to-student approach to language that surprised the Dr. Hauschka employees and continues to impress hundreds of other program enrollees.

“Adults are like kids — we need reinforcement; we need support,” she said. “I’d much rather students learn from each other than from me. When you’re using the language, not seeing it, you train your ear.”

That said, Johnson added, “even though there’s a lot of goofing around here, we take what we do very seriously. We don’t take ourselves seriously, but we take language seriously.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Report Urges Action to Increase Number of College Graduates

StateGradsUrgencyDPartRichard Freeland says the numbers don’t lie. If anything, they’re conservative, which should be cause for alarm or — preferably, in his view — decisive action.

He was referring to projections contained the latest Vision Project report released recently by the Mass. Department of Higher Education. Titled “Degrees of Urgency: Why Massachusetts Needs More College Graduates Now,” the report uses rhetoric, but mostly numbers to explain that thesis.

Starting with 72%. That’s the percentage of Massachusetts jobs that will require some college education by 2020, said Freeland, the state’s commissioner of Higher Education. That number is the highest in the country, he added, and a reflection of the high-tech jobs that are now dominating the state’s economy.

But there’s also 55,000 to 65,000 — that’s the projected shortfall in the number of college graduates the state will experience by 2030, according to the report. Then there are 6:1 and 17:1, the current ratios of job openings to recent bachelor’s degree recipients in the fields of healthcare and information technology, respectively. And finally, there’s -9%. That’s the projected drop in Massachusetts high-school students graduating annually between 2009 and 2020.

Add all these numbers up, figuratively, and the state is facing what Freeland calls a “perfect storm,” one that could seriously threaten or slow its high-tech economy.

“The Massachusetts workforce has become heavily dependent on the graduates of public higher education,” he said. “And unless we raise the level of our game, we’re not going to have the workforce we need.”

This is a message that should resonate with incoming Gov. Charlie Baker and the Legislature, he said, adding that the state’s ability to compete with leading technology states such as California, New York, and New Jersey will be imperiled unless steps are taken.

Richard Freeland

Richard Freeland

“Degrees of Urgency” recommends three: boosting college-completion rates; closing achievement gaps, especially those involving the African-American and Latino populations; and attracting and graduating more students from underserved populations.

None of the above constitutes rocket science, and these steps have been the basic goals spelled out in the Higher Education Department’s Vision Project, said Bill Messner, president of Holyoke Community College, who said the problem outlined in the report and the solutions to it appear relatively simple. In reality, though, they are not.

“We have to get more people into college, and we have to get more people through college — it’s as simple as that,” he said, adding quickly that changing demographics across the state and especially in the Pioneer Valley (more on them later), current funding levels for the state’s public institutions, and those projections of falling numbers of high-school graduates will make these stern challenges.

What will help, said Freeland, is a broader commitment from the Legislature to fund public higher education at a level well above the current one, which is, in every sense of the word, average, in terms of national statistics.

“Massachusetts still ranks very much in the middle of the pack among the states in terms of per-student investment in public higher education,” he said while explaining his department’s call for an additional $475 million over five years that would be spread out over the state’s community colleges, state universities, and the many campuses of the University of Massachusetts. “We still haven’t made a commitment to investing in genuine excellence in public higher ed, and that’s the point of this report; Massachusetts can’t get by with an average system of public higher education and an average level of investment.”

Such a boost will make the state’s public schools more affordable and, thus, more attractive to those challenged by the cost of higher education, he said, and also to the comparatively high number of high-school graduates who feel compelled to leave the Bay State to attend college.

Overall, recent funding increases for public higher education have essentially restored what was lost in the fiscally trying years following the Great Recession, Freeland said, adding that a greater investment is needed to build on recent momentum and enable the public colleges to meet the additional burden they’ve been asked to absorb.

For this issue and its focus on education, BuinessWest takes an in-depth look at the “Degrees of Urgency” report and the suggested steps for possibly clearing the skies.

Course of Action

Messner told BusinessWest that the gathering storm outlined in the report is already much in evidence at HCC, in the form of recent enrollment figures.

In 2009, the year after the Great Recession began, there were 7,400 students enrolled, he noted. By 2011, the number was down to 7,100. In 2013, it was 6,700 (down more than 5%), and in 2014, it was 6,600. And another 1% to 2% drop is projected for 2015.

Bill Messner

Bill Messner says falling high-school populations, coupled with demographic changes, have impacted enrollment at Holyoke Community College.

Behind these statistics is declining high-school enrollment, Messner acknowledged quickly, but there’s much more to it than that, especially changing demographics.

“Whatever bubble was moving through has come and gone,” he said of the high-school population. “Meanwhile, the demographic mix in our region is changing, and that’s no surprise — we’re seeing it at HCC, and other people are seeing it as well.

“We have more first-generation, low-income students coming to us, and that reflects the population as a whole,” he went on. “We have fewer college-educated students moving into the area, and more non-college-educated people moving in, which results in more first-generation college students.

“The other way of saying that,” he continued, “is that the only growth population in Western Massachusetts tends to be immigrants, and the large majority of these immigrants do not have a college education, and they’re not coming from cultures where a college education is necessarily the priority it is here in the United States.”

But while enrollment is down, the number of graduates has not changed appreciably, Messner went on, noting that, in 2011, the high-water mark, there were 1,128. In 2013, there were 958, and in 2014, there were 1,105, a nearly 15% increase. These numbers clearly show that the college is becoming more successful in moving those students who do enroll through to graduation.

And these real-time developments add some exclamation points to the “Degrees of Urgency” report and those three steps outlined to put more students into the pipeline, see them through to the other end, and make them part of a qualified workforce, said Messner, adding that, while the report talks mostly about conditions projected for down the road, many of the anticipated changes in numbers are already taking place.

“Community colleges are pretty good canaries in the coal mine, so to speak,” he said. “If you look at our enrollment — and our enrollment is no different than any other community college — it peaked in 2008 and has been on a steady decline since then, and there’s little to indicate that this will change.”

Messner noted that, while there has been progress in closing achievement gaps and improving graduation rates, as his statistics show and the report states, there is considerable work to be done.

Completing His Thoughts

Freeland agreed, and returned to what the “Degrees of Urgency” report calls the “Big Three” strategies to increase the number of students graduating with degrees or certificates.

He said declining high-school enrollment is a reality the state will have to live with, and, given those numbers, there must be a commitment to improving completion rates in general, attracting more students from underserved populations to the public colleges and universities, and closing achievement gaps.

Included in that ‘underserved populations’ category are adult students (those ages 25-65 who have some college credits but not a degree), military veterans, and high-school graduates heading to out-of-state colleges.

Massachusetts has more individuals in that third category than most states (it ranks 29th in that category), said Freeland, listing as possible causes everything from the small size of the Commonwealth — “if you want to get away, as many students do, you almost have to leave the state” — to a lack of awareness, or appreciation, when it comes to the public higher education system here.

“Public higher education in Massachusetts has never enjoyed a strong reputation,” he explained. “You have students leaving Massachusetts to attend public colleges and universities in other states. Staying in state and going to one of the public schools doesn’t have a lot of cache among high-school students, although UMass Amherst may be beginning to acquire that.”

Changing this equation won’t happen quickly or easily, he went on, adding that the quality of education being provided and its cost are two big factors that could be addressed through a greater investment in public higher education in this state.

As for those adult students, they most aspire to jobs that require a college degree or certificate, but they are not yet ready for college-level work, said Freeland, adding that, in addition to the challenge of getting them enrolled or re-enrolled, these individuals must also confront competing job and family pressures.

Thus, they embody two components of the report’s three-pronged strategy — getting into college and then getting through it.

As the report states, there have been some improvements in graduation rates, such as those logged at HCC, but additional efforts, encompassing everything from mentoring to making more enrollees ‘college-ready,’ will be needed.

“We have been working very hard on what we call ‘student success,’ which is shorthand for retaining and graduating more students, and we’re not peculiar in that — everyone’s working on that,” said Messner, adding that this hard work, coupled with more emphasis on attaining a degree, rather than taking certain courses and attaining a certain number of credits for transfer, is at least partially responsible for that rise.

But there are still many challenges ahead, most of them manifesting themselves in those lower enrollment figures he relayed.

As he talked about ways to stem that tide, he focused on one of the big problems — poor high-school graduation rates in many area cities, especially Springfield and Holyoke — while relaying some comments he made at a recent United Way meeting on that subject (see related story on page 27).

“I told people, ‘this is not a problem for the Springfield School Department or the Holyoke School Department — anyone who hires people from the local workforce is going to be impacted by this,’” he recalled. “If we don’t increase our high-school graduation rates, we’re going to see a dramatic decline in the number of college graduates, and that doesn’t bode well for our economy.”

The Bottom Line

Looking ahead about six months, Messner said the final tally for the number of graduates at next spring’s commencement ceremony will be very telling. And right now, he’s not at all sure what to expect.

“If it’s up or even close to the number we had for last spring, it will be a really good sign that something positive is going on,” he said, adding quickly that, whatever the number is, stern challenges remain for those looking to put more students in the pipeline — and hire them if and when they graduate.

Freeland concurred, and noted that all those numbers in the Vision Project report add up to an ominous forecast — one for a perfect storm.

It probably won’t miss this region, he noted, and, in fact, it will hit harder than most others. But with appropriate steps, the state can weather it.

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

Education Sections
Conference Focuses on Ways to Boost Springfield’s Graduation Rate

By KATHLEEN MITCHELL

Michael Smith

Michael Smith (second from left) introduces Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno (left) to his parents and grandmother, who helped him succeed in school.

Many businesses donate to local nonprofit organizations and do their best to support the community. But Michael Smith says they inadvertently fail to recognize the role they can play in a critical area of need.

“Businesses often think that lowering the high-school dropout rate is a job for schools, nonprofit organizations, and the government. But they need to pay attention to what is happening if they expect the country to have an educated workforce,” said the Springfield native during a keynote speech at the GradNation Summit 2014 luncheon held last month at Springfield College for community and business leaders. “They may be writing checks or hosting grant competitions, but it is not enough. They need to establish apprenticeship programs, bring high-school students into their companies, and send their employees into the schools.”

Smith was recently appointed a special assistant to President Obama and is senior director of Cabinet Affairs for the presidential My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which addresses opportunity gaps faced by boys and young men of color that prevent them from reaching their full potential.

He traveled to the Bay State from Washington, D.C. to attend the day-long GradNation event, at which summit leaders shared best practices aimed at keeping inner-city students interested in their own education, with a focus on the relationship between success in middle school and the path to graduation.

Springfield was one of 100 cities across the nation selected by America’s Promise Alliance to hold a GradNation conference, with the goal of boosting the high-school graduation rate to 90% by 2020. And the United Way of Pioneer Valley convened the event as part of its Stay in School initiative launched last year in partnership with Springfield’s public schools.

“Middle school is a time when kids often get off track; adolescence can be really challenging, and we can’t wait until high school to make sure students are achieving at grade level. We need to get them in the pipeline early,” Smith said, adding that an overwhelming number of dropouts are “kids of color.”

He told BusinessWest that he grew up in the Hill McKnight area of Springfield. “It was a rough neighborhood with drugs, crime, violence … you name it,” he said. “I had many opportunities to fall off the path, but thanks to my parents, my grandmother, and the Boys & Girls Club, which provided me with opportunities to volunteer as well as my first job, I became a success.

“But I think about the kids I went there with who are not standing in a similar position today,” he went on. “A lot of them dropped out of school or had children early, and way too many dreams were deferred.”

However, there are strategies that can make a difference, and Smith said peer mentoring is an effective tool in middle school. But he quickly dispelled the belief that focusing solely on improving academics is the most important strategy in reducing the dropout rate.

“It takes far more than academics for a child to be successful,” he said, citing the Harlem Children’s Zone as a program that works. “They use innovative educational programs to help children, but they feed them breakfast first. You have to look at all of the roadblocks, and we need to disrupt the way we have been doing things because it is not working.

“Good enough is not good enough; we invest far too much money in things that don’t bear fruit, and governments and nonprofits can’t save children,” he went on, adding that, while nonprofits spend $300 billion each year, the dropout rate remains high.

“So, it’s clear that we need to form new partnerships, invest in innovation, and set the same goals if we want to attain a 90% graduation rate,” he told the audience.

Working Together

Springfield Mayor Dominic Sarno told those assembled that a number of success stories have come out of Springfield, adding quickly that considerable work remains.

“We need to push the needle if we are going to knock down poverty. The number-one priority is education, followed by jobs, and you get jobs through education,” he said, acknowledging that middle school is a difficult time for young people.

“If we are going to make any real improvements in the dropout rate, the entire community needs to be behind it,” the mayor went on. “We have a moral imperative to improve urban schools, but it will require bold and difficult measures to get dramatic outcomes.”

Springfield College President Mary Beth Cooper was among a bevy of speakers who outlined their efforts to help Springfield schools, and said the college has tutors in preschools who focus on early literacy skills of at-risk children.

“Our Springfield College School Turnaround Initiative also places 48 Americorps members in Level 4 schools. In 2013-14, they implemented targeted interventions to improve attendance, academic achievement, and the behavioral-social-emotional health of the students,” she said, adding that, as a result, 55% showed an increase in academic engagement.

Dora Robinson, president and CEO of United Way of Pioneer Valley, stressed the fact that GradNation was not simply an event. “It’s a call to action, and we really need a lot of support,” she said. “If we invest time and effort on the front end, more young people will graduate and move into the workforce. We have made some inroads in moving the needle, but until we are willing to stand up and support young people, we shouldn’t point fingers.”

In addition to speakers, the event included both youth and community panels, and the participants took note of what it will take to formulate an action plan to inspire middle-school students to do well in class. Measures that were outlined include engaging parents and young people, establishing safe places for students to go, providing them with individual mentors and social and emotional supports, and putting early-warning response systems in place that will alert educators when a student is at risk of dropping out.

“If anyone can do this, Springfield can,” Smith said. “But in order to reach a 90% graduation rate, we have to interrupt the status quo. People keep doing the same things over and over, while millions of kids fall through the cracks. Everyone needs to lock their arms together with a common goal.”

Moving Forward

Although 80% of students across the nation graduate from high school today, jut over half (54.9% last year) of Springfield high-school students earn their diploma.

Progress has been made, but Henry Thomas III, president of the Urban League, said the future of the region and the local economy depends on students not only graduating, but obtaining the credentials they need to get a job after high school. “The whole community needs to put education front and center.”

The information gleaned from the GradNation Summit will be distilled into a three-year community action plan to support Springfield’s middle-school students that will be submitted to America’s Promise Alliance by early January.

“This summit is the beginning, but nothing we do in school matters if a child is not eating, or drugs are being sold in violence outside their windows,” Smith said, as he spoke about a program in Washington, D.C. that matches children with paid mentors who do everything from getting them help for depression to providing assistance to parents looking for a job.

“But we also need investments, mentors, and slots for apprenticeships and internships so young people can gain practical experience,” he went on. “We need to come together to figure out our workforce needs in the next few years and make sure we are investing time and money to fill these jobs instead of having to look elsewhere.”

Education Sections
WNEU’s Biomedical Engineering Program Is in a Growth Mode

By KEVIN FLANDERS

Dr. Robert Gettens

Dr. Robert Gettens, right, with students Hadiatou Barry (left) and Dena Navarroli, check out lab equipment in the Biomedical Engineering department at WNEU.

Inside the labs at Western New England University’s Biomedical Engineering (BME) department, students aren’t simply studying the technologies behind medicine. They’re constantly searching for ways to improve them.

It’s a philosophy, acting Department Chair Dr. Robert Gettens and BME students agree, that prepares them well to be leaders in a variety of careers. Many recent WNEU graduates have become specialized medical attorneys. Others have gravitated toward research. One particularly accomplished alumnus, Ryan Turner, is on his way to becoming a brain surgeon. But, regardless of what path graduates choose, they all share an ability to comprehensively analyze and enhance technology, a trait that is imbued in each student while studying at WNEU.

“Rather than teach students what the functions are of particular medical devices, we focus on the fundamentals of engineering so they will be able to go out and design new products,” said Gettens, an associate professor who will remain the acting department chair until Dr. Judy Cezeaux returns from her sabbatical.

Named by U.S. News to its “Best in Undergraduate Engineering” list, WNEU’s Biomedical Engineering department has seen a marked increase in enrollment over the past five years. What was once a fledgling department with fewer than 10 graduates per year has become a paragon of biomedical pedagogy that sends about 20 students each year into the field. With five professors — each boasting impressive credentials to go along with a Ph.D. — the department has inspired students from throughout the nation to pack their cold-weather gear in preparation of continuing their studies in Western Mass.

“The numbers have skyrocketed,” said Gettens, who praised his students for their commitment and relentless pursuit of knowledge. “The students are always so engaged and dedicated to learning.”

Training Future Inventors

Take a moment to reflect on how far medical devices and the technologies that allow for their creation have come in the last 10, 20, and 50 years, enabling millions of individuals to have hope that wouldn’t have existed in the past. Now project those same time frames into the future, and the possibilities for expansion and invention seem unimaginable.

But for BME professors and students, future technologies are not only imaginable but viable. Every invention starts somewhere, and perhaps the incipient traces of tomorrow’s next breakthrough are currently confined to the notebook of a student in Western Mass. It’s not that much of a stretch, considering that 10 BME students at WNEU have been listed as inventors on patents since 2010. Moreover, almost 22% of graduating seniors since 2001 have received regional or national awards for their senior design projects. Engineering careers are no longer dominated by men, either, as more than 40% of WNEU’s BME students are women.

“What we teach here is engineering, which is all about designing,” Gettens told BusinessWest. “By the time they graduate, our students know how to design medical devices.”

The BME department also collaborates with several area hospitals to ensure that students are provided with the best opportunities possible. Among its partners are Baystate Medical Center, Mercy Medical Center, and Shriners Hospital for Children, as well as other local organizations and hospitals that utilize and advance medical technology. Additionally, a few seniors are currently teamed up with hospitals or companies to develop new devices that could potentially transcend the way patients are cared for.

In short, at WNEU, the future truly does lie in the here and now.

And the BME department hasn’t grown exclusively from an enrollment perspective. Following a two-phase, $12.8 million renovation and expansion project at Sleith Hall that concluded in September, students and staff are benefiting daily from two brand-new laboratories. The bioinstrumentation lab is dedicated mostly to the electronic components of engineering, including electrocardiography, bioamplifier design, ultrasound, signal-processing systems, and pulse oximetry. The second lab, meanwhile, serves as a simulated hospital room, complete with a dummy patient decked out in WNEU apparel who occupies the hospital bed. In this lab, students get to see the latest technologies in action and record their effectiveness in a medical setting. That way, when it comes time for these innovations to serve actual patients in hospitals, they will function at the highest levels possible.

In addition to their work inside the labs, WNEU students also have an opportunity each year to take part in a global health and technology course that includes a trip to Guatemala to learn about healthcare in a foreign environment. The BME department, which also includes professors Dr. Anthony English, Dr. Michael Rust, and Dr. Brent Ulrey, know a thing or two about travel, as they’ve earned degrees from several universities and conducted research throughout the nation.

What’s Next?

For thousands of graduating college seniors each year, a degree doesn’t necessarily translate into a job. In some cases, it’s a matter of too many graduates and limited positions to be filled within that field, while in others the problem is rooted in choice of major. But for those emerging from the BME program at WNEU, it’s not a question of whether they will find a job, but which position they’ll choose.

Sometimes opportunities abound to the extent that graduates must first determine what field they’ll choose, then begin the process of applying for positions.

“Many of our graduates work for companies that make medical devices, and others are working for the government,” said Gettens, who earned his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Syracuse University and also served as an engineering officer in the U.S. Army. “They can also go to graduate school to do more research, or they can go to medical school. It depends on what interests them.”

Nationally, 20% of all BME students go on to medical school, according to WNEU’s statistics. But since the university offers a unique, six-year engineering/law program, many of its students have selected the two-for-one degree and backed up their knowledge of medical technology with legal education, a decision that opens many doors.

For WNEU seniors Hadiatou Barry and Dena Navarroli, it will soon be time to say goodbye to William H. Sleith Hall and begin their careers. Armed with advanced training that will serve them well in any field, it will surely be a bittersweet departure.

“I love it here — the professors are really down to earth; you have your fun moments and your serious moments,” said Barry, who is originally from New York City. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

Navarroli, who came to WNEU from Gilbert, Ariz., added, “I was really scared moving all the way from Arizona, but the professors have really supported me. They’ve been great, and they provide so many opportunities here that you can’t find anywhere else.”

For their senior design projects, Barry is researching quantum dot nanocarrier systems for targeted drug delivery, while Navarroli is working with a clinical sponsor on an innovative breast-cancer-surgery device. Both students have excelled in the BME program, and Barry is taking advantage of the rigorous six-year engineering/law opportunity. When she graduates, she’ll be able to choose between patent law and medical litigation if she selects a legal career, both of which are branches of law that require extensive knowledge of medical technology.

“It’s definitely been challenging, but this was my top choice, and it’s been a great experience,” she said.

Both Barry and Navarroli have bright futures ahead of them, as employment of biomedical engineers is expected to increase by nearly 30% by 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In recent years, WNEU seniors have gone on to work for such major healthcare companies and institutions as Active Medical Devices, Covidien, St. Louis University, Cornell University, Respironics Novametrix LLC, and Microtest Laboratories Inc., among others.

Rewarding Field

Interests and specialties aside, WNEU’s BME students and professors were drawn together by a common passion — helping people in need.

Though many biomedical-engineering students throughout the nation may never operate on a single patient in their careers, the technologies they develop help doctors and nurses save countless lives. From advanced imaging systems to pioneering point-of-care devices, BME students situate themselves on the cutting edge of technology by studying thousands of applications and mechanisms during their college years. They also dedicate several hours each week to reviewing case studies and staying current on the latest research and literature pertaining to the constantly evolving field.

And the research is hardly limited to the students. With busy teaching schedules, professors sometimes struggle to find enough time to complete multiple research projects each semester.

“The faculty members have done a lot of research lately in micro- and nano-devices,” said Gettens, whose department recently received a $500,000 grant from Massachusetts Life Sciences. “Because the professors usually do 12 credit hours of teaching [per semester], trying to find time for research can definitely be a challenge.”

Gettens said the grant will allow for the purchase of equipment that facilitates micro- and nano-fabrication for medical devices. To outsiders, these words might as well be written in a different language, but for those immersed in the innovative, collaborative culture of biomedical engineering, the more complex the application, the more enthralling the endeavor.

And that explains why the program — and the job opportunities it creates — are both on the rise.

Education Sections
The World Is Our Classroom Makes Learning Meaningful

Sue Towers, left, and Nora Patton

Sue Towers, left, and Nora Patton say The World Is Our Classroom helps expose students to a wide variety of careers.

Sarah Topey never used to think twice about the water that came from the faucets in her home.

But after spending a recent day touring West Parish Water Filtration Plant and Cobble Mountain Reservoir in Westfield with her class, the 12-year-old not only had fun and learned important lessons about water filtration, she returned home with a dream.

“I hope I can do an internship there when I’m in college,” said the seventh-grader from STEM Middle School in Springfield. “I like science, and think I might like to work in a water plant. This helped me see how things happen in real life, and it’s good for the environment.”

The field trip was part of a program called The World Is Our Classroom Inc. (WIOC), and Executive Director Nora Burke Patton says it was founded on the principle that students learn best when they see classroom lessons reinforced in the real world.

“It runs from fifth grade through high school, and by partnering with urban school systems, institutions of higher education, and businesses, WIOC not only reinforces classroom lessons, but also opens young minds to employment opportunities,” she said, adding that the program was launched in 2002 through a collaboration of area businesses and school systems, and has exposed more than 20,000 schoolchildren from Springfield, Holyoke, and Westfield to memorable experiences that can lead to careers.

In fact, Katherine Pederson, executive director of the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission, says Topey’s dream of a college internship is realistic, and she hopes to interview and hire a job candidate in the future who took part in the program and was intrigued enough to pursue a career in the field.

“We hope some of the students who come here will choose to study water or wastewater management and become stewards of our natural resources,” said Pederson, explaining that jobs range from business managers to accountants; from laborers to engineers, with entry-level salaries for candidates without a college education starting between $30,000 and $34,000 and topping out at about $120,000 for engineers.

Jobs in water- and wastewater-treatment plants are going unfilled due to a lack of qualified applicants, and demand is only expected to rise. “The Baby Boomers working in these professions are nearing retirement, and young people are not choosing these careers,” said Pederson. “So it’s becoming more and more difficult to find operators.

“Every town and city in the country has a water and sewer department or a combined department, and these jobs will be there forever,” she went on. “So we feel very fortunate to have a program that starts the dialogue about them, and about water, in fifth grade. We hope that, by the time the students are in seventh grade, they will start thinking about careers.”

Pederson added that the tours are educational. “It’s important for students to learn that, when they turn on a faucet and water comes out, it’s not just magic, and it’s also good for them to understand what we do here to make sure the community has safe drinking water and enough water for fire protection,” she said. “We also think of the students as future ratepayers. They will become the decision makers in the community, so it’s good for them to know why wastewater costs more than water.

“This program is a first step,” she continued, “but it’s an important one, and we are happy to have this partnership. It’s been a positive experience for everyone involved.”

