HCC Hires Amy Brandt as Dean of Health Sciences and Culinary Arts

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College (HCC) recently welcomed Amy Brandt as its new dean of Health Sciences and Culinary Arts.

Brandt most recently worked as associate vice president and dean of Health Sciences at Broome Community College in Binghamton, N.Y., which is part of the State University of New York system.

At SUNY Broome, she focused on developing partnerships with local area hospitals to address healthcare-worker shortages and advocated for enhanced use of simulation to improve clinical education and position programs to remain current with emerging national trends in healthcare education.

At HCC, she will oversee seven academic programs: Foundations of Health, Medical Assisting, Medical Billing and Coding, Nursing (associate of science and practical), Radiologic Technology, Veterinary and Animal Science, and Culinary Arts.

Brandt holds a master’s degree in social work from California State University, Sacramento, and a Ph.D. in social work from the University of California Los Angeles. After earning her Ph.D., she began working in education, initially at the University of California Berkeley in the School of Social Welfare, where she focused on program administration and teaching introductory social-work courses. In 2007, she transitioned to the community-college setting in California, focusing on allied-health education, and she has worked on allied-health program development in California, Florida, Texas, and New York.

Brandt has extensive experience working with state regulatory agencies, as well as developing self-studies for programmatic accreditation. She has served as a site visitor for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, reviewing institutions for compliance with general education and educational-effectiveness standards.

She has collaborated with multiple programs on developing assessment plans to assess educational quality and delivery and has co-led a variety of different campus committees related to program review, general education, professional development, COVID-19 reopening, and student retention and equity initiatives.