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New Center on HCC Campus Caters to Adult Learners, Parents

By
Amy Woody
Education

Balancing School and Life

 

Amy Woody

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Evolving Effort

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Generational Impact

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

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

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

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

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

 

Holyoke Community College Opens New Center for Life Sciences

By
Emily Rabinsky guides two HCC students in a lab project.
Education

Culture Shock

Emily Rabinsky guides two HCC students in a lab project.

Emily Rabinsky guides two HCC students in a lab project.

As she walked BusinessWest through one of the brand-new labs in Holyoke Community College’s Center for Life Sciences, Professor Emily Rabinsky said there’s plenty for students to appreciate.

“Our old lab space was very outdated and not very conducive to learning,” said Rabinsky, who coordinates the Biotechnology program at HCC. “There were two long bays with a tall shelf in between that made it very difficult for the students to see what the lecturer was referring to, and the equipment was very outdated.”

Not so today.

“At our recent open house, some students happened to walk by, peeked in, and said, ‘wow, this is amazing,’” she said. “I think this facility could rival many of the four-year colleges.”

Take, for example, the only certified cleanroom at any Massachusetts community college, and one of very few at any college or university in Western Mass.

Once it’s fully operational, the cleanroom will have a certification rating of ISO 8, which means air quality of no more than 100,000 particles per cubic foot. Inside the cleanroom, there will be a hooded biosafety cabinet where the sterility will increase to ISO 7, or no more than 10,000 particles per cubic foot.

“It’s pretty unique at the community-college level,” Rabinsky told BusinessWest. “It’s something commonly used in many of the life-science research areas. Students will learn how to minimize contamination and keep the space sterile for any kinds of cells they’re working with.”

Take, for example, a class she’s currently developing called “Cell Culture and Protein Purification,” which will make copious use of the cleanroom.

“We’ll be training students in the cell-culture class in how to maintain mammalian cell cultures, because they can be easily contaminated with bacteria or other microbes that are in the air,” she explained. “Mammalian cell cultures are commonly used in any kind of research studying cancer, or studying new drug therapies, so it’s a good skill to know.”

The cleanroom will also be utilized as a training facility for area professionals — for instance, in how to monitor the air for microbial content, commonly known as particle count.

“In a cleanroom, there should be fewer particles in the air because we have a special kind of filtration. So it has to constantly be monitored and verified,” she said. “Any cleanroom at UMass or any kind of industry has that monitoring done for them, so if someone wants to go into that kind of field, they could get that training here.”

So, while students are being trained in laboratory settings similar to what they will experience in industry, making them more competitive for the biotech job market, Rabinsky said, HCC serves a local workforce-development mission by training non-students as well.

“A lot of these local biotech companies that do this kind of work, they find it can be very costly for them to train new employees at their facility, and at the same time, they’re risking contaminating their facilities with these new workers that are just learning the technique, so why not do it here where it’s not such a high risk?”

On the Cutting Edge

HCC recently staged a grand-opening ceremony for the 13,000-square-foot, $4.55 million Center for Life Sciences, located on the lower level of HCC’s Marieb Building. The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center awarded HCC a $3.8 million grant for the project, which was supplemented by $750,000 from the HCC Foundation’s Building Healthy Communities Campaign, which also paid for the construction of the college’s new Center for Health Education on Jarvis Avenue in Holyoke.

“Those grants outfitted the biotechnology program but also all of the programs that fit in around it, including microbiology, general biology, and genetics,” Rabinsky said, noting that the new space includes two labs, the cleanroom, a prep room, and a lecture area.

Grant funds and donations also paid for new equipment, including a high-end, research-grade fluorescent microscope, like those used in the pharmaceutical industry; a micro volume spectrophotometer, used to measure small amounts of genetic material; and an electroporator, for genetic engineering. Meanwhile, a cutting-edge thermocycler can take a small sample of DNA and make billions of copies in an hour.

About half of Rabinsky’s students are interested in going into biotechnology, with most of those specifically interested in medical biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, as well as medical devices, an industry with strong roots in Western Mass. and the Boston area.

“I also have students who are just interested in the life sciences, interested in research, and just want to be exposed to all the different areas of biotechnology,” she went on. “A lot of these skills can be applied to many different fields. They may be interested in going into genetics, for example. I would say one of the challenges is drawing in the kids in who may not have thought about biotechnology or biology.”

To that end, in her introductory biotechnology course, she incorporates activities that students can relate to their everyday lives.

“Last week, we did a fun lab where he tested for the presence of genetic modification in things like cheese fries and Cheetos,” she explained. “Food producers aren’t required to list the presence of GMOs unless it’s above a certain percentage. So they’ll grind it up, extract the DNA, and test for the presence of GMOs. That was fun — they could have a hands-on experience and test for something that is very commonplace that we’re all aware of.”

Important Evolution

Rabinsky admitted some might not see the new center as a necessity since HCC already had a functioning facility upstairs, but said it was important to keep the college on the cutting edge and attract more students to give the life sciences a look.

“This makes them excited about the field, and it’s more a conducive space for learning, with these small tables that make working in groups much easier. Then we have newer technologies and new equipment to train students on, which are very similar to what they’ll in the field.”

Of course, it all starts with the instruction, and on that front, Rabinsky said the Center for Life Sciences will continue to prepare students to enter what is certainly a growing field from a jobs perspective.

“I’ve had students that have gone on to UMass and said that they learned things here they haven’t learned there, and that our equipment properly prepared them for graduate research,” she said. “That’s really nice to hear.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]