Learning Curves

The idea for the WIOC was born more than a decade ago after United Water signed a 20-year contract with the Springfield Water and Sewer Department to operate and maintain its wastewater-treatment plant and flood-control system.

“We wanted to make a long-term commitment to the community, and because we’re an environmental company, the idea of doing something involving stewardship and education resonated strongly with us,” said Don Goodroe, area manager for United Water.

So the company teamed up with Patton, Springfield Water and Sewer, and Springfield Public Schools. It also hired Springfield College Professor Robert Barkman to create a curriculum for fifth-grade students based on the state science framework that would teach them about the importance of water, the complexity of managing it, and the critical role wastewater-treatment plants play in keeping it clean.

A group of seventh-grade Springfield students

A group of seventh-grade Springfield students recently toured the West Parish Water Filtration Plant and Cobble Mountain Reservoir in Westfield.

The pilot project, which kicked off 12 years ago, was called “A Day at Bondi’s Island Springfield Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility,” and included a tour of the facility, where students learned physical, earth, and life sciences as well as technology and design engineering.

“The program was a perfect nexus of all our needs,” said Goodroe. “We were providing education focused on environmental stewardship, and although fifth-graders are not usually thinking about jobs, the program exposed them to people working in occupations they might not have known about.”

The outcome was so successful that the WIOC was incorporated as a nonprofit organization, which allowed it to grow and expand.

As a result, today all Springfield fifth-graders visit Bondi’s Island, while all seventh-graders spend a day at Cobble Mountain in Westfield. There are preparatory and follow-up lessons in the classroom, and teachers whose students visit the site early in the year refer to their experiences throughout the course of study, while those who visit near the time of the MCAS exam say it makes the material students need to know easier to remember and understand.

“Everything the students are taught during the field trips reinforces what they learn in the classroom,” said Patton, as she spoke about the program while STEM Middle School students ate lunch on picnic tables at Cobble Mountain Reservoir. “This morning, they learned about where drinking water comes from and also learned about ecosystems, microorganisms, plant habitats, and animal life when they went into streams in the watershed and used nets to catch crayfish, salamanders, frogs, and toads.”

Ron St. Amand says the program is a great way to help students understand the relationship between book learning and the outside world.

“It blends inquiry, problem solving, and collaboration,” said the director of science for Springfield Public Schools, adding that his staff worked closely with the program directors to design the curriculum for The World Is Our Classroom.

St. Amand pointed to an engineering design challenge that gives students the opportunity to attempt to clean mock wastewater at Bondi’s Island as an example of an activity that provides a hands-on, memorable learning experience. “There is also a water-cycle game in which kids pretend to be water molecules and move between rivers, glaciers, the atmosphere, and groundwater to simulate what the water cycle is like, before pollution is introduced into the game,” he said.

“Another activity called Molecules in Motion gives kids the opportunity to look under a microscope, see microbes in wastewater, and learn they are food for microorganisms, which addresses many areas of science,” he went on.

St. Amand believes the program is stimulating and inspirational. “It supports the curriculum and also opens students’ eyes to potential job opportunities, which will help motivate them to study,” he said, noting that the majority of students in Springfield are minorities who are often underrepresented in STEM careers.

Down to a Science

The program expanded into the Holyoke Public School system in 2004, and through a partnership that includes Holyoke Community College, fifth-grade students began spending a day at Hazen Paper Co.

“The trip there exposes students to earth and space science, life science, and physical science, in addition to technology and engineering, and also introduces them to the paper-making process and related manufacturing careers,” Patton said.

The morning session consists of a tour of the facility, including the opportunity to observe a large gravure printer in operation, interactive lessons called “Molecules in Motion” and “The Water Cycle and Life Cycle of the Oak Tree,” and a reflection period during which students are asked to write or draw something that showcases their experience. After lunch, they take part in a challenging design activity and are given the opportunity to make their own paper.

CEO and President John Hazen said that, when Patton asked him to get involved, he was happy to do so.

“The idea of engaging with kids in Holyoke intrigued me, and I thought it sounded like an interesting way to connect with the community; I also thought my employees would be energized by it,” he said, noting that, earlier that year, a group of retirees had toured the company, and his staff found it satisfying to have them see what they do at work.

Hazen has been involved with the WIOC for 10 years and believes it is important because many of the students would not get another opportunity to see how a Holyoke manufacturing firm operates.

“When we teach them how to make paper, it opens up their world. Our employees talk with them about their jobs because we want to create a fantastic experience and plant seeds at a young age about career opportunities,” he told BusinessWest.  “It has gone very well, and we have never had a bad experience. The kids are so stimulated that they become very engaged in the activities.”

His only challenge was to find a space large enough to house the students, but Hazen refurbished an attic area for the purpose and has since used it for other meetings. “The program is very energizing, and my employees love to see the school bus arrive. It brings meaning to the workplace and ultimately is about providing jobs for families and the community,” he said.

In another fifth-grade program, Mestek Inc. partners with Westfield Public Schools, STCC, and the Westfield Manufacturing Education Initiative to increase interest in heating and cooling systems, water cycles, weather, and the environment.

Mestek Marketing Manager Matt Kleszczynski says the company enjoys supporting the program.

“Kids don’t learn a lot about manufacturing in the classroom, so we open our facility to them and give them tours through the plant, as well as insight into what we do, how we do it, and how their houses get heat and hot water, which is something kids don’t usually think about,” he noted.

The students walk through the entire assembly line, which allows them to see how components to baseboard heating are manufactured. “The tours are conducted by volunteers who provide them with tutelage on each of the specific jobs,” Kleszczynski said. “We like to give back to the community, and this exposes students to alternative professional avenues in the field of manufacturing, which is valuable, as a lot of kids like to work with their hands.”

He added that Mestek has had a long-standing relationship with the WIOC program. “We are busy, but we make sure we schedule time for this.”

Class Act

Patton said The World Is Our Classroom continues to grow, and next October, students from Chicopee Public Schools will visit the Chicopee Water Pollution Control Facility.

In addition, a One Day Medical Encounter program for high-school students that took place in the past is expected to resume next fall. It is focused on the 10th-grade biology curriculum and exposes students to alternative careers in medicine by bringing them into patient-simulation labs at local community colleges.

“These mini-hospital settings provide a real-world environment in which students work directly with healthcare educators while learning about anatomy and physiology, laboratory diagnosis, cell structure, and function and genetics,” Patton said.

Goodroe is proud that the program evolved from United Water’s desire to be a good corporate citizen. “I look forward to the day when I can hire a student who came through the program,” he said, adding that the company operates throughout New England and created a similar program in Killingly, Conn. that allows students to visit a wastewater-treatment plant there.

Patton noted that The World Is Our Classroom is funded by grants, with cooperation from area businesses.

“Our goal is for each program to be self-sustaining,” she said. “But the experiences students have can be life-changing, and it helps businesses to start recruiting tomorrow’s workforce by exposing kids to careers that have great promise.”

Education Sections
Greenfield Community College Emphasizes Collaboration

Robert Pura

Robert Pura touts a number of GCC’s notable academic departments, from art to nursing to a unique program in renewable energy.

They’re called ‘studios.’

While they vary slightly in design across the Greenfield Community College campus, they all have some features in common, most importantly tables and couches at which students work and talk, in a space surrounded by that department’s faculty offices.

“About 13 or 14 years ago, the math department convinced us they wanted to have a space near the faculty offices for students to come, to ensure there wasn’t a long wait to see a faculty member,” said GCC President Robert Pura. Since then, virtually every department has followed suit in creating a common study area surrounded by those office doors.

“It’s a space with tables and chairs, where students can learn from each other and support each other, and the faculty are right there,” he explained, recalling a time when a maintenance worker questioned a mass of students sharing pizza and studying in one of the studios late at night.

“They didn’t want to leave. I laughed and said, ‘that isn’t a problem.’ That’s the spirit we want to see — a community where people are encouraged to work together and learn independently, but also from each other. That’s the kind of attribute that will serve them well, whether they transfer to another school or head into a career right away.”

The studios are one of the more notable examples of a culture of connectivity fostered at GCC, Pura told BusinessWest — one further enhanced by an extensive renovation of the campus’s core building three years ago, which better connected each department and brought in much more natural light to boot.

“You can see our commitment to community in the design of the building, our commitment to interconnectivity,” he said. “You’re always feeling like you’re connected to people as you’re walking around — you feel those relationships and sense of community among students and faculty and staff.

“I’ve talked to a lot of alumni over time,” Pura added. “It’s not a lecture they remember; it’s not a formula or that one piece of poetry. It’s the relationships they had with people that makes a long-term impact. As a smaller college, we have an opportunity to make that the strength of the institution.”

Hand in Hand

The main role of an institution like GCC, of course, is to prepare people — both young learners and older career transitioners — for jobs in a still-difficult economy.

To that end, and perhaps more than ever before, the state’s community colleges are working closely with area economic-development bodies and local businesses to bridge the gap between education and career opportunities, to ensure that their graduates have the skills and training required to meet companies’ needs.

That’s especially important for GCC, Pura said, because of its position as the only community college in Franklin County — or neighboring Hampshire County, for that matter.

Robert Pura

Robert Pura says GCC’s recently remodeled core building is designed with both access and connectivity in mind.

“It is essential, especially up here in Franklin County, that we collaborate with regional employee boards, the Literacy Project, the Center for New Americans, Franklin County Technical School, Smith Vocational School … the more we’re able to collaborate, the more we’re able to do collectively.”

One notable collaboration involves Steve Capshaw, the owner of Greenfield-based Valley Steel Stamp, who raised $250,000 from private industry for new manufacturing tools for Franklin Technical School, then got legislators to match it. The result was an effort involving both Franklin Technical School and GCC to boost opportunity in the manufacturing sector.

“With Steve’s commitment, we developed a state-of-the-art lab. The technical school developed a curriculum for their students, and we developed curriculum to reach the worker in transition,” Pura said. “Steve Capshaw is really the reason that happened; he’s certainly a local hero.”

Noting that the Franklin Hampshire Regional Employment Board was involved as well, Pura said he is “proud of the way folks in Franklin County and Hampshire County understand collaboration. We really do more with less.

“Collaboration happens to the be the way of life up here,” he added. “I don’t know if it’s because we have an agricultural base, and farmers collaborate as a way of life. But the same is true of the industrial base here, the banks and healthcare, the education folks up here — we really know how to collaborate well.”

Having those ties, he went on, helps the college in terms of program and curriculum development. “We listen to business leaders, healthcare leaders, agricultural leaders of the community. They want people who can communicate effectively, think critically, and work well with others — and these are the outcomes of a GCC education.”

Those are skills, of course, that translate to a multitude of fields, which is important at a time when many graduates wind up shifting gears into fields they didn’t major in, or return to school later in life to learn a new career.

“Coming here gives folks the opportunity to change direction without significant cost to their family or themselves,” Pura said. “Changing careers is a hard decision because of the investment they’ve already made. It shouldn’t cost another $200,000 to figure out what they want to do.”

Signature Programs

Like most colleges, Greenfield has differentiated itself in several academic areas, including its programs in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Those caught the eye of Congress, which invited Pura and associate professor Teresa Jones to speak at a subcommittee hearing last spring titled “American Energy Jobs: Opportunities for Education.” Lawmakers in Washington were interested in hearing how to link education with the growing need for a solar-energy workforce.

“There is a great deal of opportunity for economic growth, job creation, and job attainment in the sustainable-energy field,” Jones said at the time. “There is a huge potential for domestic jobs in the area of energy-efficiency upgrades, but people need knowledge and advanced skills to do those jobs.”

The field, she added, is already much different than it was only five years ago, “so businesses and workers need to be able to adapt. The key piece for us is figuring out where the best job opportunities are and what people need to know to succeed in getting those jobs or starting businesses. We look to our business and other community partners to help guide that process.”

On a related note, Pura also touted the college’s farm-to-food program. “What it’s really about is how to get local farming into the restaurants and refrigerators of the community and make that a more mutually beneficial system,” he said. Meanwhile, the American Assoc. of Community Colleges recently gave GCC an award for its sustainable systems on campus, including an energy-neutral greenhouse built two years ago, which supplies produce to both the school’s dining service and local food pantries.

“That comes from our commitment to not wanting to see the work being done in the classroom and the work we’re doing on campus being too far apart,” Pura said. “We learn from students, and we all learn from each other. These are powerful programs.”

As is the college’s well-regarded graphic arts program, which decorates campus buildings with paintings, sculptures, and other installations, and attracts some of the top art schools in the country to an annual ‘portfolio day,’ Pura said. “The combination of our students’ life stories with the strength of their fundamentals makes them highly sought-after artists.”

He also talked up GCC’s nursing program, noting that its graduates are typically among the top scorers in their licensure exams and snatch up jobs quickly in a market that’s starting to ramp up demand for quality nurses again.

But other programs that don’t get as much press are just as key to the college’s success, Pura added.

“At the core of our institution, two departments that are not as recognized as many are English and math. But these two departments teach the communication skills and critical-thinking skills that are so sought after. For all the wonderful acknowledgement of some of our signature programs, it is really the English and math departments that are fundamental to our school’s success.”

Room to Grow

GCC is helping its students succeed in other ways as well, including a new child-care center currently being built, which will be staffed by Community Action’s Head Start program.

“It’s hard to focus fully on academics with a child in your hands,” Pura said with a laugh. “So having child care on campus will help our students succeed, and it is a great start for kids; the data about the number of children who start in college-based child care and go on to college is pretty strong.”

It’s just one more way Greenfield Community College is forging connections and giving students the foundation to succeed, no matter their stage of life.

“There’s no distance here between students, and the teaching space embraces that philosophy,” Pura said, referring not only to those studios but to the classrooms, where students typically sit together in groups, not at separate desks.

“Those students come in with dreams of what they want to do with their lives,” he added. “We give them an opportunity, and if they work hard, they can be successful in their career aspirations.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Westfield State Works to Put the Dobelle Controversy Behind It

WSU Interim President Elizabeth Preston

WSU Interim President Elizabeth Preston

Elizabeth Preston acknowledged that, in the vast majority of cases, when someone in academia has the title ‘interim president’ in front of their name, they are usually in a caretaking role, holding down the fort until the institution chooses its next leader.

But at Westfield State University, that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, it’s been more of the exception than the rule, she said, noting that individuals have been called upon to restore order and change the tenor of front-page headlines in the wakes of scandals in the ’80s that led to the resignations of Frank Pilecki and Irving Buchen.

And that is the situation that Preston, formerly the school’s vice president of Academic Affairs, finds herself in as she serves as interim leader following the tumultuous end to what could only be called the Evan Dobelle era at WSU.

It’s been roughly eight months since Dobelle, who by then had the adjective ‘embattled’ seemingly attached to his name and title, abruptly retired amid a searing controversy over his lavish spending of university resources. Dobelle, who had been suspended from his $240,000-a-year job with pay while a law firm hired by the university’s board of trustees investigated his spending habits, had vowed to fight for that job, filing a federal lawsuit against the trustees and accusing the chairman of conspiring to destroy his reputation.

But he eventually stepped down for what he said was the good of the university — although state and federal lawsuits he’s filed against various parties are still pending — and Preston, who has also served as dean of faculty and chair of the school’s Communications Department, stepped into the breach, first as acting president, then as interim, which means she’ll serve until a new president is selected — a year from now, by most estimates. She will not be a candidate for the permanent position.

Today, most of the headlines concerning the university — and the Dobelle controversy — concern the size of the legal bills the school has amassed in this mess (roughly $1.3 million to date), and there is still the rather large matter of a state inspector general’s report on the school’s noncompliance with the state’s Public Records Law, which was due to arrive several weeks ago, but is still being awaited.

But Preston believes that, to a large degree, the university is succeeding with the ongoing work of putting the Dobelle scandal behind it and moving on with the present, and especially the future.

WSU community

Elizabeth Preston says the WSU community has recovered quickly from last fall’s controversy.

It is being helped in this regard by the school’s 175th-anniversary celebration — which has come in parts and is still in progress (more on that later) — because there have been a number of events that have helped the campus community focus on the positive, said Preston, and also change the tone of news coverage and begin the discussion about what the school could, and should, look like when it turns 200.

The sentiment can be summed up with the phrase ‘moving forward,’ which is more than the name given to a website (www.westfield.ma.edu/movingforward) created to serve as the university’s official resource for information on the inspector general’s investigation and related legal action.

Indeed, it is also a mindset.

Looking back on the academic year that began last September and ended in May, Preston said that, while there were some bright spots, this was what amounted to a timeout for the college, as the Dobelle controversy played itself out in the media, he eventually retired, and the school dealt with the aftereffects.

“And you can’t have a two-year timeout. You can’t sit in the break-down lane for two years. That’s simply not an option in higher education today,” she went on, adding that evidence that this won’t happen comes in a number of forms. They range from enrollment numbers for this fall, which are slightly higher than last year, and on target with the administration’s goals, to fund-raising efforts, including a successful initiative that was part of the recent 175th Anniversary Gala, to comments she’s received from faculty, students, and parents.

Meanwhile, there are other positive developments, such as the planned construction of a new science center, the matriculation of the school’s first class of nursing students last spring, and a collaborative initiative with Holyoke Community College to improve access to, and the affordability of, a bachelor’s degree.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Preston about what being interim president means in this situation, and about what’s next for this school as it marks a milestone.

Altered State

Preston was vacationing in Yosemite National Park last July when the controversy surrounding Dobelle and his spending habits started to reach a boiling point.

She had only limited Internet access where she was staying, but enough to learn that a special meeting of the board of trustees had been called. “That’s when it first occurred to me that this was serious.”

That wasn’t the first time she allowed herself to think about having to assume the role of acting president — the vice president of Academic Affairs is next in line in such situations, according to the school’s well-entrenched succession plan — but it was the first time she thought it was a real possibility.

And four controversy-filled months later, it was reality.

A few weeks after that, her title changed to interim president, which is not an automatic progression, but a role she wanted and one the board of trustees asked her to accept.

It’s been a learning experience on many levels, one that has taken her out of what she called her “comfort zone” within academic affairs, but she’s found it rewarding in a number of ways.

“I was a little bit unprepared for the feeling of responsibility that I have — I’ve always been in a position where there was someone else who was ultimately responsible for things,” she explained. “There’s something very challenging about knowing that you’re responsible for the institution. That would be challenging under any circumstances, but under these circumstances, it’s been more difficult.”

Preston told BusinessWest that, from the beginning, she’s considered her job description as interim president to be fairly simple, even if carrying out that assignment isn’t.

“I thought I clearly had the responsibility for boosting morale and restoring confidence,” she explained, adding that she has gone about this in a number of ways, from effectively communicating not only with the campus but the outside community as well, especially with the ‘moving forward’ website, to putting in place spending safeguards to prevent another controversy like the one authored by Dobelle, to revamping the school’s financial-management team by creating two new positions that focus on internal auditing and risk management.

The website is a key part of the process of putting information in the hands of those who want and need it, and being completely transparent, she said, stressing the importance of communication — at all times, but especially in situations like these. The site answers often-asked questions about the inspector general’s investigation, which began last August, other investigations, ongoing litigation and the accompanying costs to the school, the impact of the scandal on enrollment and fund-raising, and even the search for a new president.

As she talked about the past academic year, using that term ‘timeout’ on more than one occasion, Preston said it’s obviously been a challenging time for the school — and for her.

But in some ways, she said she’s been pleasantly surprised by how quickly the school has seemingly recovered, while also acknowledging that maybe she shouldn’t be surprised.

Indeed, Preston told BusinessWest that, in many ways, the Dobelle scandal, while it received national and international coverage, did not leave what she would consider a deep mark on the school. Few on the campus were really affected by the spending controversies, she noted, and many at the school have been able to focus on the many positive developments from Dobelle’s tenure, and not on how or why it ended so badly.

“The controversy really hasn’t affected much of the work of the university,” she explained. “In terms of morale, Evan Dobelle did a lot of good things for this university, and he greatly elevated its profile.”


School of Thought

Backing up a bit, she noted that, prior to Dobelle’s arrival, WSU endured two caretaker interim presidencies following the departure of Vickie Carwein and then a failed presidential search. This led to what she called “pent-up energy” when Dobelle arrived that translated into a number of initiatives.

She used one — a greater focus on international programs — to show how this pent-up energy manifested itself.

“There was a lot of interest in international study-abroad programs and travel-abroad trips; the faculty had been proposing those kinds of programs for years on campus and hadn’t been able to get any traction,” she explained. “He [Dobelle] opened the doors to all kinds of international programs, and that was typical of a number of things.

“There was a lot of interest in movement on campus in a number of directions,” she went on, “and he elevated the profile of the institution and also empowered faculty and staff to do a number of things they wanted to do; there were a lot of people on campus who were very partial to his presidency.”

So when the controversy broke and Dobelle was eventually compelled to resign, some felt a sense of loss, while others experienced a sense of betrayal, she went on, adding that the extensive, global media coverage and commentary that slammed not only Dobelle, but the trustees — first for hiring him and then for an apparent lack of oversight — made matters much worse.

It all added up to a challenging period, but one that she doesn’t believe has lingered.

A new science building

A new science building, seen here in an architect’s rendering, is one of many positive developments taking place on the Westfield State campus.

“This really is a tight campus community, and people are really focused on the education and experience that our students receive,” she said. “So it was surprising to me how quickly things returned to a degree of normalcy on campus.”

She can’t pinpoint exactly when that happened, but a social event late last fall may have been a factor in accelerating the healing process.

“There were no speeches, and there was no program,” she said of the gathering. “There was just a chance for everyone to reconnect. I think that was the beginning of the process of rebuilding morale on campus.”

Meanwhile, the 175th anniversary and various celebrations to mark that occasion provided not necessarily a distraction, she went on, but a chance to focus on the institution’s history, future, and core values.

“When you celebrate something like a 175th anniversary, what gives that occasion such power is what it allows you to recognize and talk about where the institution has been, and also about the timeless values that have been the foundation of everything you’ve been doing, and how much they’re still present.

“It gave us a chance to celebrate being a public institution, our history of inclusion, and the centrality of service to our academic programs and the campus culture,” she went on, “because those have been part of the institution for 175 years, and it gave people a chance to be proud of who we are and where we’ve come from; it was very helpful in moving the institution forward.”

The festivities culminated with a gala on campus on March 29. The event raised more than $125,000 for scholarships, the highest total for a single event in the school’s history.

And the 175th celebration will continue, she said, adding that there is some “fuzziness” about the dates surrounding the school; the Legislature approved the charter for Framingham State and what became Westfield State in 1838, but the schools didn’t open until the fall of 1839.

Moving forward (there’s that phrase again), the school is looking at new enrollment of more than 1,500 students this fall, which will exceed the target set by administrators. Meanwhile, work is expected to commence this fall on the new, $48 million science building, the first new academic building on campus in nearly 40 years.

There are other initiatives, such as an RN-to-BSN initiative that will be part of a growing Allied Health program, as well as the articulation agreement with Holyoke Community College, which will enable students at HCC to transfer from that school’s online associate’s degree program to WSU’s complete online bachelor’s degree program.

“We have a lot going on here,” said Preston, adding quickly that such initiatives may not be generating big headlines, at least when compared to those stories about the school’s legal bills, but they do provide evidence that the timeout is clearly over.

Steady Course

Preston wanted to make it clear — and did — that the Dobelle controversy and its aftereffects are not entirely in the rear-view mirror.

The inspector general’s report still hangs over the campus, as do the lawsuits filed by Dobelle and the resulting legal fees. Meanwhile, there are several vacancies on the board of trustees resulting from resignations  and expiring terms.

“We’re not on the other side of this completely,” she told BusinessWest, adding quickly that, with the issues that matter most — those of morale, momentum, and positive energy with regard to what comes next — the school has in almost every sense turned the corner.

Which means that Westfield State University is moving forward — in a great many ways.

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

Education Sections
Bay Path Launches Program in Negotiation, Leadership

Joshua Weiss

Joshua Weiss says negotiation isn’t a lost art, but simply one that too many people haven’t taken the time and trouble to master.

Joshua Weiss was talking about the difference between being assertive and being aggressive.

And while doing so, he made it clear that, in the worlds of leadership and negotiation, these terms that appear to be synonymous are anything but.

“When you’re assertive, you’re standing on your own two feet, and when you’re aggressive, you’re standing on the other person’s toes, and people often don’t make that distinction,” said Weiss, co-founder of something called the Global Negotiation Initiative at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He’s also an acclaimed author and consultant in the field who now has a new title on his business card, although they haven’t actually arrived from the printer yet.

Indeed, he is the director of Bay Path College’s newest program, the Master of Science in Leadership and Negotiation, or MSLN.

This fully online initiative is the first of its kind — in this country and probably on a global basis as well, said Weiss, adding quickly that understanding the difference between assertive and aggressive is just one of many things students will learn in this program, which will begin this fall.

They’ll also learn how to deal with the concept of power and how to wield it, understand how men and women approach leadership and negotiation differently, learn about the many psychological dimensions of leadership and negotiation, understand the role of emotions in these realms and how to control them, and grasp the importance of relationships and how they go on after the negotiations are over.

“Aggressive … that means I steamroll you to get to where I want to go,” Weiss explained, returning to his lesson in both vocabulary and effective management. “Being assertive means I explain clearly that ‘this is what I need, and I want to work with you, but I’m not going to accept anything that doesn’t fit into that.’

