Page 28 - BusinessWest June 13, 2022

While addressing these needs, HCC is also focused on the changing world of work, what it will look like in the years and decades to come, and how to prepare students for that world.
“Our focus is on having students create life-long relationships with the college,” she explained. “Culturally, we have fewer students who start, finish their education, and then focus on work for the rest of their career. Now, the world of work has shifted, the future of work has
“We believe in transforming communities through education; that is at the core of what we
do. We believe there are a lot of different ways that people can find their path and contribute to our local economy.”
changed a lot, and we know that people make job changes much more rapidly than they did in past decades, and so therefore, there’s a different interconnection and relationship between edu- cation and workforce.
“It’s not linear anymore,” she went on. “It’s integrated, and it changes depending on how a student’s path changes in life, how many career changes they make; they’ll come back and retool through short-term training or perhaps another
The Kittredge Center for Business and Workforce Development is another of the many recent additions to the HCC campus.
degree, and then they make their way into a new career field.”
Class Act
Summing up both the first 75 years and what comes next, Royal said that while there has been tremendous change since HCC was founded, and there is much more to come, there is a constant:
“We believe in transforming communities through education; that is at the core of what we
do,” she told BusinessWest. “We believe there are a lot of different ways that people can find their path and contribute to our local economy.”
Helping individuals forge a path is what this institution has been about since it was called the Holyoke Graduate School. And that is what is being celebrated in this milestone year. u
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
28 JUNE 13, 2022
EDUCATION
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