“You have to understand what you want to achieve, and assert for that,” he went on, “but also understand that the relationship is going to exist after this negotiation, and that there’s a way to go through negotiations so you don’t burn bridges — you don’t have to.”

As he talked about these concepts and others, Weiss said that negotiation certainly isn’t a lost art. But it is one that many people don’t make an effort to master. Elaborating, he said it’s a skill that many people will say they lack, for one reason or another, but don’t try to acquire, because they don’t believe they can or don’t believe they need it.

“A lot of people see negotiation as what the select few — the diplomat or the contract negotiator — would do,” he said. “There’s a sense that certain people negotiate and others don’t.”

These are flawed assumptions, he went on, adding that both leadership and negotiation can be taught and have been taught over the years, but not in a very comprehensive way — usually with a course or perhaps two, not with a degree program.

Such a higher level of instruction is necessary, he said, because advancing telecommunications technology and the emergence of flatter organizational structures in companies of all sizes means that more people will — or should be — called upon to provide leadership and negotiate, and they will have to do both in different ways and with a wider array of issues.

Indeed, while most think of negotiation in terms of mergers, acquisitions, and salary numbers — and those are still important parts of the equation — it now also involves such matters as flex time, working environments, and generational differences when it comes to the evolving world of work.

For example, while the conference-room table has long been the unofficial symbol of negotiation, people are now doing it with e-mail, text messages, and a host of other media, he said, adding that successfully leading, and dealing, through these platforms requires specific skills.

All these factors and others led Bay Path, with some strong encouragement from Weiss, to create the new program, which he believes will become attractive to both graduating seniors and those already in the workplace looking to advance, and who are seeking an alternative to the traditional MBA.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Weiss about negotiation, leadership, the new program, and why that acronym MSLN might soon become an important part of the regional business lexicon.

Courses of Action

It’s called the Abraham Path, or Abraham’s Path.

This is, as the name suggests, a walking trail across the Middle East that essentially follows the epic journey of Abraham, considered the world’s first pilgrim. It starts at his birthplace in Urfa in Turkey and ends at his burial cave in the Palestinian city of Hebron. Other stops include Nablus, Jericho, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.

Weiss was part of the team that worked to create the path starting in 2003, and he called it a learning experience on a number of levels, and especially when it comes to negotiation.

“Right now, despite all the things that are going on in that region, there’s about 500 kilometers of path that have been mapped and are in use,” he explained. “Some people walk considerable distances, and others go for a day; there are many students and others who do community-service projects along the path, everything from helping with the olive harvest to painting a school — ways in which people can come to understand, and interact with, the region differently.

“Early on, my job was to go and negotiate with the governments and get their approval for this,” he went on. “There were negotiations all over the place, from the national governments down to the governors, mayors, to sitting in villages with families drinking goat’s yogurt and trying to persuade them that this was an interesting idea and that they should get involved.”

Weiss will take lessons from the Middle East, as well as others from countless businesses he’s consulted for, and try to impart them upon students who enroll in the MSLN.

This is an initiative that meets his desire to return to the classroom (he’s taught at Harvard and other schools) and direct a program, but that also meets what he considers a critical need — for employees who possess more and better leadership and negotiation skills.

“A lot of people tend to see negotiation as a skill that leaders need,” he explained. “I see it much differently; I believe negotiation is very much a mindset and how you approach issues and challenges that come up. Yes, leaders need to learn how to negotiate, but leadership today, from my perspective, requires a lot of different skills.

“You certainly still at times have the ability to coerce others, but leadership seems to rely more on persuasion and empowerment and on modeling the kind of behavior you’re looking for from your employees,” he continued. “So I see this degree as being good for both the student in terms of their own growth and ability and being able to move on from where they are to the next level, but also very valuable for an employer, because if I know I have someone who is very skilled in leadership and negotiation, I can hand that individual a project knowing that it requires the ability to lead, and when problems come up, he or she can negotiate their way through them; they’ve become a very valuable employee, and one that I don’t have to worry about.

“Leaders often micromanage because they worry and lack trust in people and their skill sets,” he went on. “With these skills, people will ultimately become real assets.”

Even better, he told BusinessWest, he believes these skills have a way of rubbing off on other people, meaning that effective leadership and negotiation can permeate a team or a company.

Talking the Talk

Returning to the subject of negotiation, Weiss said it has always been part of doing business — and life in general — but it is in some ways changing and evolving, and those who wish to advance their careers need to appreciate both its importance and many nuances.

“I tend to view negotiation in a very broad sense,” he explained. “To me, negotiation is ubiquitous; it’s something we deal with every day. So, in the workplace, it may be more formal negotiations where you’re talking about mergers and acquisitions or a job salary. Or it may be more informal things when you’re working on projects with employees and there’s a disagreement and you need to go back and forth and figure out how you’re going to work together in a different capacity.”

Elaborating, he said there isn’t necessarily more negotiating going on today, although one might be able to make that case. Instead, people are increasingly recognizing that negotiation is what they’re doing, and that they need to become better at it.

There have been some seminal moments that have helped manifest this mindset, he went on, citing, in particular, the publishing of Getting to Yes, authored by Roger Fischer and William Ury, in 1981.

“It’s been on the bestseller list ever since,” said Weiss, adding that the book and others that followed helped foster an understanding of the importance of negotiation. “If the average person had experience with negotiation, they thought about it in terms of buying a car or a home or something like that. This book changed all that and got people to realize that, first of all, a lot more of us are negotiating, and there’s a different way to negotiate, one that for a lot of people feels more comfortable.

“Part of the reason people don’t like to negotiate for things like cars is that they feel like the process itself centered around manipulation,” he said. “That’s one way of approaching negotiation, but there’s another way; for most of us, our negotiations are with people that we have to work with over time, and so that model of manipulating and distrust is a self-defeating way of negotiating.”

The model that was presented in Getting to Yes and has been built upon ever since is called ‘interest-based negotiation,” said Weiss, adding that, in simple terms, it involves creating scenarios where there is not a winner and a loser, but where both sides’ interests are respected and, by and large, met.

“When people started to realize that they were negotiating with someone they needed to work with over the long term, they understood that it would be better to build a relationship so that they meet the needs they have rather than trying to one-up each other,” he said, adding that, over the past several years, and especially since the recession broke out in 2008, businesses are embracing this concept.

While books like Getting to Yes have opened some eyes about the importance of negotiation, there have historically been only limited opportunities to learn about it in the classroom, said Weiss.

He noted that many law schools and business schools offer a course or two in the subjects of negotiation and leadership, and that in many instances, such offerings are required. But such courses provide only what Weiss called the basics. Bay Path’s new program amounts to what he called a “deep dive.”

The 36-credit program will be taught in eight-week blocks. Courses include “Leading and Negotiating in a Virtual and Multicultural World,” “Psychological Dimensions of Leadership and Negotiation,” “Gender, Leadership, and Negotiation,” and “Case Studies of Leadership and Negotiation.”

Weiss said there has been strong early interest in the program, and he expects to start with eight to 10 students in the fall and see that number rise as individuals, businesses, and nonprofit agencies realize the importance of leadership and negotiation to their success moving forward.

Bottom Line

As he talked about his program and its target audience, Weiss relayed the comments of a biotech engineer who has been kicking the tires on Bay Path’s new offering and leaning toward enrolling.

“She said, ‘I’ve been looking at MBA programs, but keep getting pulled back to yours because I don’t want budgets and finance and that kind of stuff,’” he noted. “She said, ‘where I am, technically I’m very good at what I do, but I’m in a mid-level position, and I know I’m capable of more than that. What’s holding me back is this ability to assert for myself and lead other people; I don’t know how to do that.’”

There are countless others who can say the same thing, and because they can, Bay Path’s program would appear to be the right offering at the right time.


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

Education Sections
College Summer Programs Continue to Grow in Popularity

Pam Robinson

Pam Robinson says the average student taking summer courses at American International College earns 12 credits, or nearly the equivalent of a full semester.

The job market and economic climate have changed dramatically in recent years, and so have the needs of college and university students, who are signing up for summer courses in record numbers.

Many want to reduce the time it takes to earn a degree, take the prerequisites needed to enter a program, improve a grade, and/or lighten their course loads for the fall semester by taking challenging classes during the summer.

So, in response to a continually growing demand, college and university officials have continued to expand their summer offerings; create new, accelerated, year-round programs; and add experimental summer courses in hopes of attracting new students.

“Years ago, students attended classes during the fall and spring and took the summer off. But it’s very different now,” said Walter Breau, vice president of Academic Affairs at Elms College in Chicopee. “We have really become a 12-month institution. Students are looking to finish their schooling quickly, so colleges have had to respond.”

Bill McClure agrees. “The concept of taking courses in the summer is not new, but what has changed is the programs that are offered. Summer is our largest term,” said the executive director of Continuing and Professional Education at UMass Amherst and former president of the North American Assoc. of Summer Sessions, which includes 250 colleges and universities.

“We have a very strong summer program,” he went on. “Last year our Division of Continuing and Professional Education offered 1,323 courses, and 525 of those were held during the summer.”

Community colleges have also seen a brisk increase in summer enrollment. “We have a very robust summer program. Almost everything that is offered in the fall and spring is also offered in the summer, but with fewer sections, or classes,” said Debbie Bellucci, dean of Continuing Education and Online Learning at Springfield Technical Community College. “We try to add a few new courses every summer, whether they are online or totally new topics, and this summer we have instituted a format change. In the past, we ran two five-week sessions, but this summer we have some 10-week, on-site courses for students who don’t want the intensity of a five-week term.”

Similar measures are being introduced at other institutions and include an increase in online courses, which allow working students to stay on track.

“Our offerings have grown significantly over the last five years,” said Pam Robinson, associate dean of Adult and Continuing Education at American International College. “More and more students have to stretch out their studies because they have so many other responsibilities, and our experience with adult learners has helped us to design offerings for all of our students. Even traditional students today are working and often need to rely on summer classes to stay on track.”

Officials say summer courses offer other benefits as well, which include smaller classes and an increased opportunity to interact with faculty members.

“But summer school isn’t for everyone. It’s very intense,” Bellucci said. “Plus, some students need to work full-time or want to take the semester off.”

Creative Programming

STCC will offer a number of new free classes this summer. Its so-called Jump Start program includes three pre-college-level classes — Algebra I, Algebra II, and Review for College Writing. The courses are open to students slated to start college in the fall, but who need remedial coursework, which is determined by placement testing. “We’re hoping the free courses will give them a jump start,” Bellucci said.

STCC also created a new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy with three classes for Massachusetts high-school graduates who earned their diplomas between 2012 and 2014 and had a point average of 2.0 or higher. “We have room for 60 students who will each receive a $1,000 stipend as an incentive to participate and complete the courses,” said Bellucci. “We hope the students will develop an interest in pursuing a degree in our STEM programs in the fall.”

She added that STCC offers close to 300 summer classes, including unique offerings, such as Organic Chemistry, which can be difficult to find in a summer syllabus. “We also offer Calculus I through 5, and find students take these classes so they can concentrate on that subject.”

Jackie Synder

Jackie Synder says Bay Path College continues to create accelerated degree programs that run year-round.

Accelerated programs that run year-round are also on the rise. At Elms College, they include the Second Bachelor’s Degree Program in the School of Nursing for students with an associate, baccalaureate, or higher degree in a non-nursing major.

The program begins in September of one year and finishes in May the following year. “Our second class will graduate May 17, the third cohort is working toward graduation, and a fourth group has been accepted for next year,” said Program Coordinator Brother Michael Duffy, adding that it was designed for people “whose career didn’t play out the way they had hoped or who are looking to make a significant career change, and want to parlay their experience and credits into a professional degree that makes them more marketable.”

The waiting list is longer than the acceptance list, and the next class will include a Harvard graduate. “The program has become very competitive; it’s intense, but the people in it are adult learners who don’t want to wait four years to get back into the work pool,” Duffy continued. “It fills a need and is a commitment on our part to prepare more nurses with a bachelor’s degree for bedside care.”

Elms also offers an accelerated bachelor’s degree-completion program in social work at several sites. The largest is held in the STCC Technology Park, a second program is based in the Berkshires, and a third will start this fall at Greenfield Community College.

“Classes are held on Saturdays for 20 months, and people find the program very accessible,” said Maureen O’Connor Holland, assistant professor and program director of the Social Work department. She told BusinessWest that Elms has formed partnerships with community colleges, and students start the Elms program as a junior after earning an associate’s degree in liberal arts or human service.

“It is booming, and is a way for the college to reach more deeply into the community,” she said. “We also have several other social-work degree programs, including a year-round weekend program on the main campus and a traditional program with an optional summer course for students who want to accelerate their education.”

Breau said the number of high-school graduates has declined since 2006, and the numbers are expected to decrease through 2020, due to the size of the population. “We’re a small, regional liberal-arts college, and since the traditional market of students is getting smaller, we had to look at other opportunities to serve students, including the adult market. And we’re not alone,” Breau told BusinessWest. “There are people looking to move up in their job who have an associate’s degree and need a bachelor’s degree or have a bachelor’s degree and need a master’s degree. And adult learners are passionate and motivated. They want to complete their schooling as quickly as possible.”

To that end, Elms also offers a year-round RN to BS to MSN Nursing Completion program, which allows students to complete graduate-level nursing courses while enrolled in the RN to BS program, and a year-round master’s in Business Administration degree program, as well as summer courses for students in more traditional programs.

Changing Demographic

AIC will also launch two new undergraduate degree-completion programs this fall, targeted at working adults.

“People can earn a bachelor of arts in social science or in general business through a combination of online and Saturday classes in 20 months,” Robinson said. “We have a lot of adult students who are reinventing themselves, starting new career fields, and returning to school as a result. But traditional students also take these courses.”

Bay Path College in Longmeadow also offers several accelerated programs, including more than a dozen degrees through its American Women’s College, in which all courses are taken online with a few Saturday classes.

“The sessions are unique,” said Jackie Synder, executive director of Academic Operations, Assessment and Planning.

Bay Path had stopped offering summer courses to traditional students for many years, but revived the programming last year due to demand. In addition to college students, Snyder said, the classes are popular with high-school students who want to enhance their college applications.

Debbie Bellucci

Debbie Bellucci says Springfield Technical Community College is offering a number of new, free courses this summer.

“It also provides students who have already been admitted an opportunity to get a jump start on coursework so they have a reduced load their first semester or are able to take a double major without becoming overwhelmed,” she explained.

Seventeen of Bay Path’s summer courses are held on campus, and 32 are online. “Science and math are the most sought-after classes,” said Snyder. “They’re called gatekeeper courses because of their difficulty. But if they are taken in the summer, students can focus entirely on them.”

Robinson agreed, and said science courses fill up quickly at AIC.

“They’re especially popular, not only for our own students, but for high-school students and others going into health fields who need to take prerequisites,” she said, adding that other offerings include courses in general education, such as history, sociology, and foreign languages. “The average summer student takes two courses per semester, so they can earn 12 credits, which is essentially a college semester.”

She reiterated that a growing number of traditional students work while they are in college. “So they often rely on summer classes to stay on track,” she explained. “But others take summer courses for a variety of reasons. Some want to fulfill general requirements, some want to repeat a class they didn’t do well in, and others need prerequisites for graduate schools. There are also students who want to take a double major or add one, and are trying to earn credits during the summer that will give them more opportunities. Every year I try to add two or three new offerings to see if the interest is there.”

This year, new online summer classes at AIC include Crime and Delinquency and Philosophy Through Literature, while History of American Musical Film will be offered on campus.

UMass Amherst offers two six-week terms during the summer. “We experimented with a three-week term, but it didn’t work well,” McClure said, adding that a growing number of students are opting to take classes online. “It’s been a trend which continues across the board for undergraduate and graduate students.”

The university also has a full course catalog that includes eight-week music camps, sports camps, science programs, and a French program. “Some are aimed at high-school students, and some are college-level courses,” McClure said.

UMass also offers a year-round undergraduate degree-completion program called University Without Walls. “And our online MBA program continues to be very popular,” he continued.

Meanwhile, Bay Path added two online cybersecurity classes this summer in advance of its new undergraduate program in cybersecurity, which will begin this fall.

Future Outlook

As the cost of education continues to rise, Robinson said, more students will have to work while attending school, which means they will take fewer courses during the academic year and make up the difference during winter and summer intercession periods.

“These classes provide a great alternative for many people,” she concluded.

McClure agreed, and said UMass has become a four-season school, offering classes during winter breaks and in the summer through its division of continuing education.

And as student demographics change and the need for adult education expands, the demand for summer courses is almost guaranteed to heat up even more.

Education Sections
HCC Will Expand into Former Photo Studio, Modernize Facilities

Grynn & Barrett studios

The sign outside tells the story at the former Grynn & Barrett studios in Holyoke.

As he talked about the property at 404 Jarvis Ave. in Holyoke, the former headquarters of the Grynn & Barrett photo studios, and how and when it came onto the market, Holyoke Community College President Bill Messner described the seller, the Grenier family, with that often-used term in real state: “motivated.”

And that adjective could also be applied to the eventual buyer — the college, he told <em>BusinessWest</em>.

That’s because the HCC campus, located almost across the street from the photo studio, is land-locked, and what little vacant land exists on the campus is, by and large, undevelopable, due to environmental and logistical concerns, he explained, recalling the many difficulties with the last new-building project — the Kittredge Center for Business & Workforce Development.

“We literally had to blast away rock to build that facility,” he said. “And while there is other land, it’s environmentally sensitive, as we’ve learned over the years.”

Meanwhile, some of the facilities on the campus, built in the early ’70s, are starting to show their age — and their limitations. This is especially true in the Marieb Science Building, which houses both health and life-sciences programs, said Kathey Hankel, dean of Health and Natural Sciences.

She and Messner said that, while the programs conducted there, especially nursing, are in demand and highly rated, they are offered in cramped quarters, with some labs, including those used for biology, that are seriously out of date.

“Our bio labs are dreadfully out of date — they’re 40 years old,” said Messner, “and we need to get them into the 21st century.”

The opportunity to expand and modernize those facilities is what inspired the college to become motivated when it came to the Jarvis Avenue property, said Messner, noting that the school is now moving forward with a multi-faceted, $15 million initiative centered around creating its new Center for Health Education in the 22,000-square-foot Grynn & Barrett building.

Plans call for moving the nursing program, the radiology technician (rad-tech) offering, and the medical assisting program from the Marieb building to Jarvis Avenue, said Hankel, and then renovate the vacated space to create what will be called the Center for Life Sciences, which will feature larger, more modern life-sciences facilities than exist now, including a clean room that should create new and intriguing learning experiences.

The Grynn & Barrett building, only a decade old, is both modern and flexible, with large amounts of open space, said Hankel, making it ideal for conversion into classrooms, labs, and other learning facilities.

Current plans call for using the top floor for offices and conference rooms for faculty, said Hankel, adding that the ground floor will be used for teaching, with one large classroom and several small ones envisioned. The center will also include a simulation lab that will be much larger and better-equipped than the one currently used at Marieb, a ‘low-tech’ lab, and a radiology suite with a dedicated classroom and state-of-the-art equipment.

The renovation of facilities in Marieb Hall will be equally significant, said Hankel and Messner, adding that the aqddition of a clean room — which they believe will be the first one at a college or university in this region — will be of significant benefit in the training of individuals for in-demand jobs at testing facilities, such as Agawam-based Microtest.

In fact, Microtest CEO Steve Richter was among those who lobbied the Center for Life Sciences to award HCC the $3.9 million grant for the project, said Messner, because he understood the importance of the initiative to workforce development in the growing life-sciences sector.

While plans for these twin, related initiatives are blueprinted, fund-raising efforts continue to finance them, said Messner.

He told BusinessWest that the school received a $3.9 million grant from the Center for Life Sciences for the project, and is going about the task of raising the rest, largely through a capital campaign.

As part of these efforts, school officials are working to meet a unique, $1 million challenge grant from Elaine Marieb, an HCC alum (nursing), former faculty member (biology), author of more than a dozen anatomy and physiology textbooks, and frequent contributor to the college; it’s her name on the science building.

“She’s authored the premier book on Anatomy and Physiology; it’s used by thousands of colleges and universities,” said Hankel. “She’s done well, and she’s always been a big supporter of the college.”

Marieb’s challenge grant is different from most, because the challenge isn’t based on the dollar amount — although that number is a goal as well — but rather on securing 1,000 donations.

Kathy Hankel

Kathy Hankel says the new Center for Health Education will enable HCC to expand its nursing programs and thus help meet what is expected to be great demand for qualified professionals.

“She wanted to get a broad base of people involved in this initiative,” said Messner, adding that organizers now have 800 pledges and are moving closer to securing enough funding to commence with the project.

No firm timetable is in place, but the school is hoping to get started on the Jarvis Street phase of the project by the end of this summer, said Hankel, who anticipates a number of benefits from both phases of this initiative.

For starters, the school can expand its nursing program, which currently boasts enrollment of 110, by 24 to 32 students, she said, adding that the school is looking at introducing a program focused around evening, weekend, and online offerings, which will be attractive to students who must also work full-time.

And the additional enrollment is important, she said, because while the shortage of nurses that visited the region several years ago has eased somewhat, due largely to the sluggish economy that persisted for several years, demand for nurses will soon escalate as older members of the profession move into retirement.

“We had a period for a few years when the economy tanked and no one retired,” she explained. “Now, the economy’s coming back, and nurses are retiring in record numbers, and there will be a huge shortage, perhaps one larger than we initially thought.

“Meanwhile, there is a still a roughly 20% vacancy rate, and that’s primarily in long-term care, and that’s where we’re all heading,” she added. “So this additional capacity is important.”

Meanwhile, relocation of the health-science programs to Jarvis Avenue will enable students and faculty there to become involved in the community, and especially three neighbors to the Grynn & Barrett building — Sullivan Elementary School, Loomis Communities, and the Bowdoin Village low-income housing facility.

Students are already involved with these institutions to one extent or another, said Hankel, but the relocation will enable these efforts to escalate.

“The building is directly adjacent to the Sullivan school; students can walk out the back door and be at the school, and vice-versa — the Sullivan kids can walk over to our building,” she noted. “We’re working with them to provide some health screening for the students with the nurse that’s on staff there, and also do a lot of teaching with the students; the Sullivan school will give us experience with pediatrics that will be beneficial to both parties.”

At the housing complex, run by the Holyoke Housing Authority, HCC students have conducted surveys of residents to identify areas of need that the college might help address, she went on, while also undertaking blood-pressure screenings and efforts to provide medical information to those living there. The move to Jarvis should facilitate efforts to expand those initiatives.

And at Loomis, a multi-faceted senior-living facility, students can get valuable experience in geriatric care, which, with the aging of America, has become a field experiencing explosive growth that will only continue in the years to come, she said.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to work with the community and get the best clinical experiences that are available,” Hankel noted. “We’re very excited about the prospects.”

— George O’Brien

Education Sections
Bay Path’s New Accounting Degree Makes Sense on Many Levels

Kara Stevens

Kara Stevens says the unique scheduling — no classes during tax season — is one of many attractive features that come with Bay Path’s new graduate degree in accounting.

Kara Stevens says that, when she went about designing the new master’s degree in Accounting program at Bay Path College, she had some of her own experiences in this profession — and with attaining this degree — in mind.

“I was in public accounting and working toward my master’s, and can remember having to run out at 5 o’clock to go to class during the prime time, when I needed to be there longer hours,” she said, referring to her time at Wolf & Co. soon after graduating from UMass Amherst and, more specifically, her recollections of having to balance school with her various responsibilities during the height of tax season, between the start of the new year and April 15.

The new program at Bay Path, scheduled to start at the end of this month, was blueprinted with that awkward conflict in mind, and the desire to essentially eliminate it.

Indeed, this totally online program effectively shifts the traditional summer break to what everyone in the industry refers to simply as ‘the busy season.’ Classes run from May to the holidays in December, break for tax season, and then resume for five weeks, ending in late May.

“With no classes held between January and April, you can adjust your life, work, and professional goals,” said Stevens, director of Bay Path’s Accounting program and assistant accounting professor. “Once April has passed, the program picks up again, and you can continue in sequence.”

This is a fairly unique twist to the traditional MS in Accounting, a degree program designed to give bachelor’s-degree holders the fifth year, or 150 credits, they now need for licensure as a certified public accountant in more than 40 states, including Massachusetts.

Stevens said she is not aware of another program with such scheduling, so it should help the college create an effective niche. And while there are already a number of MS in accounting programs in this region, she believes there was need for another, especially an offering with some unique qualities beyond that schedule.

Among these is the all-women, or almost-all-women, nature of the program, she told BusinessWest, noting that, while men can enroll, and she expects some will, they will be in the minority, which she sees as a positive for the female enrollees.

“Our master’s-degree programs are still seeing a large percentage of women in their ranks; we of course allow men, but at this point it’s roughly 86% women on average, and more in some programs,” she said. “I like the idea that this is helping to create a culture of women in accounting.”

Elaborating, she said that, while most undergraduate accounting programs are roughly 50% women, there is still a glass ceiling in this industry when it comes to women progressing into the partnership ranks at firms and then senior management. An MS program featuring all or mostly women can create an environment where such issues can be more effectively discussed — and confronted.

Another benefit is the small size of the classes, she said, adding that most sessions will have a dozen or fewer students, while the online nature of the program — with “on-ground support,” as she called it, is another popular feature.

The master’s offering is Bay Path’s first graduate program in Accounting, said Stevens, adding that the school introduced an undergraduate offering eight years ago, and now has several variations on that program, including a one-day offering and an online curriculum. Eventually, she would like to introduce what’s known as a 3+1 program, which will enable students to enter an accelerated program, whereby they can get their undergraduate degree in three years then move on to their master’s, thus saving roughly a full year’s tuition in the process.

The MS is built on a common core of classes — everything from Advanced Financial Reporting to Fraud Examination to Government and Nonprofit Accounting — and students can focus on one of three concentrations: public accounting, private accounting, and forensic accounting.

There are five sessions, two that run for six weeks and three that run for eight.

Early interest in the program is fairly strong, said Stevens, adding there have been a number of inquiries, and several women have already signed on. She anticipates an initial enrollment of 12 and expects that number to rise as awareness of the program and its unique features become known.

Overall, Stevens sees the MS program as a step forward for Bay Path, an initiative that will enhance the undergraduate Accounting program, because it will provide a smooth transition to the fifth year for Bay Path students, and one that should benefit the college on the whole as the accounting industry goes about the task of filling vacancies that will be created when those in the Baby Boom generation retire.

“Based on where my students are being placed for internships and then jobs after graduating, there is definitely a need for accountants in this area,” she said. “And that need will only grow in the years to come.”


— George O’Brien

Education Sections
A Dynamic Principal Has Given New Meaning to the Phrase ‘Putnam Pride’

Gilbert Traverso

Gilbert Traverso, principal of Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy

There’s an axiom printed in bold black marker, and in capital letters, on a whiteboard in the principal’s office of the new Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy. It reads, “DO NOT ACCEPT, NOR BE PART OF, INSTITUTIONAL MEDIOCRITY.”

That last phrase is among many, most all of them with negative connotations, that have been summoned over the past decade or so in reference to the State Street institution. But those words and others like them are now used almost exclusively in the past tense.

Ray Lapite helped explained why. A Putnam Collision Department repair technician for 12 years, he points to Gilbert Traverso, principal at the school since July 2010, as the impetus behind a foundation-shaking and unwavering plan to trigger a positive cultural shift that has given new meaning to the phrase ‘Putnam Pride,’ a chant that is quoted often in the halls and on the playing fields.

The change in attitude is so profound that it actually dwarfs, in scope, the transition from the old Putnam high school to the sparkling, $114 million facility that opened its doors in the fall of 2012.

“Chaos reigned; it was a free-for-all, and the morale was so bad, there just wasn’t any at all,” said Lapite as he reflected, somewhat regrettably, on conditions before Traverso arrived. “But Gil came in, and he held us all accountable, because we’re here to do a job, and some people were acting back then like it was their retirement.”

The story of Putnam’s radical and swift turnaround has very little to do with the new school, said Lapite and others we spoke with. Its construction simply served as a rapidly looming deadline for Traverso in his new role making sweeping changes in every facet of a school that had low morale, low student scores, and little attention paid to the few policies and procedures that were in place.

“The majority of the change had to take place in the old school, because I didn’t want to bring old or negative habits into a new setting,” Traverso explained. “I don’t care what the façade is; it’s what the internal mechanisms are, and they have to be sound and effective.”

When Traverso arrived just before the 2010-11 school year was to begin, he was told that employees at neighboring MassMutual across the street were used to the regular sounds of sirens arriving at Putnam due to fights in the hallways and the 52 false fire-alarm calls in the previous year alone.

“I was not really welcomed by too many people when I came on board, and I had no connections here,” Traverso said, recalling that first school year. “I uncovered some issues, and then I was the bad guy.”

The issues that Traverso unearthed went far beyond weekly police calls. Indeed, he’d inherited a school with an internal systemic breakdown that prompted him — with seven unions to deal with — to restructure the grading policy and daily class schedules, and request an audit of his school’s books and procedures, which led to numerous lawsuits and hearings. He fully expected, and indeed received, tremendous pressure from administrators, teachers, parents, and students to essentially back off.

But he never did.

Peter Salerno

Peter Salerno supported Gil Traverso’s aggressive plan for Putnam’s culture change, with investment in students, not the new building, as the number-one goal.

What became an emotionally draining two-year reconstruction process required unwavering encouragement outside his supportive family, which he found with Superintendent Daniel Warwick and his office, and Peter Salerno, executive director of the Roger L. Putnam Technical Fund Inc.

“I told him that, five to seven years from now, nobody’s going to be talking about the new building; that’s not the story,” said Salerno. “The story is you and the kids, and the children are going to be new each and every year; we’ve got to reinvest in ourselves in making it work for them.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at what Traverso has accomplished and, more importantly, how. In doing so, we’ll shed light on how the phrase ‘new Putnam’ isn’t used exclusively in reference to the building.

Culture Clash

Traverso, an Hispanic, said he “came out of the ‘hood’” and had to work hard for everything he earned, a reality that has shaped his career, management style, and outlook on education.

Echoing Salerno, he said his mission is to provide a safe, fair, and equitable vocational and educational experience for those who are the intended beneficiaries — the students.

A former assistant principal of the Connecticut Department of Education’s Technical High School system, he was appointed to the Putnam position just two years before the opening of the new school. A visit early in the hiring process prompted some trepidation; he saw kids “hanging around,” and found little evidence to support the fact that there was a dress code in place.

The façade of the original Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy

The façade of the original Roger L. Putnam Vocational Technical Academy now serves as a grand entrance to the new, $114 million school.

“All I saw was that these urban kids weren’t being treated in an equitable manner, and I’m all about equality,” Traverso said as he pointed to a poster in his office printed with the Golden Rule. “I teach diversity training throughout Connecticut for the Anti-Defamation League, and if I want to live by that premise, why would I turn my back on an opportunity to address a situation that needed to be addressed?”

Elaborating, Traverso explained that many who are teaching these urban youths don’t live among them. “So there’s that misperception that maybe those kids can’t do it. But it’s not about lowering standards; it’s about providing multiple opportunities.”

It all starts with a belief gap, he went on, adding that there is a widely held belief that the students who don’t want to learn academically should be put in a vocational setting. “That doesn’t work,” Traverso stated.  “What that ultimately does is ruin their self-esteem.”

And it’s untrue to begin with, he said, because Putnam has 90 days of trade education and 90 days of academic classes, but with the latter, students have to cover the same amount of required content that other comprehensive high schools stretch over 180 days.

That initial visit just before he was hired convinced Traverso that very few within the school walls seemed to recognize the value in a quality vocational-educational setting; a balance between academics and trades had to be found.

But creating this balance, and inspiring change, would prove to be a challenging assignment, he said, adding that, from the start, there was animosity stemming from the perception that he was “the new guy that was coming in to fix us,” with the ‘us’ referring to both students and faculty alike.

In that environment, he decided there was no way he was going to get up, assembly-style, in front of 400 or more students at a time, as well as their equally skeptical teachers.

His method to change the perception of him was to “divide and conquer.” His class-by-class conversations and gatherings in very small groups of students, he can jokingly say now, had less chance of turning into a “synergistic meltdown.”

In his first year, Traverso found that several students had earned enough academic credits to qualify as 10th graders, but were recorded as seniors, or were making the grade in their academics but not in their vocational classes, and were still being passed upward. Making more friends by the day, Traverso and the teachers met with 60 quite upset parents, one on one, and explained that the credits would have to be made up, with the help of the school, or the student in question would have to transfer. But the recommendation was to stay at Putnam, and most students did.

With students randomly hanging out in the hallways, Traverso also had to make sure all could be easily accounted for at any given time of day. Two significant scheduling changes he made were to divide the lunch times by grade level, due to the many fights, and to split grade levels for academic and vocational classes. Previously, half the school’s students across all four grades (9-12) were in academic classes one week, known as A Week, while the other half was in vocations during B Week, a system that made it difficult to track where students were at any given time.  Traverso split the schedule to have ninth- and 11th-grade students traveling together to academics and 10th- and 12th-graders traveling together to their trades for the full five days of A Week, with both groups switching the next week.

Traverso and his team also created competencies for each grade level in each vocation, which provided more structure for the instructors and more accountability for the students, he said. During that analysis, he uncovered another alarming issue: each of Putnam’s 18 vocational programs, funded through Chapter 74 (Massachusetts Vocational Technical Education Regulations), are required to have advisory committees of two to 12 industry leaders from across the region. But most programs had no committee or, at best, one that was barely functioning.

The goal of each trade-advisory committee should be to identify new trends, skills, and technology required by the industry, and for those advisors to work with faculty and administrators to ensure that graduates are positioned for success in the workplace. When Traverso requested a meeting of all the advisory committees and vocational chairs, hardly anybody showed up to the first meeting.

“And I said, ‘that will not happen again,’” he told BusinessWest, adding that funding would stop for any trade without a fully functioning advisory committee. “From that day forward, we’ve had nothing but perfect attendance with active advisory committees.”

Looking back at the changes, Salerno added, “there’s a trait in Gil — he faces the brutal facts. Even if it’s a bad thing, you’ve got to face it courageously. You may not be applauded for every win, but you’ll know that you’ve won.”

Accountability Measures

But winning meant everyone had to feel that win.

Traverso recalled a teacher with many years of experience at Putnam who came to him at the beginning of this past school year, beaming and saying, “these kids are the best kids that I’ve ever taught,” an opinion he found intriguing.

“They’re the same kids — the same kids they’ve always been,” Traverso said with a laugh, adding that this episode is just one example of how much the attitudes, from the top down, have positively affected the feeling of being at Putnam, enabling people to say ‘Putnam Pride’ with conviction.

Four years ago, the pride was dead, Traverso explained, and “integrity-filled” instructors were in the shadows, lost in the shuffle during the audit phase. But as the smoke cleared, he created what became known as the Instructional Leadership Team for the purpose of giving more volume to those quiet voices throughout the old building to talk about the positive reality of Putnam’s transformation, as well as to learn what colleagues were doing in their core areas. Instructional rounds were formed, and teachers now run them every five weeks to observe, present feedback, and improve learning in the classroom.

Traverso also created an internal program called Implementation of Sustainable Change. It’s a simplistic flowchart of growth, showing where the school as a whole was in 2010, where it is at present, and where it is going as a team. His office whiteboard shows a graph in different-colored markers that breaks down the change process into four phases, all with traits that administrators, including Traverso, had to cultivate.

The phases include inception, incubation, inclusiveness, and interdependence.  Each phase closely follows each of the past four years of Traverso’s demanding schedule to right the sinking ship, including the few months of running room he needed that first fall. He told BusinessWest that Putnam is about 25% through the final phase, which is the chapter that speaks most to cohesive and consistent accountability, vision, and trust.

As they went through the phases, staff members were making data-driven decisions and analyzing, as a team, what was working, what was not, and how to make it all crystalize. By the inclusiveness phase around the start of 2013, the teachers were largely on board; there was far less pushback and far more teamwork, Traverso said.

“But it wasn’t me expanding; it was more people coming on board, and they were seeing change and facilitating these conversations themselves,” he recalled.

Turning his sights to Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scores, Traverso launched an internal assessment to find out what areas the students were struggling with, which in turn would help teachers across the board in their teaching process. The assessment is done four times a year and has been a “game changer,” he said.

“It’s provided a professional recognition to the teachers about their input for the students and the assessment of their abilities in their own teaching method.”

Other grade-level exercises included tracking disciplinary data by teacher, attendance of students as well as teachers, out-of-school suspensions, and a tougher Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS) program, which is comprised of grade-level teams, allowing teachers to benchmark students through all four grades and intercept at the first signs of dropout behavior.

When all was said and done, in just over a two-year period of time, Traverso and the re-energized teachers at Putnam instituted more than 80 different policies and procedures.

Shared Victory

After the audit, a few “troublesome” teachers were either fired or left of their own accord, but those remaining, and any new instructors, have a found a place that they truly enjoy coming to each day.

A 22-year veteran at Putnam, John Kennedy, Collision Department head, saw the cultural change happen before his eyes, and both he and Lapite are still shocked at how fast the transformation happened.

“It’s a whole new atmosphere now, and the kids absolutely love the new building,” Kennedy said.  “The culture here now … it’s a new vibe.”

Feeling that new vibe, Traverso recently spoke to 10 new students accepted from a waiting list of 1,000, to tell them that Putnam is very structured; there are expectations, there’s no drama, and nobody bends the rules. “There was a big sigh, and some of the kids even clapped,” he recalled.

Salerno looks back at the disturbing number of false alarms that were pulled before Traverso’s leadership; now there are none, not because the halls are policed, but because the students don’t want to do it anymore.

“The peer-to-peer relationship is a major, positive change under Gil Traverso and all the team,” Salerno said, adding that “victory has many fathers; failure has none. Gil has created the architecture of a successful organization and created a systemic change — it’s not just dependent on Gil — that will be in place for many years.”

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Willie Ross School for the Deaf Emphasizes Flexibility in Learning

Bert Carter both signs and speaks with teacher Laura Chagnon

Bert Carter both signs and speaks with teacher Laura Chagnon — much like teachers and students communicate at the school.

The Willie Ross School for the Deaf was born out of tragedy. In the 47 years since, however, it has crafted a striking legacy of helping children overcome hardship.

Specifically, the Longmeadow-based school was founded in 1967 by a group of concerned parents who were struggling in the aftermath of a rubella epidemic that swept the East Coast and deafened thousands of children.

During that era, residential placement of all deaf children was virtually the only option for families. But these parents had a vision of a day placement program for their sons and daughters. Since existing programs did not provide such an option, they established their own day school.

“A group of concerned parents made the effort to put the school in motion,” said Robert “Bert” Carter, who took over as president and CEO last year. “I think we offer an alternative, and a big difference from other schools for the deaf, in that we’re not residential. We really are about serving the local region; we’re not interested in serving kids from the Boston area or Vermont. And we believe those kids should go home at night to their families.”

The school’s stated philosophy, in fact, is that it’s primarily the responsibility of the family, before the school, to make sure no child is left behind.

“We think families should be involved in the day-to-day lives of their children, and that they should have the opportunity to go home in the evening,” Carter added. “That’s not a criticism of residential schools; there’s a reason for those, too. But we offer this alternative.

“It’s a team educational approach,” he continued. “Again, there are several schools for the deaf in Massachusetts, and it’s good for parents that the approaches differ, so there’s some choice.”

Led by the late Gene and Barbara Ross — and named after their son, Willie, who resides in Southern California these days — the parent group sought to establish a program that would further their children’s abilities in an inclusive setting. Almost a half-century later, it has built a reputation and a track record that more than validate their decision.

Talk to Me

Betsy Grenier

Betsy Grenier sits with her young students on the floor, an intimate setting made possible by the small class size.

The non-residential nature of the Willie Ross School isn’t the only way it differed from established educational models. Another is the way students and teachers communicate and learn.

Specifically, the school began as an oral-only school, built on speech and lip reading, but over time parents and teachers saw limitations in this approach. Rather than abandon it completely, sign language was integrated alongside speech, and the school adopted a simultaneous approach known as ‘total communication.’

Over time, the school has integrated a number of communication approaches to enhance student learning, including advancements in the use of ‘residual hearing’ through digital hearing aids, FM systems (in which the teachers wears a microphone and transmitter and the student wears a receiver), and cochlear implants. These technologies, working in concert, maximize speech and understanding in a way that cannot occur when only a single method is available.

“With total communication, we use both speech and sign language to address the individual strengths of the child, Carter said. “We have students that use a variety of listening technologies, such as cochlear implants and the use of FM systems in the classroom. Again, we’re looking at each child’s strengths and needs and addressing those accordingly.”

In short, the school recognizes that instructional models must evolve along with the needs of the students it serves, and this extends well beyond how they communicate at school, but also encompasses where they learn. A case in point is the development of a dual-campus model. In addition to the 62 students based on the Longmeadow campus, other students are ‘mainstreamed,’ to some degree, at public schools in East Longmeadow.

“We have this campus here, which functions like a lot of schools for the deaf, but we also have classes in the East Longmeadow schools, at all levels — two classes in elementary school, two in middle school, and two in high school,” Carter said. “Students are served over there by our teachers and our staff, and they have opportunities to mainstream where it’s appropriate.”

This model, known as the Partnership Campus, is a good fit with many students whose families appreciate the mainstreaming opportunity but still want the benefit of an education overseen by Willie Ross-affiliated specialists. Whether through that program or learning at the Longmeadow campus, he explained, deaf students have the opportunity not to feel isolated among their hearing peers.

“Language access is important,” he said, noting that public schools offer diversity in a number of beneficial ways, but communication is critical. “For a student to be in a public school, even with a sign-language interpreter, it can be socially stifling.”

Forging Connections

Even in area public schools that aren’t part of the Partnership Campus — 17 of them, to be exact — the Willie Ross school is helping students feel less isolated through a consultation program, helping educators and staff understand the needs of deaf students and offering technical expertise and support regarding listening equipment.

“It can make a huge difference,” Carter said. “We have an audiologist go out to public schools with listening devices a student might benefit from. Technology changes constantly, so we help them stay ahead of that — we manage equipment, make sure it’s in good, working order, repair it if necessary, teach staff how to clean it, all those things.

“Along with that,” he added, “they work with students and remind teachers of simple things like having deaf or hard-of-hearing students sit in the front of class, and how to manage group situations — it’s hard to follow what’s going on when there are multiple speakers. We just provide consulting to school staff.”

The Willie Ross School also established its Outreach Division to provide services from infancy through age 22, encompassing everything from newborn screening to tutoring for high-school students.

“We have staff that go out to families at home and work with them around developing skills with the child and getting them ready to go to school,” Carter said, adding that the school’s philosophy of parental choice extends here as well. “We always go with what the parents are thinking. If they’re saying, ‘I want my child to speak and go to public school,’ we help them move through that process. If they’re saying they want the child to learn sign language, we help them do that.

“It can be a difficult process for the family,” he added. “They don’t necessarily expect that they’re going to have a deaf child; it’s usually a surprise, and you have to adjust expectations around that. Not that you don’t expect the child to be successful, but the process looks different. You have to be prepared for that. We help a lot of parents work through that and recognize the success their child has along the way.”

The Outreach Division also sponsors the Laurin Audiological Center, located in Pittsfield, so that public-school students in the Berkshires receive the same kind of audiological support available in Greater Springfield.

Personal Touch

Meanwhile, back at the main Willie Ross campus, small classes allow for plenty of individualized attention. Students are grouped by approximate age in most cases, but also by ability level, and many students have learning and physical disabilities in addition to deafness.

Laura Chagnon, who teaches a class of five boys, said most of them would struggle with mainstreaming, but at the same time, everything they experience at the school is preparing them in some way for mainstream life.

Carter understands that concept, having worked in some way with deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals for more than 30 years, most recently at the Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vt. Having worked in adult social services as well as in education, he said, “it’s helpful to understand what happens to people after they leave school.”

These days, it’s his job to prepare them for that, and the Willie Ross School doesn’t cut corners on educational requirements.

“We have our own curriculum based on state standards, and our kids do well on state testing,” he told BusinessWest. “But even with all that, so many people in Longmeadow don’t know we’re here. Or, they know we’re here, but they don’t know exactly where.”

That’s not surprising, with the small, quiet campus tucked away on Norway Street, near the Connecticut border. But the impact of the school’s work, he said, radiates much farther out.

“The whole approach we take — with total communication, with the choice between two campuses — is based on what’s the most enabling environment,” he said. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s still considered an uncommon model.

“We’ve been asked to consult around the country on that, because it is an intriguing concept for people,” he continued. “Instead of looking at education as, ‘well, if you need this model, go somewhere else,’ we provide the whole continuum and can move fluidly between different modalities in our organization.”

Its students might be going places, all right, but for now, they’re staying close to home, learning and communicating in a variety of different ways. That’s something worth talking about. Or signing. Or both. Whatever works.

Joseph Bednar can be reached  at [email protected]

Education Sections
University Without Walls Offers Alternative Options for Adult Students

Orlando Ramos

Single father Orlando Ramos has been able to fit his degree work around his full-time job and his new role as a Springfield city councilor.

When Orlando Ramos of Springfield sits down to do his homework at the kitchen table, he’s often joined by another student — his 9-year-old daughter, Ariana.
As she completes her fourth-grade studies, Ramos, 31, is completing his concentration in Public Policy at the University Without Walls (UWW), a degree that will allow him to reach his next goals of a law degree and a future in public policy making.
Ramos is attending UMass Amherst’s adult degree-completion program, but, as the name implies, the classroom is one without walls, other than the walls of his home, due in part to his choice of completing his first degree completely online. The name conveys the fact that this is not a traditional university in terms of everything from physical structures to the hours spent in the ‘classroom.’
Adults like Ramos who want to change careers or never completed their degree programs, for whatever reason, need flexible support in the way of process and cost. As the nation pulls out of the Great Recession, President Barack Obama recently challenged colleges and higher-education leaders to adopt promising practices that include functions like ‘competency-based learning’ and ‘experiential learning.’ Such practices award college credits based on what students have learned in life and work experience, and offer more opportunities for adult students to get financial aid based on how much they learn, rather than the amount of time they’ve spent in class.
As one of the oldest alternative adult-education programs in the country, UWW is already at the forefront of meeting Obama’s challenge. Serving students in most fields available at the university, the unique program offers individualized degrees or course plans, 100% online, on-campus, or blended. UWW students earn a bachelor of arts or bachelor of sciences degree depending on the program they personally design, based on what credits they are able to transfer and what credits are attributable to experiential learning.
As a single father with a full-time job, it hasn’t been easy, Ramos admits, as some of his study sessions end with him waking up with a textbook stuck to his face. After years spent in construction and as a union steward with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 108, a back injury just before the recession started had him considering his future options. After earning his associate’s degree in Liberal Arts from Springfield Technical Community College, he was accepted at another school to continue his education.
“But it just wasn’t for me … being in a classroom with students who were 10 years younger,” said Ramos, recalling a trying semester at a local university. “And it didn’t fit my schedule, so I really felt out of place.”
He soon found that right place at the right time in his life with UWW, and will graduate this May, according to a timeline he created.
And timelines are important, said Cynthia Suopis, a senior lecturer in Health Communications at UWW.  With the program for 12 years, she’s seen students like Ramos, as well as those in their 70s, who seek the degree that eluded them decades earlier.
For Angie Boris, 47, of Grafton, a career change from a $60,000-per-year job to her own business that she sold after the birth of a second son led to pursuing her dream of becoming a teacher through UWW online — again, on a timeline that fit her changing lifestyle.
All students, regardless of their story, enter into a process that allows them to evaluate and receive valuable credit for past experience; it’s called the ‘portfolio,’ and according to Suopis, it’s what sets UWW apart from all other online programs (more on this later).
For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest visited UWW to learn about this 45-year-old program, which offers a customized and affordable plan for adult students who want and need alternative means to earn a degree, and academically sound credit reflecting what they’ve truly learned in life — and on the job.

Degree by Design
Founded in 1971, the UWW program was considered fairly radical when it was rolled out, said Suopis.
“The movement was about the idea that education is more than going to classes for four years and getting a degree,” she noted. “It was started by a group of graduate students from all over the country, and the thinking was that adults have a lot of experienced work in their background; why couldn’t they get academic credit for that?”
With students ages 22 to 82, Suopis said the program has been a lifeline to individuals who have started and stopped school for families, experienced dramatic job changes, or endured hard times financially. But the philosophy of UWW is that, in addition to transferable courses from other schools, past work is honored, if it can be qualified.
While other schools may look at a student’s résumé and check off the list what is comparable to the school’s academic requirements, the UWW curriculum requires the student to spend an entire semester dissecting their résumé and other life experience; that process is called building the portfolio. It’s a reversal of the term ‘service learning,’ which means learning that starts in the classroom is then put into practice in the community. At UWW, students are bringing the practical experience with them to learn more, but receive academic credits for that past expertise.
Suopis explained that students with a minimum of 12 past college credits and a minimum 2.0 grade point average, once accepted, are required to accumulate 120 credits to earn a degree, or a ‘concentration,’ as the program labels it, and this can mean a focus on business, education, health, human services, or other fields such as journalism, criminal justice, public policy, sustainability, and applied psychology, all interwoven with their past experience.
Up to 75 of those 120 credits can go toward the selected concentration, and they are accumulated through two means: transferred credits from another school (up to 30 credits for the portfolio), or experiential learning outside the classroom.
Ramos transferred 47 credits and earned 21 more through his portfolio; Boris had 17 transferred, and her portfolio gained her another 18. Both have finished the four specific courses required of students, which entail writing the portfolio and designing their degree plan. The finished thesis is then evaluated by UWW faculty members, and not having to take classes for those credits saves not only money, but valuable time, Suopis noted.
The revenue from the four courses, either online or blended, allows UWW to be self-sustaining; the revenue from the additional online courses through UMass goes to the university.
The curriculum courses include:
• “Frameworks for Understanding,” where students design their course plan;
• “Reflections,” where they pick two subjects out of four: technology, organizations, leadership, and public policy; and
• The portfolio class, which involves a semester of critically analyzing what they’ve learned on many levels in their past.
The Reflections courses are not about content, said Suopis, adding that they are discussion points that impact students’ lives and help them write their portfolio. The first step is for the student to identify what they are good at, what they claim they know, and write about it. The writing process is a critical analysis that forces the students to pull out every minute detail of their past history and what they’ve learned, and in many cases, Suopis said, they are shocked to realize that they really did learn, and retain, a great deal of information and viable skills.
For Boris, the portfolio process was overwhelming but quite revealing.
“I consider myself fairly self-aware,” she told BusinessWest. “However, I learned that I had accomplished much more in my life than I had originally thought, and the portfolio process gave credibility to what I had done for my past career; basically my life experience was now worth college credit, and that was a big eye- opener for me.”
Suopis said this is a common reaction, and one that helps build the confidence needed for the remaining work to attain a degree.
“What we’ve found is that the sooner we get the student to write that portfolio, the better their chances are of graduating,” added Suopis, “because they see this huge number of credits coming to their transcript, and they’re like, ‘I can do this.’”

Personal Investment
But what about those students who are not skilled writers?
“There are two phobias at UWW — math and writing,” Suopis said with a laugh. “We’re not teaching them grammar, but if they can start at where they’re at and give us just five pages as we ask them a series of questions, we can get them to a place to be more comfortable with their writing.”
By the end of the semester, after numerous revisions and edits, those fearful writers are proud of their accomplishments in the past, Suopis said, and their newfound ability to record it all for credits saves hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and valuable time.
The impact of the Great Recession is what prompted Ramos to alter his career plans. After his third back injury on the job kept him home for five months, and unemployment that followed due to a recession-prompted slowdown in the industry, he knew he needed to pursue a different, more stable path.
When writing his portfolio, Ramos learned that his past was a foundation for his future.
As a union steward, his main responsibility was to look out for the best interests of his union brothers, and little did he know back then that he was performing ‘constituent services’ — taking care of their issues and needs as a leader on the job site. And there were situations that weren’t all that easy to handle.
“As a steward, you’re not there to be friends,” he explained. “so there were a lot of situations where I had to build up the courage to stand up for my guys, and that’s a skill I know I’ve transferred to my current positions.”
Now as a district director for state Sen. James Welch, who represents the 1st Hampden District, Ramos stands up for Welch and his constituents. And as an newly elected Springfield city councilor, he’s standing up for the residents in Ward 8, which includes Indian Orchard and parts of Pine Point and Sixteen Acres, as well as all city residents with the entire council.
“I learned about what I really learned in the past,” Ramos said as he recalled the portfolio process. “It was interesting to link my experience and previous career to my current career positions because on the surface, it doesn’t look like it’s something that matches, but it does, and it’s helped me in public policy, legislation, and being elected.”

I Can Do Anything
UWW serves between 750 and 800 students each semester, with fully integrated UMass graduations of 150 per year at three different times: February, May, and September.
The stories of why students of all ages come to UWW are numerous. For some, it may be their last, best chance to earn a degree. But when a student speaks of future opportunities and self-worth, Suopis knows she’s succeeded in guiding another student in their journey to what could be their perfect job.
“We’re now having two and three generations that have gone though UWW — mom, daughter, and granddaughter — and as a 45-year old program, that’s pretty cool to see that happen.”
True to UWW’s website slogan, “we get adult students,” Ramos and Boris are good examples of non-traditional students who ‘get’ UWW, and are on their way to a future where doors will be opening because of their time spent at a university without walls.

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
HCS Head Start Strives to Get Preschoolers on the Right Track

Nicole Blais

Nicole Blais says HCS Head Start has evolved over the years to reflect the current emphasis on preschool academic readiness.

Fifty years is a long time in any field. Soit’s no surprise, Nicole Blais said, that early-childhood education has evolved quite a bit since Head Start was launched in 1965.
“We consider ourselves a comprehensive early-education and care program that focuses, of course, on school readiness,” said Blais, director of community engagement for the Holyoke-Chicopee-Springfield Head Start program, which boasts 16 area centers and benefits mostly low-income families in 15 different Greater Springfield cities and towns.
“But when it first started in 1965,” she continued, “it was a summer program that focused on health and nutrition, with the idea that poor children who had access to healthcare and access to healthy foods would have a head start when they entered kindergarten, and be able to catch up to their peers who might have had other opportunities available to them.”
While health and nutrition remain key elements of Head Start, however, the program has increasingly focused over the decades on instilling the foundations of literacy and learning in preschoolers, so they can hit the ground running when they reach public school.
“The field of education has evolved; it had been more about the care of children, as opposed to education,” Blais said. “We’re so happy that early-childhood education is finally being recognized as a field beyond babysitting. We just don’t play ring around the rosy in these classrooms. There’s a lot of learning happening with this age group.”
While moving from a summer to full-year program after its early years, Head Start has evolved in other ways as well, she added. For instance, “people realized they couldn’t do anything sustainable with this age group without finding ways to include and engage parents, since the parents are with their children the majority of time through those first years.”
Today, she said, teachers team up with service coordinators, medical assistants who perform needed health screenings, mental-health professionals, nutritionists, and others, who constantly aim to engage parents in the total development — educational and otherwise — of their children. “We’re looking at the child as a whole.”

One Tree, Many Branches
Thirty-two Head Start programs blanket Massachusetts, Blais said, each with its own catchment area. HCS Head Start, as it’s known in shortened form, operates most of its centers in the three cities that comprise its name, although it also has sites in Ludlow and Palmer. Children from other area communities may access out-of-town centers, however.
“We don’t have centers with classrooms in all of our towns because our charge is really to set up shop in communities where there’s a great need,” she said, noting that poverty tends to be more prevalent in urban areas. “We work with vulnerable children and families — children who are living at or below federal poverty lines. And 10% of our enrollment has to be made up of children who have a special need or disability.”
Under the leadership of its long-time executive director, Janis Santos, HCS Head Start operates three different types of programs. There are 904 slots for traditional Head Start, designed for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Meanwhile, 60 clients are enrolled in Early Head Start, which works with prenatal families and children from birth to age 3, with goals ranging from healthy prenatal outcomes to the development of very young children to cultivating a healthy family structure. “Then, when a child turns 3, they can transition into the preschool room,” Blais said.
Finally, “about 10 or 12 years ago, we became the Migrant Head Start grantee for the state of Massachusetts, and we are charged with providing Early Head Start services to eligible children whose families are working in agriculture. Our assessments showed that a lot of migrant families reside in Western Mass. as opposed to the eastern part of the state,” she explained. “That program is a little different in terms of length of operation; those families tend to be here in the summer months, so we have a fast and furious 13-week program to cover those summer weeks.”
Last year, federal budget cuts resulted in a loss of 200 slots, making the program more competitive than it already was. Blais said HCS Head Start aims to fill spots by the greatest need first — not only financial, but developmental as well. And homeless families are always a priority.
With the public education system so focused in recent years on testing and outcomes, there has been increased scrutiny of Head Start. Competing studies have produced very mixed data in determining how much of an advantage enrollees gain when they reach kindergarten.
One notable 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services claimed that Head Start benefits both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and aids 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain.
“However,” it goes on, “the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by first grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through first grade, a potentially important finding for children’s longer-term development.”
Blais noted that each child is a different case, and some make academic gains faster than others.
“Every child is unique, especially during this critical time. They all come in here at different stages, and they all have their unique ways of mastering different skills,” she told BusinessWest. “It can be hard to keep that in perspective. There’s this standard, but it’s sometimes hard to capture that. Sometimes it’s hard for people to understand the complexities when we’re working with unique little ones.”
That said, HCS Head Start — which makes sure all its teachers have degrees in early childhood education and that each classroom has no more than 20 students — is always looking for ways to self-evaluate.
“We’re always figuring out how to appropriately measure something that gives validity to the program,” she said. “Teachers can tell you a thousand anecdotal stories about successes in the field. In general, we’re working really hard trying to figure out how to measure those.”

Getting Better

What is clear, Blais stressed, is that parent involvement in the program makes a big difference.
“There’s been a lot of talk over the years about quality, and what makes a quality early-education and care program: things like staff and materials,” she said. “The unique thing with Head Start, what has made it stand out, is the parent-engagement piece. The staff really get to know the families.”
They accomplish this through home visits, family fun nights, cultivation of classroom volunteers, and a policy council comprised of elected parents who serve as consultants to HCS Head Start’s senior management.
“We always make sure the parent’s voice is included,” she said. “Parents are made aware of how the Head Start program works — not only what they see in the classroom, but in its entirety. We’re developing leadership skills and advocacy skills for the family, too, so they can hopefully get a different perspective on how Head Start works and how important their voice is. Sometimes our families have been through some challenging times, challenging situations, and they don’t always believe they have the power to make a difference.”
Other Head Start programs are aimed directly at family involvement, from the TLC Building Healthy Relationships Program, which helps adults and teens develop skills in parenting, conflict resolution, financial management, and other areas; and the MILK (Men Involved in the Life of Kids) Program, a father-involvment initiative that offers male-focused activities that bring fathers and their children closer together.
While parents become more active, Blais noted, the teachers never stop learning, accessing a host of professional-development opportunities, particularly in rapidly advancing fields like science and technology.
“Professional development is huge in Head Start. We do a lot of in-service trainings,” she said, citing one recent workshop in conjunction with Holyoke Health Center on helping children develop healthy eating habits. “Teachers are on the front lines with kids, so we’re making sure they have a wealth of information, including community-resource information they can pass along to families. It makes a big difference for the child in the end.”
With so much at stake — and a waiting list to be admitted — it’s not surprising that regular participation is critical. Specifically, Blais said, children need to maintain an 85% attendance record to stay in the program.
“Not only will they miss out if they don’t show up,” she said, “but we’re really trying to instill good attendance habits for when children go off to kindergarten.”
Just one more way, in other words, to get a head start.

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Square One Returns to Its Roots in the South End

Joan Kagan

After more than two years of turmoil, Joan Kagan says Square One is happy to be back home in Springfield’s South End.

Joan Kagan says she never really settled in to her office at what is now known as the Business Growth Center in the Springfield Technology Park across from STCC.
She made it comfortable, finding some non-matching office furniture from various sources — including a table to replace the cardboard box that her printer sat on for months — and securing a print depicting landmarks at her alma matter, Columbia University, that was intended to somehow fill in for the diplomas that were lost when a tornado tore down Main Street in Springfield on June 1, 2011 and essentially leveled Square One’s facilities there.
But the suites in the growth center that housed several administrators with Square One, an early-education provider with facilities in Springfield and Holyoke, were always intended to be temporary, said Kagan, adding quickly that she knew going in that this is, indeed, a relative term.
And as it turned out, the stay was less temporary than she hoped, a development forced by another calamity roughly a year ago — the natural-gas explosion that took out another of Square One’s facilities, this one on Chestnut Street — and difficulty securing a place to rebuild in the city’s South End, the institution’s long-time home, because of speculation and relative uncertainty regarding MGM’s bid to locate a resort casino there.
But in what would have to be considered one of the company’s rare instances of good fortune lately, space unexpectedly became available for lease at 1095 Main St. (the former Grape Vine liquor store), just a block or so from Square One’s former location. A few months ago, elaborate ceremonies were staged to mark the opening of the company’s Family Square center, a family resource facility, on the first floor of that three-story property, and by March, Kagan expects other programs and personnel to be moved into the renovated second floor.
The 14,000-square-foot facilities are not exactly what Square One leaders had in mind as they conceptualized plans for the next chapter in the institution’s history following the tornado, Kagan noted, adding that the preference was certainly for new construction and ownership of the eventual new home. But they represent a chance to return to the South End, which has been home since the late 19th century, and an opportunity to bring back together programs and employees that had been scattered after the twin calamities.
“It’s exciting to be back in the South End — that’s our home,” said Kagan, adding that relatively long-term leases (five years for the first floor and seven for the second) have been inked, giving Square One time and opportunity to determine what ‘home’ will be in the years and decades to come.
Much will be determined by if, where, and how the MGM facility — now the only casino proposal for the Western Mass. region still on the table — takes shape.
For now, though, Square One is focused on the immediate future and proving John Updike wrong when he wrote “you can’t go home again.”
Back in September, there was a different kind of literary look and feel to the grand opening at 1095 Main St. Indeed, students, in a nod to that classic line from The Wizard of  Oz, wore T-shirts that read “there’s no place like our new home.”
The ceremonies came a tumultuous 27 months after the June 2011 tornado changed the landscape on Main Street. The Square One facilities there were so extensively damaged that they had to be torn down.
Programs and personnel were then relocated to a number of sites, said Kagan, listing facilities on Wilbraham Road, the MCDI building on Wilbraham Avenue, and, eventually, the Technology Park at STCC, among others. “We put people anywhere we could find a desk and an office.”
After a short period devoted to stabilizing operations, preliminary planning for building a new, larger facility in the South End commenced.
This was complicated by delays in obtaining an insurance settlement, but moreso by MGM’s announced plans to build an $800 million casino in the South End, mostly on underutilized, vacant, or tornado-damaged property directly across Main Street from Square One’s former home.
“We had owned one piece of property, and we were looking to expand that piece of property,” Kagan explained. “But people were talking to MGM, and MGM was optioning some land; people were hoping that MGM would come to them and make them an offer. There were simply too many moving parts for us to do anything.”
Plans then shifted, with a new goal of finding property to lease, she went on, adding that it was serendipitous that the property at 1095 Main St. became available when a tenant slated to move in backed out of the deal.
In August, Square One opened its Family Square center, as well as one 20-student preschool classroom. The center houses a number of what Kagan called “parent education support services,” and also hosts a number of programs and services, such as a group for mothers of 5-year-old children.
There are also computers at the facilities, on which parents can search for jobs, she said, adding that the new location on Main Street enables Square One to expand services offered at the center and bring under one roof a number of programs and initiatives that were scattered across the city.
And with a new home secured, Square One officials can continue efforts to realize the growth that was anticipated in early 2011, but then essentially shelved due to the loss of facilities from the tornado and gas blast.
Elaborating, Kagan said the company had planned to bring an additional 200 children into its expanded facilities on King Street in Springfield, but that additional capacity was absorbed by the displacement of students following the tornado and gas explosion.
“Those events essentially blew my business plan out of the water,” she said, adding that process of rewriting that document is ongoing.
Growth opportunities will likely accompany an MGM casino in the South End, she said, adding that provisions for day care for the children of employees are part of the agreement between the city and the corporation, which has already had preliminary discussions with Square One about where and how to provide those services.
Meanwhile, possible expansion into Union Station, which is currently undergoing extensive renovations, remains a possibility, she said, adding that a child-care facility has long been one of the potential reuses of the station — because of its location and the public transportation that will be based there — and it remains an option for that landmark.
Looking down the road, Kagan said she’s not sure what Square One will do long term, again, because of the uncertainty regarding the MGM proposal, how it will take shape, and what additional property the casino giant may acquire.
But she says the company is committed to the South End, and to being part of that community. And as it goes about writing that next chapter, Square One will adhere to a philosophy that was actually in place long before the tornado roared down Main Street, but has been reinforced by the events of the past few years.
“We never gave up … we simply said, ‘this is what we’ve got, now how do we move forward given that this is the reality?” she explained. “One of our mantras has always been to be solution-oriented; there’s always a solution, and you just have to get creative and figure it out. But it’s there.” n

— George O’Brien

Education Sections
Bay Path Looks to Carve a Niche in Emerging Field of Cybersecurity

Larry Snyder

Larry Snyder says positioning Bay Path College as a hub of cybersecurity expertise is an ambitious, but attainable, goal.

Larry Snyder says his broad goal is to help position Bay Path College as a “hub of cybersecurity in Western Mass.”
That’s a somewhat ambitious but certainly attainable goal, he said, noting that there are many aspects to the process of getting there, starting with the school’s decision to create what is believed to be the first master’s degree program in cybersecurity management in New England, which will be led by Snyder and launched later this month. There is also the Cybersecurity Management Summit, which the college will host on Oct. 11, featuring Robert Milton, retired commander of the Metropolitan Police Service, or New Scotland Yard (more on that later).
And in the fall of 2014, the school will launch an undergraduate program in cybersecurity, said Snyder, who has held titles ranging from director of the CyberSecurity Research Center at Herkimer Community College in New York to manager of fraud operations at First USA Bank in Wilmington, Del.
If all goes as planned, he told BusinessWest, Bay Path could soon join schools such as UMass, Utica, the University of Maryland, Stonybrook, and Champlain College as recognized leaders in academic programs and research in the emerging field of cybersecurity.
More importantly, though, it will be training individuals for a growing number of jobs in this emerging field, and thus helping to meet one of the recognized challenges moving forward — making sure there is an adequate supply of talent to enable the business community and society in general to cope with a security problem that grows larger and more ominous each year.
And the new master’s program will address one of the more pressing and immediate needs, said Snyder, citing a documented lack of management-level individuals to lead programs and individuals in the fight against cyberthreats.
“This program grew out of the sense that there was an opportunity — something was missing,” he explained. “Cybersecurity had been around for a while — there are lots of technical cybersecurity programs in academia — but what was missing, at the master’s level, was this cybersecurity management focus.”
Bay Path’s new 36-credit, online program will address this void, he said, by training people for some of those positions he’s held — in both academia and business — and a host of others.
And there will be great demand for such individuals, he said, enough to give graduates choices and some clout.
“The really great part about this — and what I tell students when I meet with them — is that they can really write their own career path,” he noted. “Typically, you’d expect them to fall into that chief information security officer level, but you’ll also see them as compliance officer, senior auditor in an accounting firm, and many others. It’s so wide open right now, and it really depends on the industry you’re interested in.
“This is a great time to get into the field,” he went on. “It’s been a great time for about 10 to 15 years, and it’s going to be a great time for another 20 years, I expect. These graduates are going to be able to take this field in a whole new direction.”
For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Bay Path’s new master’s program and its broader efforts to take a leadership position in a field where the prospects are bright and the job opportunities are expected to be plentiful.

Technically Speaking
“Digital Forensics.” “Financing, Cost Control, and Project Management of Cybersecurity Organizations.” “Information Assurance Manage-ment and Analytics.”
These are just a few of the 12 courses currently planned for the Master of Science in Cybersecurity Management program, said Snyder, noting that about 10 students have signed up for the program, and he expects probably double that number by the time it is launched at the end of this month.
And these individuals come from a number of industry sectors, he said, listing everything from accounting to gaming; from banking to law enforcement. This diversity provides more evidence of both the scope of the issue of cybersecurity moving forward and its promise when it comes to jobs in this field.
“President Obama calls it one of the most serious economic and national-security issues we face as a nation,” said Snyder, noting also that some of the nation’s leading industries are vulnerable to the ever-expanding threat of online attacks, cybercrime, and digital espionage. “Our financial systems, power grids, telecommunications, water supplies, flight operations, and military communications are all online, making them vulnerable to this growing, global form of cyberwar.”
Snyder has been on the front lines of this war, as someone both fighting the threats directly and teaching those who will join the swelling ranks of those hired to keep their employers’ interests safe.
A former military police officer in the U.S. Army, he would later serve as loss prevention/operations manager for Jamesway/Ames in New Jersey, manager of Fraud Operations for First USA Bank, and senior information systems auditor for NBT Bank in Canajoharie, N.Y., before shifting into academia.
He’s served as an adjunct professor focusing on crime investigation and cybersecurity at Utica, but his more recent, and far-reaching, work came at Herkimer County Community College, where he received accreditation for a cybersecurity program from the Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS), developed a curriculum, and handled ongoing assessment of the program and individual courses to meet standards set by the industry, the State University of New York, and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
At Bay Path, his first assignment is the get the new master’s degree program off the ground and win accreditation for it. He described it as a much-needed vehicle for training individuals for mid-level management positions in a host of sectors that will “bridge the gap between upper management and technologists that will be working for them.”
But his broader mission is to make the school that “cybersecurity hub” he described.
And the upcoming Cybersecurity Management Summit is one of many initiatives being undertaken with that goal in mind.
Subtitled “The Human Side of Cybersecurity Management,” the event will feature thoughts from Milton about the global challenges associated with this emerging specialty, and provide first-hand examples of what he has learned about human nature and its relationship to cybercrimes and cyberterrorism in particular.
The summit will also include a panel featuring, among others, Snyder and Marisa Viveros, vice president of IBM Corp. and leader of something called the Cyber Security Innovation Initiative. She will discuss efforts to create a pipeline of talent in cybersecurity and encourage collaboration between industry, government, and academic institutions.
Meanwhile, the undergraduate program in cybersecurity, currently on the drawing board and slated to begin a year from now, will represent another step forward in the process of gaining regional and national prominence in this field of study.
That program will have two focal points, or majors, he explained. One will be in ‘cybersecurity and information assurance,’ which will involve computer programming, and the other will be in ‘digital forensics,’ an emerging field that holds significant promise for Bay Path because there are currently very few degree programs in this realm.
“Digital forensics involves treating the computer, cell phone, or other electronic device as a crime scene,” he explained, noting that there will be demand for people trained to do this work. “Students will learn how to conduct a search for evidence on that particular device, and process it in the same way they would if they were at a more traditional crime scene collecting fingerprints or blood.”

Keys to Success

Summing up his outlook — and his assignment moving forward — Synder said that, in time, and perhaps not much of it, Bay Path could become a center of academic excellence in cybersecurity.
“We want to make an impact in this area,” he told BusinessWest. “This is a new endeavor for Bay Path, and something not typically connected to the school — this is not a technical school. But the management focus really hits home; we have a good business program here, and a good criminal-justice program. This is going to be a real growth program for Bay Path.”
That’s because ever-improving technology has fostered new types of crime and breeds of criminals — and a steadily growing need for people to fight it.

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

Education Sections
Diocese of Springfield Wins Cathedral High School Insurance Fight

Ann Southworth (right, with Mark Dupont)

Ann Southworth (right, with Mark Dupont) says the “thousand details” of tornado recovery interrupted her broad vision for Cathedral, but her strategy is back on track.

When Ann Southworth became president of Cathedral High School, she was excited to implement a new plan to invigorate the school and increase enrollment.
A longtime educator and assistant superintendent in Springfield Public Schools, she was also a member of Cathedral’s board, and had helped shape some new ideas for the school.
But that was in May 2011, one month before devastating tornadoes tore a 39-mile path of destruction through Western Mass., and the 52-year-old Cathedral High School, which had also housed middle-school students since a 2009 merger with St. Michael’s Academy, was directly hit.
Southworth’s excitement over her new professional endeavor was quickly overshadowed by multiple challenges, starting with finding a temporary home for Cathedral’s grade 6-12 population — in less than two months.
“My first thought was, ‘we’ll overcome this; we’re going to keep going,’” she recalled, “and I found the principal, picked him up in the parking lot of Holy Cross, and we starting planning that next day.”
That summer, “a thousand details” had to be addressed, Southworth said, and administrators put on new hats — as realtors, searching for temporary quarters; as facilities managers, to move all offices to various buildings in and around Springfield; and as transportation coordinators, for getting students to wherever the new temporary home, or homes, would be.
Other church properties, including the St. Michael’s Priests Residence building and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, were damaged as well, while the St. Jude Mission property in Springfield was hit hard by a microburst a month and a half later, and remains closed.
To diocesan leaders, pictures of Cathedral’s splintered roof and shattered windows spelled out an obvious need for major repairs, if not complete reconstruction. So, like many other commercial and residential property owners in the twister’s path, the diocese filed insurance claims in the millions for all four properties. Language in the policy with Catholic Mutual, the insurance company of which the Diocese of Springfield is a member, guided the determination of what the school believed to be ‘replacement value,’ Southworth said.
But that summer of a thousand details turned into a two-year difference of opinion between the insurance company and the property owner, because the initial settlement offer was unexpectedly — and jarringly — low.
“You try to work things out internally, especially when you have close relationships, but with our cost estimates as high as $70 million, for the worst-case scenario, and their $13 million response, it was just too great a gap to make up,” said Mark Dupont, director of public affairs and co-secretary for communications for the Diocese of Springfield, detailing how, when it came to questioning literally every element of the claim, Catholic Mutual didn’t give up.
But neither did the diocese.
The long journey to work through a process called a ‘reference procedure’ (more on this later) finally culminated this past Sept. 10, when the Diocese of Springfield and Catholic Mutual announced an amicable resolution of all claims, totaling $60 million for tornado damage to all four properties. A final step with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) still looms for potentially more storm-related compensation, but the major battle is now over.
“When you’re facing challenges and hardships, you rise to the occasion,” Southworth said. “You come out of it better … and we did.”
For this issue’s focus on education, BusinessWest met with members of the Diocese of Springfield to learn more about their two-year insurance battle to secure what they felt Cathedral was entitled to, proving that patience is only one of their virtues.

Survival Mode
Bishop Timothy McDonnell explained to BusinessWest that the tornado that destroyed Cathedral High School and the other properties caused him many a sleepless night.
“But I couldn’t forget the words I had so often quoted to others, Mother Teresa’s words: ‘there’s nothing so bad that God can’t bring a greater good out of it — if we let him,’” he recalled.
Looking over the past two years, McDonnell said Mother Teresa’s words have been prophetic in the case of Cathedral, but the situation has been trying nonetheless for students, teachers, and parents. School choice and charter schools have affected the academic marketplace across the country, and specifically enrollment at Cathedral, which now stands at 236, said Dupont. The current goals are 300 high-schoolers and 200 in the middle school, but those figures could change as the school’s final footprint emerges.
“The school is struggling,” he said. “It’s fine to have a life raft, but you don’t want to live in the life raft.
“The tornado would have been devastating anyway,” Dupont went on, “but it came at such a pivotal point when we were ready to take that next step with Ann. And next thing you know, it was ‘where are they going to have classes in September? Where are we going to put the students we have?’”
Many of the options the diocese investigated involved undeveloped vacant space or non-academic space. Creative solutions were pitched by the city of Springfield, commercial realtors, and Springfield Technical Community College, but state regulations for using the college space would take far too long into the year to wait.
They received a call from the superintendent of schools in Wilbraham, a Cathedral alum, who suggested the diocese look at Memorial Elementary School. While it made a difficult situation even more trying for students and their parents, due to school busing, after-school programs, and other issues, said Dupont, the diocese still had to spend $750,000 to upgrade the school. With little time to widen the search, Memorial became the life raft for Cathedral, while the middle-school students went to the diocese-owned Holy Cross campus on Eddywood Street in Springfield. Dupont said the location has worked, and the lease in Wilbraham will be extended for as long as necessary.
But ‘as long as necessary’ is difficult for parents to hear when they want answers as to why the diocese can’t make a decision on whether to repair or rebuild. Yet, until engineers are allowed to venture into the damaged building, the extent of the damage is unknown.
“When you’re engaged in negotiations with an insurance company, you have to be prudent in how you proceed,” Dupont explained. “Because we were holding them [Catholic Mutual] to the full commitment of the policy, we weren’t going to give them any sort of ‘out’ to get around it — replacement cost is replacement cost.”
A total of $20 million was initially advanced to the diocese for preliminary cleanup and other expenses that were incurred, considering the magnitude of destruction, Dupont explained. But the initial low-settlement response persuaded the diocese to utilize the aforementioned ‘reference procedure,’ a Massachusetts law afforded in settlement claims, allowing both parties to appoint representatives for each side and a mutually agreed upon ‘referee.’
“That referee listened to months and months of testimony and reviewed data to determine what the real damage was that they could see,” said Dupont, likening the parading of engineers on both sides to a “battle of the experts.”
Due to the claims being challenged on almost every point, the process dragged for months, but the decision upholding $60 million worth of claims was finalized in September, with no more debate.

Cathedral justified far more

Diocesan officials knew the damage to Cathedral justified far more than the $13 million initially offered by its insurance company.

The settlement, Dupont said, brings all disputes with Catholic Mutual to an ultimate conclusion, without the possibility of further legal challenges, and allows the diocese to build whatever is in the best interest of all to update a 1950s school to the standards of the 21st century.
However, the next hurdle involves FEMA, which coordinates the federal government’s role in preparing for and responding to all domestic disasters, natural or man-made. The diocese is hoping to recoup some of its tornado-related costs, but that remains to be seen, said Dupont.
“Their regulations are daunting and very strict, and rightfully so, but we couldn’t go to FEMA until the claim was resolved,” he explained. “And any potential outcome is predicated on whether you’ve aggressively pursued your claim with your insurance carrier first.”

Valuable Assets
During the insurance battle, work on the new strategic plan never slowed, said Southworth.
The plan calls for more of a day-school curriculum and an extended day, where students stay from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with regular academic classes followed by experiential learning such as fine and performing arts, community service, internships, and sports.
A focal point in the school’s strategic plan will be the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, which will set Cathedral apart from other schools, she said. Even as a pilot program, 71% of seniors and 61% of juniors are enrolled in one or more classes.
Tuition for Cathedral is now $9,300, but McDonnell has charged the administration to find ways to make Cathedral more affordable for lower-income families. Currently 57% of students receive some form of tuition assistance through the diocese, alumni, and donors, but to grow the school’s population, something more is needed. Another part of the plan, the Cathedral Tuition Foundation, as it is called, will answer that important issue.
“Since the tornado, the alumni have rallied in support of Cathedral, and it’s leading to a campaign to endow tuition funding so that future generations of Panthers may benefit from the same first-class education that has always been Cathedral’s hallmark,” said McDonnell. Simultaneously, St. Michael’s Academy has been able to undertake its own plan to ensure its growth and stability.
“The connections that Cathedral has are really powerful,” Southworth added, mentioning just a few of the noteworthy alums, including Michael Ashe (’57), the current Hampden County sheriff; Richard Monaghan (’66), research biologist with the patent for the first cholesterol-reducing drug; and Derek Kellogg (’91), head basketball coach for UMass.
The word is out regarding the foundation, but Dupont likened it to a chicken-and-egg scenario, since donors don’t currently know what Cathedral High School is going to look like. But that isn’t deterring the diocese from testing the waters.
“We’re a people of faith,” he said, “and this is going to require people digging into their reserves of faith and saying, ‘I’m going to make this commitment, even though I’m not sure how the site is going to play out.’”

Challenge Accepted
To this day, books and other educational materials remain in the damaged Surry Road school that teachers have not been able to retrieve, Southworth said. But not one lesson has been missed, even from the first day of classes in September 2011.
She said she’s committed to continuing that ‘show must go on’ mentality, adding that, as the FEMA process unfolds, she will continue implementing the invigorating plan that was her mission before disaster struck from the sky.
All agree that, whether the school is rebuilt or repaired, this new plan and new energy will help create a bright future for even more students of Cathedral High School — who are, after all, among the most valuable of the diocese’s assets.

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
MacDuffie’s New Campus in Granby Offers Room for Growth

Steve Griffin, left, and Tom Addicks

Steve Griffin, left, and Tom Addicks say the Granby campus can help create a stronger balance between boarding and day students.

Steve Griffin wasn’t at the MacDuffie School campus on Ames Hill in Springfield when the June 1, 2011 tornado tore through the middle of it, uprooting huge trees and damaging century-old buildings as it moved east.

He started as head of the then-121-year-old school two weeks later, when the institution was still sorting out the damage, adding up the cost, and counting blessings — the tornado hit on the last day of classes, and students and staff took shelter in a basement, with no recorded injuries.

Originally, Griffin’s first assignment when he arrived was to oversee relocation of the school to new quarters on the grounds of the former St. Hyacinth seminary in Granby — a process that started roughly two years earlier — but the tornado changed that plan somewhat. The new first order business would be a healing process.

“We have many tornado stories from the campus,” said Griffin. “And from my standpoint, since I wasn’t here during the storm, I was unaware of the extent of it, but you had people, even a year later, opening file folders and seeing shards of glass fall out.”

But if the memories of the tornado and some of the physical evidence of that day still remain, MacDuffie has certainly moved on from that calamity and some years of economic struggle that preceded it, and the new campus in Granby has greatly facilitated that process.

Indeed, the move represented what Griffin called a “new day” for the institution, and in many respects.

He explained to BusinessWest that the new campus enables the school to market itself more effectively to a much wider audiences — from residents of Hampshire County communities such as Amherst and Northampton, who were previously intimidated by a commute to Springfield, to international students.

The sprawling campus, coupled with recent renovation and expansion efforts, are enabling MacDuffie to continue and expand its respected academic programs, while also making huge strides in efforts to take its athletic programs to a much higher level.

The former St. Hyacinth seminary in Granby

The former St. Hyacinth seminary in Granby offers an environment in which the MacDuffie School can grow, with more classroom space, boarding quarters, and several acres of playing fields.

At the Springfield site, there were no playing fields to speak of, said Tom Addicks, assistant head of school and a math teacher, adding that the school had to make use of various municipal parks and sports facilities. “And here, we have so many playing fields and a very in-depth sports program, and that was very appealing to us.”

The sprawling grounds that roll out like green carpet to the stately stone former seminary offers the classic New England preparatory-school experience that appeals to parents of American and international students, and allows MacDuffie to compete with nearby Wilbraham Monson, Deerfield Academy, and Suffield Academy, said Griffin.

“The site is a real gem; it’s got the ‘look’ when you drive up the drive — ‘majestic’ is a great word for it considering the open space, the pastoral setting,” he noted. “I think parents feel this will be a safe environment for their children to learn, both day students as well as international students.”

And there are now hopes — and high expectations — for growing enrollment in both the day and boarding categories, he went on, adding that enrollment is currently at 246, with a capacity of 270 and a firm resolve to get to that number.

For this issue and its focus on education and going back to school, BusinessWest toured the ‘new’ MacDuffie, and talked at length with administrators about why the new location and facilities will help students grow physically, culturally, and academically.

 

History Lesson

MacDuffie can trace its history back to one of the first graduates of Radcliffe College, Abigail MacDuffie.

In 1890, she and her husband, John, recognized a need in the Greater Springfield area for a strong college-preparatory school that would open doors for women and provide them access to to the same quality education they received at Radcliffe and Harvard, respectively.

They opened the MacDuffie School with 70 girls and quickly earned a reputation for excellence, one that would eventually draw students from across the area and around the world. By 1990, the school had taken on a far more international feel — in many ways out of necessity —  with students from many foreign countries.

By the dawn of the new millennium, however, MacDuffie’s enrollment was falling, and the urban campus in Springfield, one that had charm but was still lacking in facilities, was viewed as one of the main reasons why.

The school’s board quietly began a search for a new, more suburban home, and eventually narrowed that search to the former St. Hyacinth’s, which had become a temporary home to Holyoke Catholic High School.

MacDuffie officials eventually commenced negotiations with Wayne Brewer, who was eyeing the site as home for the planned Granby Preparatory Academy, a facility he blueprinted based on a model very similar to MacDuffie’s. The school would go on to purchase the assets and intellectual property of Brewer’s business.

The school now owns 26 of the 500 acres at the St. Hyacinth’s location, with an additional 29 acres in negotiation. It has invested millions in building infrastructure, sports fields, and classroom improvements — including expanded dance, music, and art facilities — since the summer of 2011. Currently, a new computer lab is under construction within the main academic building, while a new, 400-seat auditorium, more classroom and boarding space, and sports facilities are in the planning stages.

The new location had an immediate and profound impact on enrollment, said Griffin, noting that there were 175 students at MacDuffie in the spring of 2011, and 206 enrolled by the start of classes that fall. The numbers have been steadily rising, due in large part to larger boarding facilities on the St. Hyacinth’s campus, which have enabled more students from overseas to enroll.

“There’s a real international appeal,” said Griffin. “The old campus was limited in its footprint, and we’ve been able to double the boarding population, and that’s just in two years.”

Moving forward, the school wants to grow enrollment in both the day and boarding categories, and create more balance within the student body; currently, 60% of those enrolled are boarding students, while the stated goal is a 50-50 split.

Historically, the school has been known for its performing-arts programs, specifically drama and dance, but is also noted for its math program, Addicks told BusinessWest. But while the academic offerings have never been an issue for the school, broadening its sporting opportunities had historically been a challenge.

The move to Granby has enabled the school to aggressively address such issues, said Addicks, noting that the MacDuffie Mustangs, members of the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC), have moved to the AA division from the D division, a move made possible by improved facilities and a larger pool of student athletes.

The sports program includes boys and girls soccer, girls volleyball and lacrosse, badminton, cross country, golf, a swim club (which operates out of the Holyoke YMCA), tennis, ultimate Frisbee, and an advanced boys and girls basketball program that is bringing townspeople of Granby to the gymnasium.

“The town is realizing that this is some really high-quality basketball,” said Griffin. “The enhanced facilities have allowed us to broaden our appeal, so to speak.”

And broadening their appeal couldn’t have come at a better time.

“We survived the recession when other independent schools did not,” Griffin said. “However, while some private schools are recession-proof, most parents have to rely on more financial assistance these days.”

With day-school tuition at $20,250 (grades 6-8) and $25,250 (grades 9-12), and boarding tuition at $48,650 for all grades, Griffin and Addicks say MacDuffie’s prices are certainly competitive, and now offer additional value with the facilities at the new campus.

“I think our biggest selling point is the relationship we have between our teachers and our students, and our success at integrating our international students with our day students is a very important part of MacDuffie,” said Addicks.

Added Griffin, “we want our claim to fame to be known as the local full-service educational institution that can offer the individualized attention in a caring community.”

 

Common Ground

The tornado that touched down on June 1, 2011 represented a sad final chapter to MacDuffie’s long history in Springfield.

But as that book was closing, another was getting set to open 15 miles to the north.

The move to Granby was undertaken to give the school that new day that Griffin described, and the opportunity to grow and evolve in ways that were simply not possible on the Ames Hill campus.

Two years after the relocation, the picture is considerably brighter than it had been, and the potential for the future is as vast as the open spaces at MacDuffie’s new mailing address.

 

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Colleges Increasingly Rely on Social Media to Interact with Students and Alumni

Janet Garcia

If colleges aren’t active in social media, Janet Garcia says, they’re not on prospective students’ radar.

In the age of smartphones and social media, Janet Garcia says, people are constantly on the lookout for information. College students are no different; in fact, they might embody that cultural shift more than anyone.

“This generation of students is on the Internet constantly,” said Garcia, director of Marketing at Westfield State University. “If you’re not on the Internet, you’re not on their radar screen.”

No worry of that at WSU, however, which uses Twitter as an information-sharing resource, LinkedIn as an alumni networking tool, and Facebook for — well, just about everything else.

“These social-media tools, are tremendously valuable to me from a marketing perspective because we’re able to engage with audiences while letting people know what’s going on and what’s coming up more efficiently,” said Garcia. “For us, it’s a great value that adds to the scope of our marketing.”

But while traditional marketing, advertising, or recruitment efforts have historically been one-way conduits, social media is, by definition, a back-and-forth effort, she noted. And that has turned the way colleges communicate with their various constituencies upside down.

“One of the best things about social media is that it facilitates a dialogue among groups that wouldn’t easily be in conversation with each other — current students, prospective students, alumnae, parents, friends of the college,” said Laurie Fenlason, vice president for Public Affairs at Smith College. “That lends authenticity and immediacy, which helps students considering Smith get a full and vivid picture of what life will be like in college and after college.”

She, like Garcia, emphasized the concept of engagement in describing her institution’s active use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, as well as its lesser presence on Tumblr, Pinterest, and Foursquare.

Nancy Farrell

Nancy Farrell says the Elms is active on many social-media channels, but the common denominator is engagement.

“At Smith, we have an active social-media program that engages all of our key constituencies,” Fenlason said, including alumni, current and prospective students, parents, faculty, and staff among those groups. “Our goals are not only to maximize our followers, but to create engagement and dialogue.”

For example, “a Tweet or Facebook post about a Smith graduate’s achievements can go a long way toward making the case for Smith to a prospective student and her family; they can see an actual, vivid example of the value of the education we provide,” she explained. “And videos or Instagram images give prospective students a sense of what it feels like to be on our campus — what it feels like to be a Smithie — even if they’re half a world away.”

Nancy Farrell, director of the Office of Institutional Marketing at Elms College, also used that word engagement in noting why her school is active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. “Each one serves a unique function in our messaging, but the one commonality they have is engagement, which is the whole concept behind social media.

“The really important thing to understand is the behavior of this generation of students,” she added. “They want things immediately. You have to instantly respond and stay connected to them — to operate where they are, and work in their environment.”

For this issue’s focus on education, BusinessWest logs on to the world of social media, and how colleges have increasingly come to rely on it to inform, stay in touch, and, yes, engage.

 

Click Like

Take, for example, WSU’s comprehensive strategy for Facebook.

“We use it in a lot of different ways,” Garcia said. “Our admissions staff has their own Facebook presence and use that for their own purposes, for prospective students, to keep them apprised of what’s going on, let them know deadlines, open houses, things like that.

“We also create pages for each incoming class. For example, the 2017 page was just created this year. We invite prospective students to join the page and communicate with them,” she went on, noting that the college helps with planning and tries to increase their comfort level. “Then they use that page for four years here to communicate with their classmates, share information, talk about classes, sometimes try to sell books, and talk about events they’re going to and try to get their friends to go. It’s a real communication tool.”

It’s one that continues after graduation, only as an alumni page, she added. Meanwhile, the athletic department manages a page to keep students and the public up to date on games and athletes, while individual academic departments set up pages based around those students’ interests.

And, of course, “the university has a general Facebook page to keep the public engaged,” Garcia explained. “We provide information about events and keep people engaged with what’s happening on campus — everything from infrastructure changes to a faculty member getting a grant, that kind of thing … anytime we’re in the news. We really have quite a Facebook presence.”

The Elms also encourages a vibrant Facebook culture, said Karolina Kilfeather, web manager. She said today’s college-age generation doesn’t respond to traditional messaging like their predecessors did, but are looking for something more sincere — and, again, communication that runs in both directions.

“So we’re careful about not policing what students say, even if it’s something negative,” she told BusinessWest. “We do keep our eye out for inappropriate things, like bullying or being wantonly aggressive. But beyond that, we do the best we can to respond to complaints or negativity, but never try to shut anyone off. We don’t discourage students from being honest, and because of that, they stay engaged with us.”

In short, she said, colleges need to realize there’s been a seismic shift in the way young people communicate. “It has become much more of a dialogue. The hardest thing to learn is coming down from the mountain. The audience wants a two-way channel now.”

It’s gratifying, Garcia said, when that audience spans generations. “It’s interesting because we’ll have alumni go to a class page to talk to current students about when they were here, things they did, how much things have changed. That cross-generational communication happens on Facebook a lot.”

 

Press Play

Kilfeather said the Elms has certainly recognized the shift, using social media to make sure people know what’s happening on campus. “It’s been very instrumental getting crisis information out, if we have potential snow days … students look for information on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve learned we get a quick response to questions on social channels.”

Meanwhile, she said, Twitter has been a positive place to engage prospects, while YouTube is useful to showcase some of the campus programs with short videos, including footage of a cafeteria flash mob and a music video created by the field hockey team.

“These were student-driven, their idea, they came up with it, and for the most part, they produced it,” said Doug Scanlon, publications manager at the Elms. “It was organic.”

Social-media moments like that are useful in projecting a different side of campus life than someone might encounter in an official college publication, Kilfeather said.

“We have a reputation for a serious image, and this is an opportunity to use a lot more humor and candor and a more conversational tone. People have responded positively to that; students look for content after events, they want to see more videos, they want to see more photos. It has changed the tenor of the relationship between colleges and students.”

And they’re not waiting until they get back to their rooms, but living in virtual connectivity 24/7, Scanlon said. “These students all have smartphones, and they’re always checking in. It’s something that’s a part of their lives now.”

Managed correctly, Kilfeather said, social media can definitely pay dividends for a college, and that includes making sure the college’s website is not only accessible from various social-media sites, but optimized for smartphones and tablets. “Facebook and Twitter are very proactive about making sure they are successful on mobile devices. No longer does somebody have to be at the computer to interact with your message.”

As a result, “our percentage of mobile traffic to the website has more than doubled every year for the past five years,” she noted. “We know we have to be available that way, to make it easy to access and share that way. Mobile devices are certainly not going away.”

Neither, most marketing professionals seem to agree, is social media, and the constant challenge is learning how to use it and what platforms to adopt.

“It’s not about putting information out the way a lot of companies do when they get on the social-media bandwagon; they think of it as just another way of pushing, pushing, the way we use traditional marketing channels. This is very different,” Farrell said.

“As technology advances and different forms of social media come out,” she added, “we have to be very cognizant whether it’s the right move for us. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to use it. That’s probably our biggest challenge moving forward: to carefully choose channels that work for us as an institution.”

That’s a challenge worth undertaking at Smith, Fenlason said, because colleges that don’t take social media seriously will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

“It’s vital to meet prospective students where they are, on the channels and devices they value,” she said, “with content that is truly social — visual, immediate, engaging, and real.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
Holyoke Catholic Survives Through Its Close-knit Community

Theresa Kitchell’s quilt

Theresa Kitchell’s quilt, which showcases previous homes for Holyoke Catholic High School, tells only part of the story of this resilient institution.

Theresa Kitchell says she’s been quilting for decades now.

And like other practitioners of this time-consuming pastime, she enjoys it because it provides relaxation, as well as the ability to tell a story through one’s artistic expression.

The piece hanging in her office at Holyoke Catholic High School, which she has served as principal for the past three years, certainly does that. It features images of many of the historic buildings that were part of Holyoke Catholic decades before that name was ever put over a door — and there have now been several doors that have had that honor.

The only landmark missing is the current mailing address, 134 Springfield St. in Chicopee, said Kitchell, noting that she created the piece before the move to that location in 2008. (The quilt was created to be a featured prize at a fundraising auction, was given by the high bidder to his mother, an alum, and was then gifted back the school after she passed away).

But the quilt showcases only physical structures, Kitchell went on, so it tells only part of a remarkable story. The far more important chapters involve the perseverance and vision required for this school to live on through several forced relocations (more on those later), and the dedication of an alumni base and a current generation of parents who value quality and tradition more than a modern gymnasium and state-of-the-art auditorium — although those may also become reality in the not-too-distant future.

“I think ‘resourceful’ is a great adjective for us because we’ve had to make do for so many years,” said Kitchell, referring first to a move to Granby and the former St. Hyacinth Seminary, and later a move to the current address. “We had to start from scratch, in everything, and the faculty has been incredibly willing to do whatever needed to be done, in whatever facility we found ourselves.”

Today, Holyoke Catholic, with annual tuition of $8,000, boasts an enrollment of roughly 300, with students from 30 area communities and several from China. That number has remained steady in recent years despite a deep economic recession and the latest of those aforementioned moves.

Kitchell and Liz Adzima, director of Advacement, attribute this consistency to recognition among parents that, while the school still lacks some amenities, it is synonymous with value and excellence.

These are exemplified in the price tag — well below what is charged at area private schools — but also in the award-winning STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum, multiple partnerships with neighboring Elms College, and strong performing-arts and internship programs, among other initiatives.

“Parents make that decision to send their children here because they know that the sacrifices to be made are well worth it for the quality of education their children will receive here,” said Adzima.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest turns the spotlight on Holyoke Catholic, which has a rich, intriguing history and — because of that aforementioned resilience and vision — is adding new chapters to the story told by Kitchell’s quilt.

 

Quite a Yarn

Some of the institutions that came together to form what is now Holyoke Catholic High School can trace their histories back to the late 1800s, said Adizma, noting that Holyoke once had many small parish elementary schools and high schools.

These schools weren’t large enough to field their own sports teams, she went on, adding that, by the middle of the 20th century, several, including Holy Rosary, Sacred Heart, and St. Jerome’s, were bringing their athletes together to compete under the name ‘Holyoke Catholic.’ And as it became increasingly difficult for those smaller schools to exist on their own, discussions intensified about taking the concept of Holyoke Catholic beyond the playing field.

“Through that on-field unity, people started seeing that maybe it was time to come together,” said Adzima, adding that Holyoke Catholic High School was formed in 1963 on the campus of St. Jerome’s, located in the heart of the city’s downtown.

Eventually, however, those facilities became overcrowded and, worse, structurally unsafe — a determination made by Thomas Dupre, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, in 2002.

The search for what all agreed would be temporary quarters eventually focused on the 500-acre St. Hyacinth College & Seminary in nearby Granby, said Kitchell, adding that, while the location was not ideal, especially for families in Holyoke, the school managed to maintain consistent enrollment numbers.

And while there was an initial push to raise funds to build a new Holyoke Catholic, fiscal constraints brought a focus on retrofitting an existing educational facility, Adzima went on, adding that sights were eventually set on a former elementary school on Springfield Street in Chicopee, between the Holy Name and Assumption parishes, and only a few hundred yards from Elms College.

The process of retrofitting the facility was completed in the summer of 2008, and the new Holyoke Catholic opened that fall, said Kitchell, adding that the move brings a number of advantages for the school, ranging from accessibility to the natural connection with the Elms.

“The parents have been most supportive; they wanted their children to go to Holyoke Catholic, and they made the move to Granby, which was really inconvenient, and then they made the move here,” Kitchell told BusinessWest. “The move to Chicopee was certainly the most feasible economically, and there were other real pluses; first, we’d be back in an urban setting, and second, we’d be in close proximity to the Elms.”

Elaborating, she and Adzima said the new location, just minutes off interstates 91 and 391, makes the school not only affordable, but also quite accessible, especially to major population centers such as Chicopee, Springfield, and Holyoke.

As for the Elms, that institution brings facilities and collaborative efforts that greatly enhance the value of a Holyoke Catholic education, she said.

 

Sewing Seeds

The partnership with the Elms only begins with Sr. Mary Reap, the college’s president, who serves on the Holyoke Catholic board of trustees.

It extends to the institution’s library — which extends full privileges to Holyoke Catholic students, who can now take in a number of exhibits and programs, such as last year’s Holocaust exhibit — and the Veritas Auditorium, which has become home to the high school’s performing-arts programs.

However, and ironically, due to construction at the Elms, those programs are utilizing facilities at the former MacDuffie School in downtown Springfield. (MacDuffie relocated two years ago to the former St. Hyacinth’s Seminary.)

The drive to Springfield is somewhat inconvenient, but such headaches are certainly nothing new for loyal parents and alums, said Adzima, adding that the performing-arts program has enjoyed great success.

She explained that students, including incoming freshmen, work throughout the summer to produce the popular annual fall performance; recent shows (there are three a year) have included Hello, Dolly!, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Godspell, and this year The Wizard of Oz is on the schedule.

While quality and high expectations are the foundation of the Holyoke Catholic curriculum, and, historically, the English department has been very strong, Kitchell is proud of recent recognition from the state for the science department, which recently earned the 2013 Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Energy and Environment Education.

The award is fitting, she added, since 10 faculty members and 10 students were involved last year in a ‘technology frontier experiment,’ during which teachers and students used iPads daily in all departments to deepen their knowledge of that form of technology in a school setting.

“The use of handheld devices, not just pen and paper, is coming; that’s their world, and we just have to figure it out,” said Kitchell. “Students and faculty have been learning, literally, from each other across the board.”

Another perk of the school’s proximity to the Elms is the college’s advanced-placement program, which allows qualified area high-school students to take up to three college credits each semester in their junior and senior years, graduating from high school with a possible 12 college credits. Offered at reduced-credit cost, the late-afternoon and evening courses are a convenient walk across the street for about 30 Holyoke Catholic students per year, said Kitchell.

In addition to that program, Holyoke Catholic requires every senior to undertake a 50-hour internship at an area business or nonprofit. To fulfill that requirement, they must write a paper about their experience and present to members of a faculty panel.

“This year, we had students in the operating room with a surgeon at Baystate Medical Center, in court with attorneys — one student actually dug into the research and helped solve a case — and they really get put to work,” said Adzima. “It lets them see what it’s like in the real world, and the more time and attention that they give to identifying the correct spot for them, the better experience they have.”

 

Common Threads

Looking ahead, Kitchell said the school is looking at ways to fill in some of the missing pieces from its bricks-and-mortar presence, including a performance-arts facility and a gymnasium.

Two parishes in that section of Chicopee have merged, she noted, and this development may create opportunities for expansion down the road if the fiscal health of the diocese permits.

In the meantime, the school will continue to carry on and make do, something it has become quite proficient at in recent years, displaying vast amounts of imagination and resilience, skills that are among the many it tries to impart to its diverse student population.

Thus, while Kitchell says there are no plans to add new segments to that quilt on her wall, there are certainly new chapters to be written in the history of a school that has found its place — in more ways than one.

 

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]

Education Sections
LTL Program Brings Businesses and Schools into Partnerships

Washington School

Stephanie Fitzgerald, left, had her picture taken after a read-aloud assignment at the Washington School, which is being sponsored by Fitzgerald Attorneys at law.

Stephanie Fitzgerald called it a “pleasant surprise,” and then an “unexpected benefit.”

She was talking about the relationship, or partnership, that has blossomed since Fitzgerald Attorneys at Law, with which she is a partner, signed on last spring to sponsor the Washington Street School in Springfield as part of an ambitious program launched roughly a year ago by the nonprofit group Link to Libraries (LTL).

Sponsorship entails a donation of $1,200 per year for three years, with that money used to help provide the school in question with roughly 300 new books each year. But beyond the monetary donation, companies are also asked to become engaged with the school in some way, with the most common methods being donations of time and imagination for read-aloud work in the classroom.

However, in this case, the engagement process has gone well beyond reading, said Fitzgerald, who summed up what’s happened in four short months by saying simply, “that’s our school — that’s how everyone here feels. We’re not just donating books.”

Elaborating, she said that the firm and individual staff members have done everything from bringing in school supplies and snacks for students to fulfilling a request that landed at the top of a recently compiled wish list — some picnic tables that would enable outdoor activities at the century-old school in the city’s Forest Park neighborhood.

There are now more than 30 area companies using the phrase ‘this is our school,’ or words to that effect (one area bank can say ‘these are our schools’), said Susan Jaye-Kaplan, co-founder of Link to Libraries with partner Janet Crimmins, who noted that, in every case, the experience has been heightened because it involves much more than writing a check.

“Banks are providing lessons in financial literacy, a technology company [Paragus Stratetic IT] is teaching kids about computers, and professionals are talking about their careers,” she said. “People are tutoring, mentoring, providing kids with mittens and gloves and fruits and veggies … this goes well beyond books, but that’s where it all starts.”

Many of these relationships are in the developmental stages, including the one involving Holyoke Community College and the Morgan School, in the Flats section of the city.

Erica Broman, HCC’s vice president of Institutional Development, said the college signed on as a sponsor in late spring, but a number of reading assignments have been undertaken, including a few involving HCC President Bill Messner.

Looking ahead, she said the college will explore ways to deepen the relationship in the fall, with, among other things, field trips to the campus that will provide an introduction to higher education aimed at inspiring students to make that a life goal.

businesses sponsoring schools

Among the many businesses sponsoring schools is the Springfield Falcons AHL hockey team, represented here by Sarah Pompea, second adult from left, the team’s coordinator of Marketing & Promotions, and player Cam Atkinson.

Kaplan said LTL’s goal is to have at least 50 companies in sponsorship agreements by the end of this year. That’s ambitious, but doable, she noted, adding quickly that, while response to the program has been tremendous, there are still dozens of area schools — including more than 20 in Springfield alone — that need sponsors.

“There is still a great deal of need out there,” she said, adding that these links between businesses and schools do much more than fill bookshelves. “It’s important for businesses to get involved with these schools and nonprofits because there are rewards for all those involved.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with many of those taking part in LTL’s Business Book Link program to get a good read on the latest chapter in an ongoing and quite inspiring effort to connect children with books and create excitement for reading.

 

The Latest Word

Kaplan told BusinessWest that the book-link program was a natural extension of LTL’s efforts to stock area school and nonprofit libraries and get area students started on their own collections.

Since the organization was launched in May 2008, it has relied on grant funding and donations from area businesses and foundations, gifts that have helped enable it to donate more than 165,000 new books and 3,000 used volumes to area schools and nonprofits.

The concept of business sponsorships was embraced to enhance fund-raising efforts, and it has certainly done that, said Jaye-Kaplan, but there were many other goals as well, especially a desire to directly involve businesses with area schools, thus making them an integral part of the solution to a region-wide challenge — properly stocking school library shelves and generating enthusiasm for reading.

Dr. Susan Landry, a physician who has put her medical practice aside at least temporarily, accepted Kaplan’s invitation to serve as project director for the program. She described her assignment as linking businesses to schools, and said that, with this endeavor, there hasn’t been a high degree of difficulty.

“This program has taken on a life of its own — the response has been tremendous,” she said, adding that, once the pitch is made — usually following a lead provided by Kaplan or Crimmins — businesses quickly understand that participation amounts to a win-win proposition. “And from new business partners we’ll get names of other businesses that might be interested … it has really snowballed.

“The schools benefit, and of course the students directly benefit, but the businesses do as well,” she went on. “The check is nice — it helps buy the books — but what we were really hoping for, and what we’ve seen, is that the business feels like a part of the school.”

In many cases, businesses are sponsoring schools in the communities where they’re based. Monson Savings Bank, for example, has taken on a school in that community, as well as another in Ware, the location of its latest branch. Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka, meanwhile, is sponsoring that city’s Sullivan School, Dave’s Pet and Soda City has embraced the James Clark School not far from the company’s headquarters in Agawam, and Springfield College is sponsoring the nearby Kensington School. Some businesses have chosen to sponsor area nonprofits, as is the case with FieldEddy Insurance, which has partnered with the YMCA of Greater Springfield.

Fitzgerald Attorneys at Law is based in East Longmeadow, said Stephanie Fitzgerald, but the Washington School is just over the line in Springfield, and is an institution in far greater need than the schools in East Longmeadow.

The extent of those needs became apparent as lawyers and employees of the firm became engaged with the school, she continued, adding that, for many, the experiences were eye-opening and inspiring.

“Everyone is involved — from Frank Fitzgerald [her father in law], whose name is on the wall, to the assistant office manager,” she explained. “Everyone loves to read, the kids are so much fun, and the questions they ask … it’s just been a great partnership for everyone.”

Fitzgerald said the firm signed on in March, well into the school year, but has been “making up for lost time” with twice-weekly reading assignments, on average (a pace needed to include every student in the school), and other initiatives, such as talking with students about careers in law and the hard work it will take to make one reality.

Steve Lowell, president of Monson Savings Bank, said his original career ambition was to be a schoolteacher, so he is partial to endeavors involving education, as is the bank. And when Kaplan and then Landry made pitches for a sponsorship, the institution, which had made a few monetary donations to LTL in recent years, was quick to embrace the concept — in two communities.

Monson, as home to the bank’s headquarters, was a natural fit, he explained, and the experience there inspired the decision to also take part in Ware.

“We saw this as a great opportunity for us to do something really positive in that community,” he explained, “and for us to get involved in a very meaningful way.”

 

Epilogue

Looking back over the past year, Kaplan said the response from the business community has been inspiring, if not exactly surprising.

“We’ve always had strong support from area businesses, and we knew that this wasn’t going to be a hard sell,” she explained, adding quickly that the program has enabled LTL to broaden its reach, while also giving area companies license to say ‘this is our school.’

And each time that happens, it adds another chapter to what has been one of this best region’s best success stories.

 

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

Education Sections
AIC Will Add Degree in Public Health to Its Roster of Options

Cesarina Thompson

Cesarina Thompson says AIC’s new program in Public Health is a strategic response to changes in the nation’s healthcare system, which stress prevention, not treatment.

Cesarina Thompson says the recently created program in Public Health at American International College in Springfield represents a coordinated response to ongoing trends in this region and across the country — specifically, a strong movement toward preventing disease rather than simply treating it.

“Healthcare is changing, and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is projected that we’re going to be focusing more on disease prevention and keeping people healthy and out of the doctor’s office and the hospital,” said Thompson, dean of the college’s School of Health Sciences, noting that AIC’s decision to launch the program this fall is also a response to an anticipated surge in need for professionals in public health and what’s known as ‘health education.’

Indeed, projections show that demand for health educators in Massachusetts will grow by roughly 50% between 2010 and 2020, said Thompson, who pointed to a number of recent job postings to show what the job market looks like now — and what it will look more like in the future.

Fallon Community Health Plan, for example, recently advertised for an ‘employer group wellness specialist’ to “implement innovative educational strategies for general health and wellness, health promotion, and prevention for employees,” she noted, adding that Premier Health & Fitness Resources, with facilities in Springfield and Hartford, posted for a ‘health screening technician’ and ‘health educators,’ and Emerson Hospital in Concord advertised for a ‘manager of health and wellness programs.’

“We’re seeing more of these kinds of jobs, those focusing on wellness and community health,” she told BusinessWest. “And we’re going to see considerably more of them in the future. This is the direction that healthcare is taking, and there will be considerable demand for professionals who can work in this field.”

 

Recognizing a Need

Meeting that demand is the primary motivation behind the establishment of the bachelor’s degree program in Public Health, which will be launched this fall, said Thompson, adding that discussions about adding such an offering began soon after she came to AIC late last year from a position as associate dean of the School of Health and Human Services at Southern Connecticut State University.

She told BusinessWest that administrators at AIC have long sought to expand the School of Health Sciences, and a program in Public Health eventually emerged as the most logical and potential-laden option for doing so.

Careful due diligence revealed a need for such an offering in Western Mass., and specifically the Greater Springfield area, because, for starters, there is only one other undergraduate program in Public Health in this area (at UMass Amherst). But another motivating factor is Hampden County’s undesirable status as the least-healthy county in the state, as measured by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“We’re at the bottom of everything in terms of mortality and morbidity, and health factors such as smoking, obesity, and quality of life,” said Thompson, a former nurse, referring to the latest data, from 2012. “These numbers were definitely part of our rationale for creating this program, and it seemed like a great fit for us as an urban institution in the heart of Springfield.

“What we’d like to do with this program is certainly reach out and serve the diverse community of students that we always serve,” she continued, “but also give back to the community, because I believe it will benefit this region to have more people educated as public-health professionals.”

Thompson said the initiative builds on AIC’s other offerings in its School of Health Sciences — Nursing, Physical Therapy, and Occupational Therapy — and uniquely positions these four programs under one roof.

“Although healthcare professions such as nursing, OT, and PT address health promotion and prevention concerns, given our current healthcare system, these professionals typically care for patients at the time of an illness or injury,” she explained. “Public health practice, on the other hand, focuses primarily on helping people to maintain and improve their health.

“What is unique about our new Public Health program is that it will be housed within the School of Health Sciences; students and faculty will have an opportunity to work and learn together, maximizing the expertise that each brings to healthcare, and collaborating to educate well-prepared professionals for our new healthcare system.”

Upon graduation from the program, which will include such courses as Global Health, Epidemiology in Public Health, and Community Health Promotion — as well as a required internship in the public-health arena — students will have amassed the skills needed for a number of well-paying positions, said Thompson, but also the option of gaining a master’s degree in Public Health, with the nearest such program located at UMass Amherst.

Employment opportunities for graduates of the bachelor’s program would come in a number of settings, including nonprofits, community health centers, municipal health departments, and many others.

“In public health, people work within towns and within states,” she explained, listing the state Department of Public Health as one potential landing spot. “If there’s an outbreak of some sort of health problem, these are the people out there providing information on what to do.”

Thompson said the college is projecting that enrollment in the program will likely be between 10 and 15 students this fall — it was not approved by the Board of Trustees until March, too late for the most recent recruiting cycle —  but the numbers are expected to swell to 50 within a few years.

And she expects interest from a number of constituencies — from high-school graduates to individuals looking to change careers to those already in the healthcare sector (or working their way there) who may see public health as an attractive option to clinical-care fields such as nursing.

“This is one of the fastest-growing careers in the healthcare field,” said Thompson. “And we expect that there will be a great deal of interest in this program.”

 

— George O’Brien

Education Sections
At Veritas Prep, College Isn’t a Goal — It’s an Expectation

Veritas Preparatory Charter School Executive Director Rachel Romano

Veritas Preparatory Charter School Executive Director Rachel Romano

Everywhere one looks at the Veritas Preparatory Charter School in Springfield are not-so-subtle reminders concerning what this place is all about — preparation for college.
For starters, there are old-fashioned pennants, representing dozens of schools from across the country, adorning several walls in the cafeteria and the hallways by the front office. “We got started by ordering a bunch of them,” said Rachel Romano, the school’s founder and executive director. “People will come in and say, ‘where’s my college?’ and we’ll tell them they have to get us a flag.”
Meanwhile, the three classrooms are named for schools attended by some of the faculty members — Bryant, Depaul, and Chicago (short for the University of Chicago) are currently in use. And there are large banners for UMass Amherst — the alma mater of many staff members — and Syracuse, where Romano majored in broadcast journalism, but ultimately, and obviously, took another career path.
These visual displays are designed to keep both students and staff focused on what could be considered a goal, but what Romano would prefer to consider something more — an expectation.
And that distinction is one of a host of things that separates Veritas Prep, which currently has a fifth-grade class but will eventually serve grades 5-8, from other middle schools in Springfield, where close to half the individuals who start high school don’t finish it.
Many of the others can be learned through a discussion of one of Romano’s more imaginative programs, called ‘scholar dollar paychecks.’ It’s an initiative designed to introduce students to the world they’ll eventually be joining, a professional world in which they’ll take home a paycheck.
The checks they’ve been issued since last September, when the school opened, are based on an initial ‘salary’ of $100 in phony currency. The amount on the actual weekly check is determined by how well a student lives up to the many Veritas Prep expectations (there’s that word again) for conducting oneself.
There are ways to earn bonuses, through work that exemplifies the school’s unofficial slogan: DRIVE (determination, responsibility, integrity, vision, and enthusiasm). But there are also deductions that come in many flavors and denominations.
There are $3 assessments, for example, for things like not sitting up straight after a reminder to do so, talking out of turn, and having a ‘fixable uniform violation,’ such as having one’s shirt untucked. And then, there are $10 hits for things like disrespect toward staff or a student, swearing or inappropriate language, or even “consuming candy, gum, soda, energy drinks, sports drinks, or juices of minimal nutritional value” during school hours.
At Veritas, the school day is roughly two hours longer than at most public schools (7:20 a.m. to 4 p.m., with after-school activities that keep many in this former nursing home until 6), the school year is 10 days longer, and students leave each afternoon with at least an hour of homework to do. There are many reasons for this, said Romano, but the most obvious is that these students need the extra time in the classroom and the extra work.
Indeed, most all of them came in last August behind grade level for all subjects — in some cases, well behind, she said, citing one student who didn’t even know the alphabet, but was nonetheless in the fifth grade.
He’s getting caught up, slowly but surely, she told BusinessWest, adding that the first assignment for the staff is to get all students back up to grade level. And from there, the goal is get them ready — and motivated — to do all the work needed to attend one of those places represented by all those pennants and banners.
For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at this unique charter school, where a different banner in the cafeteria tells the story. “Home to the hungriest students in Massachuetts,” it reads, with Romano adding, “they’re hungry for the knowledge to send them to college.”

Grade Expectations
When asked how she wound up essentially handling payroll for 81 fifth graders, among myriad other duties as executive director, Romano eased back in her chair and offered a look that would suggest that this was to be a long story.
And it was, but one worth telling.
It starts, in most respects, on 9/11 and the days that followed, but to relate the saga properly, she went back further, to some career decisions upon graduating from Syracuse with that broadcasting degree.

banner in the cafeteria at Veritas Prep

This banner in the cafeteria at Veritas Prep tells the story about what this unique school is all about.

“I soon realized that I didn’t love the career enough to move to Steubenville, Ohio and make $15,000 a year, which is probably what I would have had to do in 1999,” she said, using sarcasm to describe the flight path of most who choose that career route, adding quickly that she opted for media sales (radio and Internet advertising) instead of journalism, and was soon doing pretty well with that pursuit.
So well, in fact, that, by the summer of 2001, she was able to move up from an apartment at 53rd and 9th streets that she shared with two others to a place of her own downtown, just a block from the World Trade Center.
Sept. 11 was the Tuesday after a Monday night football game featuring the New York Giants. Romano, who watched with some co-workers until the end, was running just a little late that morning, but enough to become trapped in her apartment building while the Twin Towers were attacked, eventually to collapse, just a few hundred yards away. It was a sequence of events she could generally hear — “when the towers fell, that was the loudest noise I ever heard” — but couldn’t see (there was no television because power was out), which was a real problem.
“I didn’t know what was going on; I thought my building was on fire,” she recalled. “I heard the towers had collapsed, but you can’t process that information unless you actually see it. I definitely thought I was going to die that day; I actually called my mother to say goodbye — I thought it was over.”
She was eventually hustled into the building’s basement, where she and others stayed for hours, but later that afternoon was bused uptown. She eventually found her way to Grand Central Station, and, with nothing but the clothes on her back, got on a train to New Haven, where her very relieved mother picked her up and took her home to South Hadley.
Unable to return to her New York apartment for three months, she stayed in Western Mass. for a while and soon grew tired of people asking her to relive the events of that infamous day — so tired that she took a job substitute teaching in her hometown.
And that’s where the story really starts to turn.
Romano found the work tedious — she was subbing at South Hadley High School, after all — but in many ways rewarding. But she quickly came to the conclusion that, if she was going to make a seismic career shift into education, it should be in a place “where it mattered.”
And by that, she meant the ability to change the course of a student’s life, something she was quite sure she wasn’t going to do in South Hadley, but thought she could do in Springfield.
“Kids in South Hadley or Longmeadow … they’re going to be fine, in spite of school; they’re probably going to go to college, and if they don’t, they’ll make another choice, but they’ll be fine,” she told BusinessWest. “Kids in Springfield need school to be successful in this world, and, unfortunately for kids in Springfield, the schools they’re getting aren’t preparing them to be successful in this world.
“If I was going to teach,” she continued, “it was going to be in a place where I could make a difference in someone’s life.”
Fast-forwarding a little, she got a job teaching sixth grade at Duggan Middle School. And while she enjoyed the work, she didn’t feel it offered her enough opportunity to make an impact, so she segued into leadership and became an assistant principal.
“I embraced the challenge and eventually became obsessed with it,” she said. “First it was my classroom for three years, and then it was like, ‘I have to help fix this broken school.’ I eventually came to think that it didn’t really matter what I did as a sixth-grade teacher — I can give kids one great year, but that doesn’t change the trajectory of their lives.”

Spelling It Out
Still desiring a way to broaden her impact in the community through work in education, Romano started conceptualizing a new charter school for Springfield, one she envisioned to be much more of an equalizer than other facilities in the city.
But the timing wasn’t right, and for many reasons. For starters, she thought she wasn’t quite ready professionally for such a venture. And, more to the point, charter schools were capped at that time, and they were starting to lose favor in many communities due to poor results. “Charter schools haven’t been very big in this region, and, quite frankly, they haven’t been very successful; we’ve seen some of these schools close.”
So Romano took a job as principal with a charter school in Framingham, where she grew professionally and found a number of best practices to borrow, but still felt the environment wasn’t what she was looking for. “I went home every night thinking, ‘these kids are going to go to college no matter what I do.’”
Eventually, the cap on charter schools was lifted in communities with the 10 lowest-performing school districts (and Springfield certainly fit in that category), and Romano went about making her dream a reality.
She recruited a board of directors, which included many area business leaders, and, after considerable editing, whittled her plan for what would become Veritas down to the maximum 155 pages, as directed by the state Board of Education.
Beyond the plan was an attitude. “I wanted to bring to Springfield a school that would get results, a school that would be a game changer for the city,” she noted. “The last thing Springfield needed was another underperforming school.”
The school’s reason for being is effectively conveyed in this paragraph from its executive summary:
“Veritas Prep’s mission and educational program are created in response to the compelling need in Springfield for a public middle school that prepares students to achieve in high school and college,” Romano writes. “With a high-school graduation rate of 54%, Springfield students are not prepared with the skills and competencies they need to move forward. Long before high school, Springfield students begin the process of dropping out of their education — and the promise of their and our future — prior to the successful conclusion of 12th grade. The source of this process for many of our most underachieving students has its roots in the middle school years.”
Summarizing the school’s approach to changing the equation for its students, Romano said it “sweats the little things” as it teaches students how to be Veritas Prep scholars, and that phrase applies to both education and behavior.
“At Veritas, we have incredibly high expectations for both academics and behavior,” she explained, “and a lot of support so they can meet those expectations.”
The first week of school amounts to orientation, she went on. “And we start from scratch, almost as if they’ve never attended school before. We teach them how to sit up at their desks, which we call being ‘in slant.’ They have to listen, and they show they’re listening by asking and answering questions, nodding their head, and tracking the speaker.
“That sounds like a very basic expectation,” she went on, “but if you, as a fifth-grader, have always sat at your desk with your head on your hand looking out the window, that’s hard to do.”
The same approach is taken with everything from morning greetings — Romano gives each student a professional handshake — to the dress code. “When they come here, they’re here to be a student, and there are expectations to be met.”

A Stern Test
As for learning in the classroom, the basics apply there as well, said Romano, adding that the initial goal is to have students learning at grade level, which is challenging, because most of these fifth-graders entered the school year last fall at what was basically the third-grade level.
In a nutshell, the approach is not to dwell on what’s happened — or not happened, as the case may be — in the past, but to focus on steady improvement that will get the student back up to where he or she needs to be. And in a charter-school environment, faculty members can focus on individual students’ needs.
“The teachers here have the flexibility and nimbleness to adapt their program to the needs of their students,” she explained. “So if Ray needs more math tutoring this week than he does reading, that’s what he can get. Being able to really differentiate our students based on their needs is so important, as is the ability to respond to the data we get from assessments.
“They’re learning to think, which is not something many of them are used to doing,” said Romano in summing things up. “It’s been hard, but we have seen considerable progress with getting them to talk, to discuss, and write thoughtfully.”
Praise and recognition are big parts of the equation at Veritas, said Romano, adding that students are singled out for earning large paychecks, making considerable improvement over the last paycheck, attendance, homework completion, and a host of other things.
Such praise is often directed at a student’s resilience, she went on, adding that this is another trait the school works to emphasize.
“One of the things we also teach kids is how to bounce back from a deduction,” she said. “We tell them that they make choices, and every choice earns them a reward or a consequence. They either choose to do the right thing, follow the rules, and keep their scholar dollars, or they choose to do the wrong things and lose them. But it’s important to bounce back and learn from those mistakes.”
Those scholar dollars can be used to ‘buy’ trips (college campus visits on Saturdays) and extra curricular activities (such as movie night at school), and supplies at the school store. Students can also use their earnings to bid on items at the ‘scholar dollar auction.’ which happens at the end of each trimester. Coveted auction items include things like being the school leader for a day, teaching one’s favorite subject for a day, hiking with a teacher, playing chess with a teacher, getting a violin or ukulele lesson, movie night with 10 friends, and a day for your entire class to be out of uniform (that one usually gets the highest bids). These exercises enable students to learn about financial literacy, said Romano, or, more specifically, about not spending more than they earn.
Summing up the basic philosophical difference between Veritas and most Springfield public schools, she once again went back to that word expectations.
“There are so many excuses that people make about why kids in Springfield, or any urban area for that matter, don’t achieve as well as others,” she said. “We know what the challenges are. We know that these families are struggling and the parents may not have educations themselves. But I really think it comes down to expectations.
“The first question I’ll ask teaching candidates, after we’ve screened them and asked them to answer a set of essay questions, is, ‘do you believe our students can achieve at high levels?’” she continued. “After explaining that most of our students come to us several grade levels behind, I ask candidates, ‘do you think we should hold these students to the same expectations at the end of the year as the fifth graders in Longmeadow, for example?’
“It’s usually a very gut reaction — people say ‘absolutely’ or ‘absolutely not,’” she went on. “And I know, if you say ‘absolutely not,’ what you’re telling me is that it doesn’t matter if you show up to work every day — these kids will never be where those children are, and we can’t have that attitude here.”
Romano noted Veritas is still only nine or so months old, and there are myriad challenges ahead — from finding talented faculty members as the school adds grades in each of the next three years, to finding or building a gym (physical education is currently limited to what students can do outdoors or in the hallways), to getting students’ parents more engaged in their education.
But she can already feel a strong sense of accomplishment.
“It’s been a lot of work, a real grind,” she said of the process of conceptualizing the school, making it a reality, and then carrying out its mission every day. “But it’s been the most remarkable thing I’ve ever done.”

Degree of Difficulty
While payroll bonuses are highly prized, the most coveted honor at Veritas at present is the so-called Golden Toilet Seat.
It goes to the team — boys or girls — that has the cleanest restroom, as determined by rigorous weekly inspections.
“It’s a big deal. We do a drum roll and everything: ‘and the winner of the Golden Toilet Seat is …,’” said Romano. “I think some of them of them still believe it’s real gold, although a few might be catching on.”
By the time they move on from Veritas, the students will be firmly focused on a much bigger prize — a college education. Time will tell how many of them will get there, but all indications are that their odds will be greatly improved by attending this unique facility.
That’s because, here, college isn’t a goal. It’s an expectation.

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

Education Sections
College Admissions Officials Face Host of New Challenges

Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly says a student’s grades and the difficulty of his or her high-school courses are the best predictors of college success.

Despite popular opinion that one exists, there is simply no magic formula for colleges and universities to use when deciding which candidates to admit, decline, or put on a waiting list.
Instead, there is a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis, say those who work in the field known as enrollment management, and, in the end, a search for the right fit, however it is defined.
“It takes a combination of good grades and good courses, and the best predictor of future success is the degree of success students have had in high school,” said Kevin Kelly, director of undergraduate admissions at UMass Amherst. “We are looking for students who have taken the most challenging curriculum they can find and done well with it.”
And though this usually grueling process has always been like this, some changes in the procedures, coupled with a rise in student and parental expectations, have transformed the climate and created an atmosphere that is challenging for everyone involved.
Teens in high school are exploring options as early as their freshman year because taking the right courses can result in acceptance at a number of quality institutions.
“We’re seeing more and more families who start the process earlier,” said Charles Pollack, vice president for enrollment management at Western New England University. “We’re giving tours to high-school freshmen and holding open houses for juniors.”
Mary DeAngelo, director of enrollment at Springfield College, concurs. She said the school recently held seven programs for juniors in three weeks. “The whole process is accelerated as students narrow down the schools they’re interested in,” she noted.
However, even when students who have been accepted attend open houses, they are asking questions about job opportunities, internships, and experiential learning that will lead to employment at the end of their college career. “Families are much more proactive in seeking out information,” she went on.
During a recent event at Springfield College, a panel of graduates addressed potential freshmen and spoke about what the school had done to help them transition into careers. “Believe me, people were paying attention,” DeAngelo told BusinessWest. “In the past, students weren’t worried about the end of the experience, but now they are definitely thinking about it before they even start.”
Julie Richardson, dean of admissions and financial aid at Hampshire College, has been in the field for more than 20 years and agrees there has been a climate change. “I love helping students figure out how to get into the right college and pay for it. But students are applying to more colleges than ever before,” she said, adding that many have submitted applications to 10 or more colleges. As a result, students with good grades are often accepted at a number of institutions, which can make it confusing and difficult to decide where they really want to go.
Kelly said UMass Amherst set a new record with almost 36,500 applicants this year, and the numbers have been rising since 2006. As a result, the review process has become a double-edged sword, as admission officials cull through a growing tide of applications, then find themselves having to compete for candidates from the 98% of 18.6 million high-school graduates who have applied or will be applying to institutions of higher learning next fall. And until a student actually begins classes, nothing can be taken for granted.
“Some students go to an orientation during the summer, then change their mind about the college they have chosen,” Pollack said, adding that WNEU receives late applications as a result and admits students at the last minute whenever possible.
DeAngelo said that’s why it’s important for high-school students and their families to visit schools and talk to people on campus in advance to determine the best fit from an academic, co-curricular, and financial standpoint.

Numbers Game

Charles Pollack

Charles Pollack says he’s seeing families start the college-application process earlier than ever before.

The Common Application for Undergraduate College Admission, first established in 1975, provides a standardized form for students, and is used today by close to 500 colleges across the country as well as two international institutions. And, thanks to the Internet, it has become easier than ever for students to apply to a multitude of schools using this format.
Last year almost 2.5 million applications were submitted online, and many colleges depend exclusively on the Common Application.
But it creates an overwhelming amount of work, because students’ credentials must be examined on an individual basis. “The Common Application makes it so easy for students to apply that it can be difficult to tell who has the most interest in your college,” said DeAngelo, adding that Springfield College does not use the format.
Last year, WNEU had 6,400 applicants and admitted 906 students. Pollack said the institution’s name change — from college to university — yielded an increase in applicants from across the country as well as overseas. “At one time, our students were predominantly from the Northeast. But now they are from states ranging from Florida to Hawaii.”
In 2005, UMass Amherst admitted 80% of applicants, while last year the number shrunk to 63%. “We are being more selective,” Kelly said. “But we did admit 1,500 more students for the fall of 2013 than last year.”
When asked how the school goes about deciding which students to admit, Kelly said the process is both an art and a science, with some math thrown in as well.
Indeed, many schools recalculate a student’s grade point average and use only college-preparatory courses to determine that number, although honors and advanced-placement courses are given extra weight.
“We’re looking for trends such as whether the student started out well, then tapered off in their senior year,” Kelly said.
It’s also critical for students to have taken the necessary prerequisites for their majors. “But there is no rating system; we judge each student on their own merits, although there are differences in high schools,” he explained, adding that, even though he and other officials look at extracurricular activities, academic qualifications are far more important than anything done outside of the classroom.
SAT and ACT scores are also considered, but many schools don’t pay attention to the written portion of the exam because it is subjective and doesn’t have a direct correlation to college writing assignments.
DeAngelo said Springfield College considers how much students know about their school, but their personal statement and whether they have demonstrated leadership in high school can be a deciding factor. “Many of our applicants have a pretty strong record of community service, which is important to us because we have a lot of opportunities for students to continue that work. Our small community makes it easy for students to get involved in clubs and organizations, and we have several hundred who are volunteering in the community.”
Personal recommendations also play heavily into the equation at Springfield College, especially in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and physican assistant programs, where spots are very limited. “We have a lot of students who are very strong academically, so we need other factors to look at,” DeAngelo said, noting that interest continues to grow in all health-related professions due to the future job outlook.
But, in the end, it all boils down to grades.
“Participation in clubs, sports, and co-curricular activities makes a student well-rounded, and we like to see it, but it is secondary to their academic record. We analyze every transcript, but only look at college-preparatory classes,” Pollack said. “Many students don’t understand what our coursework will involve, and attending college is first and foremost an academic pursuit, although our students are also exposed to leadership skills to prepare them for graduate school or the world of work.”

Stiff Competition
Hampshire College is one of the many schools using the Common Application. “It makes it so much easier for students. The college search process is fraught with enough tough decisions and stress,” Richardson said. However, Hampshire asks students to submit an additional page that contains information about recent books they have read, other campuses they have visited, and why they believe Hampshire is a good fit for them.
This is critical since the school doesn’t have grades or majors, but encourages interdisciplinary work. “We want to make sure they know about our model and have taken steps to research us. We’re looking for students who are inquisitive and articulate, and we want to know what they are interested in,” she said. “A lot of students we admit are interested in sustainability or want to make the world a better place.”
Although Hampshire admits two out of every three applicants, last year it set a record with a 20% increase in applications, which has continued this year.
And despite the fact that the Common Application contributes to the growing tide of applicants, local admission officials are quick to cite the merits of their schools as a contributing factor.
Pollack said the number of students WNEU admits is carefully calculated due to space restrictions, because it doesn’t want more than two students in a dorm room, and most live on campus.
“But we also pride ourselves on personal attention and don’t have any teaching assistants, even in our labs. It is not our intention to ever become a large institution,” he told BusinessWest. However, he points with pride to the school’s new professional degree programs in pharmacy and civil engineering, which account for the largest recent growth areas.
“And there is more and more recognition of the depth and breadth of our programs, which are attracting students from overseas,” he continued, adding that there is strong interest in the business program, which has attained accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, granted to fewer than 5% of business programs.
In some schools, such as UMass Amherst, students may not be admitted to their first program choice, especially in the fields of management, nursing, or engineering. But many are offered another track, even though they may not be able to switch to their desired major within a given time period.
Still, Kelly said every application is carefully reviewed, and every candidate has to submit at least one letter of recommendation and an essay. “There is no pre-screening done by the computer. We read them all,” he said, adding that the University subscribes to what many schools call a ‘holistic’ review process.
State colleges and universities can cost less than private institutions, but Kelly said it’s not the only reason students want to enter UMass. “It’s our academic reputation, the quality of our majors, and the overall value we offer.”
But any student’s decision about which school to attend can be tenuous. “In the end, it becomes like the tiger chasing its tail, because the more students a school tries to bring in, the more students they have with the possibility to go elsewhere,” Richardson said.

Future Outlook
The competition to attract high-quality students has intensified in recent years, and the Internet will continue to allow families to research institutions and their requirements more carefully than they ever did in the past.
“Students are trying to get a leg up on what they need to do to become competitive, and they want to make certain that they are making solid choices,” DeAngelo said.
In the end, however, it’s all about the right fit.
“The most important thing families can do is to be really judicious about the schools their children apply to,” Richardson said. “They should stretch their dreams and apply to the schools that really meet their needs.”

Education Sections
A Crash Course in the Options Available to Parents and Students

Doug Wheat

Doug Wheat

By any measure, college is expensive and continues to rise rapidly in cost. How to pay for college is one of the biggest financial concerns for today’s parents, no matter what their income level.
The parents’ concern is enhanced by the uncertainty of college costs and financial aid, the complexity of the application process, and the desire to provide the best education for their children. With a long-term plan that carefully balances savings, borrowing, and college selection, parents can help their children reach their dreams without bankrupting their retirement.
According to the College Board, for the 2012-13 school year, the average cost of one year of tuition, fees, room, and board was $17,860 for public in-state students and $39,518 for nonprofit private college students. These costs were up nearly 4% from the previous year. Locally, a year at UMass Amherst costs $23,000, Springfield College costs $46,000, and Amherst College costs $59,000.
The cost of college is having an increasing impact on the selection of schools. According to the Higher Education Research Institute, in 2012, 43% of college freshman reported that the cost of attending their school was important, compared to only 31% of college freshman in 2004. In addition, 13% of students were unable to afford their first-choice college.
An important tool now available on most colleges’ websites is called the ‘net price calculator.’ These calculators let you have an idea of the type of cost you might be expected to pay at specific schools depending on your specific financial resources.
There are six primary sources of funding for college: grants and scholarships, federal tax credits and grants, current income, savings, student borrowing, and parent borrowing. A comprehensive plan for school financing will try to balance these factors along with school selection to match a student with the school that fits his or her education goals.

Grants and Scholarships
While we all would like our children to get grants and scholarships to cover the full cost of college, the truth is that these will cover only a portion of the costs for most students. The amount a student receives from a college will depend on a combination of the financial resources of the family, the resources of the college, and the attractiveness of the student to the college.
Some students may qualify for ‘merit’ assistance from the college based on their academic or other accomplishments. But most students will require need-based financial aid. Need-based assistance starts with the expected family contribution (EFC), which is calculated after filing the federal FAFSA aid form and CSS Profile aid form for a small group of elite colleges.
The need for financial aid will be determined by subtracting the expected family contribution from the total cost of attending a college. If the cost of attendance is more than the EFC, the student will qualify for need-based financial aid, which may come in the form of grants, scholarships, loans, and work study. The more desirable a student is to the college, the more likely their need-based ‘aid package’ will be more desirable.
Since the EFC is the primary driver of financial aid, parents may be able to increase their award by understanding how the EFC is calculated. For example, some parents that have control of their income may try to decrease their income in the year leading up to college in attempt to show they need additional aid. Parents may also want to understand how colleges use student and parental assets in the aid formulas to determine their best college funding strategy, which will be discussed below.

Federal Tax Credits and Grants
There are two federal tax credits available to help pay for college, but you can only utilize one at a time. The Federal Opportunity Tax Credit provides a $2,500 credit per student for the first four years of post-secondary school. This credit (formerly known as the Hope Credit) is phased out for higher income levels (married couples with incomes above $160,000).
The Lifetime Learning Credit is worth up to $2,000 as a credit per tax return toward education expenses.
Pell grants are available for up to $5,550 per student. Students with family incomes up to $60,000 are eligible to apply, but the majority of awards go to students with family incomes below $30,000.

Current Income
Most parents would find it impossible to pay $60,000 per year out of current income. But by cutting corners and planning in advance, it is possible for many families to make a significant contribution to college costs from their current paychecks, which will help them avoid having to rely overly on debt.
One strategy parents might consider is to pay off their mortgage and other debt before their children get to college. This strategy will help free up cash flow while the student is in school, help the family adjust to living on a smaller budget, and reduce the amount of savings that might be used to determine the expected family contribution.
Income does have the largest impact on the financial-aid calculations that will ultimately determine the expected family contribution. The more you make, the less likely your children will qualify for need-based financial assistance (even if you have little savings).

Savings
Many parents have mixed emotions about saving for college. On one hand, they know college is expensive and they will be expected to pay a portion of the costs. On the other hand, they do not want to spend years saving for college only to have the financial-aid package from the prospective school reduced as a direct result of their savings.
To parents, it is not fair that they receive less aid for saving than a family of similar means that was not as prudent.
While the issue of fairness may nag at parents, it is important for them to take the long view and make sure they position themselves and their children in the best possible financial circumstances. To do this, the number-one priority for parents is to fully fund their retirement. Parents need to understand how much they need to save annually to pay for their retirement. The second priority for parents is to start saving early in the most advantageous types of accounts.
A 529 college savings account is generally the best savings vehicle, since these plans allow for tax-free growth and are considered parental assets for financial-aid purposes. The federal aid formula expects parents to contribute 5.6% of their savings to college costs each year. Accounts in the name of a student, such as UTMA accounts, are assessed by the federal aid formula at 20% per year. Since there is no tax deduction in Massachusetts for contributions to a 529 plan, residents are free to choose the plans with the lowest cost and best investment selections. In Connecticut, the state tax deduction for contributions means residents will want to participate in the CHET 529 plan.
Some people may find saving for college in a Roth IRA account advantageous if they are already fully funding their retirement in 401(k) or 403(b) plans. A Roth account’s advantages include being excluded from the federal aid formula, the ability to take penalty-free withdrawals to pay for qualified higher education, and withdrawals do not count as income. But withdrawals may limit your ability to take the Lifetime Learning tax credit, and there are rules that apply to withdrawals if the account is newer than five years old and you are under age 59 1/2. Be sure you understand all of the rules about Roth accounts and be sure your retirement savings are adequate before you use them as a college savings vehicle.
While few people can afford to save the $1,100 per month per child for 18 years that it takes to accumulate adequate savings for an elite private school, most people can save something each month. Undoubtedly, you will be glad to have saved as much as you can when it comes time to start paying college tuition bills.

Student Borrowing
Student borrowing has become one of the main sources of college funding as the cost of school has increased and the amount of government assistance has decreased. Dependent students may currently borrow up to $27,000 in subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans for four years of school. The interest rate for subsidized loans is currently 3.4%, and the interest does not start accruing until after the student graduates. Subsidized loans are available based on need. Unsubsidized loans have a current interest rate of 6.8%, and the interest starts accruing immediately.
Students should also check with their college to see if Perkins loans are available if they have extraordinary financial need.
Borrowing beyond the direct student lending amount of $27,000 will in most cases require parents to co-sign the loans and may come with higher interest rates. Many personal financial advisors recommend that students try to limit their loans to the amount that they can personally take out in order to make sure they do not enter the workforce straddled by too much debt. It is important to remember that student loans can rarely be discharged through bankruptcy, and this debt will stay with a student until it is paid off.

Parent Borrowing
Parents have the ability to take Parent Plus loans or private loans to make up the difference between the cost of attendance and any financial aid their son or daughter receives from a college.
Even if students qualify for need-based assistance, some schools may not have the ability or willingness to provide that aid (each school reports on the percentage of students whose ‘need’ is met). Filling a missing gap often results in parents being asked to take out huge college loans. Taking out tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to pay for college may not be a wise financial step for parents.
It is important for parents to make sure they do not jeopardize their own retirement by paying for the college education of their children. Parents can inadvertently do this by taking out a large amount of debt only to see their ability to pay it back diminished by losing a job. For older parents, they might consider that they do not have many earning years left to pay back the loan if the parents are in their 60s when their children graduate from college.
For people with equity in their homes, taking out a home-equity loan to pay for school is currently attractive since home-equity rates are currently lower than the 7.9% Parents Plus loan interest rate. But before mortgaging their house to pay for college, parents should carefully consider their ability to pay off the debt. Maybe a less expensive school is a better choice for the family.

Know Your Contribution Limits
It is possible for nearly every person who wants a college degree to find a combination of school selection and financial resources that will allow them to attend. Today many families prefer to find less expensive options for attending school to help make college affordable. For example, a year of classes at Holyoke Community College costs less than $2,500, and you can attend Westfield State University for less than $10,000 per year if you live at home.
Regardless of where your children ultimately decide to attend college, be prepared to know what you can afford to contribute from tax credits, savings, income, and loans. By knowing the limits of your contributions up front, it can help guide the selection of the best colleges academically and financially for your children.

Doug Wheat, CFP is manager of Wealth Management for Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka; (413) 536-8510; www.fwmgt.com

Education Sections
Bay Path Women’s Conference Continues to Educate and Motivate

Carol Leary, left, and Caron Hobin

Carol Leary, left, and Caron Hobin say the key to the success of Bay Path’s conference is effectively matching speakers to themes, such as this year’s ‘Be Bold.’

Her business card might say ‘vice president of Planning and Student Development’ at Bay Path College, but Caron Hobin’s supplementary title is ‘event organizer.’

And in that capacity, she has played a lead role in organizing and presenting Bay Path’s Women’s Leadership Conference for the past 18 years. Which means she can name drop — through the conference, she’s met everyone from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to author and screenwriter Nora Ephron to poet Maya Angelou. But she’s also had some anxious moments with some of the famous speakers.

Hobin recalled a phone message in 2001 from the representative of the keynote speaker, actress Rita Moreno — the only performer to have been awarded an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony —  the night before the sold-out conference.

“She had lost her only living relative the day before,” Hobin recalled, breathing deeply just remembering the stress she endured more than a decade ago. With less than 24 hours to go, getting a replacement was impossible.

“Moreno’s representative said that they’d let me know the next morning if she was coming,” remembered Hobin, who said she had no idea what to expect. But at 11:30 a.m. on the day of the event, Moreno called her directly and said, “I’m going to honor this commitment; I’m a performer, and I’m coming.”

And the show went on, just as it has every spring since 1996.

While Hobin remembers that scare, she has many more memories of inspiring speeches, educational programs, and Bay Path students enjoying the unforgettable experience of being escorts for those who take to the podium (more on that later).

This year, one student will have the honor of being escort for musician, actress, author, and entrepreneur Queen Latifah, the main keynoter for the March 22 event at the MassMutual Center. Latifah’s unique personality is just one manifestation of this year’s theme, “Be Bold,” which is based on the new Bold Scholarship to help students disadvantaged by the recent recession.

Bay Path President Carol Leary called the rest of the day “an amazing lineup of speakers” and promises that professional women, students, and interested individuals will be boldly inspired, entertained, and, above all, educated. Other speakers include Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, and Jenn Lim, CEO and ‘chief happiness officer’ of Delivering Happiness, LLC, who will discuss shaping a corporate culture.

Leary emphasized the educational component of the conference — which is modeled after a program both she and Hobin experienced while working at Simmons College — is geared especially toward alumni who not only never stop learning, but, like all professional women, want to be refreshed, inspired, and motivated by nationally and internationally known speakers.

“The beauty of this program is that it’s not just inspiration and motivation, but useful information, so that women can go back to their office the next day and say, ‘I just learned in one of the skill-building breakout sessions how to encourage introverts and extroverts  … practical tips I can use immediately.’

“That was one of the two primary purposes for putting the conference together,” she continued. “One, we wanted to expose our own students, faculty, staff, and alumni to well-known, well-respected, influential women, and two, it was an opportunity to bring it to a large venue to serve the outlying community.”

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at how Bay Path College’s conference has become part of the landscape in Western Mass., and how, after nearly two decades, it continues to evolve, mature, and give area professionals plenty to think about.

Words of Wisdom

Leary remembers Hobin’s first week at Bay Path in August 1995. Hobin had just left Simmons to assume the role of dean of Continuing Education.

“I told her what her first assignment was,” Leary said with a laugh before Hobin finished the sentence for her: “the conference.”

“I said, ‘we’re going to do it,’” said Leary, ‘and we’re going to take that Simmons concept of a women’s conference, and we’re going to bring it to Springfield.’”

Hobin said she was very familiar with the Simmons model for a women’s professional conference, and remembers thinking to herself, ‘how hard could it be?’

By March, she would find out — there were a number of challenges, logistical and otherwise, with staging the inaugural conference at the Sheraton and Marriott hotels in downtown Springfield, but she was helped in her efforts by successfully landing keynote speaker Elizabeth Dole (then-director of the American Red Cross). This was a timely booking since her husband, then-U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, had just announced that he would run as the Republican candidate in the 1996 presidential race. (Elizabeth Dole would later run for president herself in 2000.)

“Getting Elizabeth Dole as our first speaker really helped — that was the first big ‘get,’” said Hobin.

There have been more since, she told BusinessWest, adding that securing speakers is one of many responsibilities that fall to the team tasked with orchestrating the conference each year. That team includes Hobin; Leary; Kathy Wroblewski, director of Communications and Marketing; and Briana Sitler, director of Special Events.

To be more specific, the assignment is to match speakers to a theme, said Hobin, which is an intriguing process. “Sometimes the theme comes first and then the speakers follow, and sometimes a really great speaker becomes the lead and then a theme emerges as a result.”

While planning the 2012 conference, Hobin kept hearing, seeing, and reading the word ‘compassion’ in various publications and electronic media. Using Wroblewski as her barometer, Hobin started to pare down concepts and wordsmith possible titles for a theme (“Lead with Compassion” was eventually chosen), while also locking in a keynote speaker whose work is the epitome of compassion — Sr. Helen Prejean, a leading advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.

“I pick up on little cues, and it’s an evolution,” Hobin told BusinessWest, adding that everyone from staff to students is involved. “And I tell the students this: the universe sends you messages; you just have to listen.”

 

Star Search

Looking back, Hobin said the theme for the 2011 conference, “The Power of Choice,” was shaped in part by a Legal Studies student who was forced to drop out of the college for financial reasons.

Her former Bay Path professor bumped into her at the job she took to make ends meet, and, through the course of their conversation, learned about a book she was enjoying titled The Other Wes Moore. The teacher made the Bay Path staff aware of the book, which then became the summer ‘common read’ for all incoming freshmen.

Hobin, connecting the student’s financial issues and subsequent decision and the subject matter of the book — choice  — created the theme and landed the author, Wes Moore, as the morning keynoter.  The student in question actually became his escort, to assist him for the day.

Leary remembers seeing the student point out an underlined part of the book to Moore — the most critical part of the book for her, and, as it turned out, for Moore as well. During his keynote, Moore referenced the student in the large audience to explain how profound her life could be just by making a different choice.

“The part that she underlined was, ‘you will step out, but you will step back in if you want it bad enough,’ and you could see the emotional connection right then,’” said Leary, noting that the student did come back and finish her degree. “There’s a lot of learning that goes on during the conference on so many different levels.”

As just one example, she recalled the 2005 conference, headlined by Albright, the first female Secretary of State, who availed herself to sit with 15 students and Leary at a large table at the Marriott.

“There was an incredible dynamic between our students and this powerful woman,” said Leary, who distinctly remembers the students asking Albright who she thought would be the first female president — as well as the answer, Hillary Clinton.

“We really believe that we’re educating not only our own community,” said Leary, “but the professional women in the region who can be inspired by women, like Madeleine, that they may never have had the chance to meet otherwise.”

The opportunity for students to meet the keynote speakers is vital to the internal success of the program, said Hobin, adding that it has created a few much-coveted escort positions over the past 18 years. And the more famous the speaker, the more in demand the escort position is, said Hobin, adding that those seeking it must submit a two-page essay explaining why they want such an assignment. Applicants must then go through a rigorous series of interviews.

 

Meeting of the Minds

“Be Bold” might be the theme for this year’s conference, but that phrase also constitutes the unofficial directive for those organizing and presenting the conference since the beginning.

They have been bold — and imaginative and, above all, diligent about providing attendees with a program that will not only inform, but also inspire.

Their track record for success has made the conference a spring tradition in Greater Springfield — and a learning opportunity that, as Leary noted, comes on a number of levels.

 

Elizabeth Taras can be reached at [email protected]