Trustees of Greenfield Community College approved an annual budget for the period of July 1, 2005 through July 30, 2006 of $20,133,081, representing a 3.5% increase over the previous year. The additional money comes from a combination of state support and increased student fees. "As the state allocation goes up,"? says Richard Hillier, "hopefully we can curtail the rate of increase for students."?
"The bottom line,"? said trustees president Kevin Parsons, "is that there is a plan in place to get us back, over the next five years, into the black rather than the red position, so that we will not continue having to draw down our reserves. The state has significantly dropped the ball to the point where students are having to foot the bill (through fee increases). So this increase is a change to the good and we just hope that trend will continue."?
In his report, President Robert L. Pura described a summer in which student learning continued nonstop.
"Our students have said to us, 'our learning doesn't stop in the summertime,"? said Pura. "So like many community colleges, GCC has responded with both for-credit and credit-free offerings. Students who take summer classes tend to be GCC students who are wanting to get ahead of the curve, or they're students who want to catch up, making sure they can graduate within the time frame that they like. There are also students who come back to GCC from the university for a particular course. So summer has become increasingly hectic."?
Student success, according to Pura, will be further enhanced this fall with the completion of the second stage of renovations to the campus.
"The big picture here,"? says Pura, "is a new $35M facility for Greenfield Community College. The buildings, the rooms, are all being re-designed to meet the learning needs of our students for today and tomorrow."? Pura cited the leadership of Harry Gaines, director of physical plant, and Richard Hillier, dean of academic fairs, in moving this project toward completion. A certificate of occupancy is expected just in time for the first day of classes.
President Pura previewed the visit next Monday of Dr. William Cosby, who will participate in a symposium on increasing the percentage of students going on to pursue a baccalaureate degree after earning the associate's degree. "We're thrilled by the focus of that discussion,"? said Pura, who noted that about 50% of GCC students transfer to four-year institutions, a figure that is much higher than the national average. "One of the unique and wonderful things about GCC,"? says Pura, "is that students get the message that GCC helps them to build a foundation on which they can transfer on to get a baccalaureate degree. We are pleased to have this symposium on our campus. It's a good conversation at the right time."?
Other business concerned a union contract, road improvements, alumni organization efforts, and exchange students from India, as follows:
Pura noted that GCC "ended the year on a high note with an agreement on the new faculty staff contract."? Faculty member Kit Carpenter reported that the new contract, which covers the years 2003 through 2006, ensures that there will be no zero-increase years. Future negotiations will focus on setting salaries that are competitive with those of comparable institutions.
Richard Hillier, dean of administrative services, announced upcoming improvements to One College Drive. "The road's over 30 years old,"? said Hillier. "It's been patched and it's like an old quilt that you can't patch any more, the whole fabric's worn out."? The state has allotted $520,000 to completely redo the road this fall.
Kevin Parsons reported progress in organizing alumni of all 15 community colleges into a state-wide network. "This could be just an incredible political force to bring to bear on state support for public higher education,"? said Parsons.
GCC Foundation Executive Director Allen J. Davis attended the first-ever meeting of all the alumni professionals at the 15 community colleges. "It was a great start,"? said Davis. "We talked about how alums could be organized as a political force, also how to reconnect alums to the college to serve as mentors, provide internships, in all the ways that four-year colleges do, and as potential contributors to the foundation. We agreed to meet once a month."?
Student trustee Eli Higbee-Glace welcomed two students from India who are visiting Greenfield Community College through Nov. 12th to learn about American culture and to interact with GCC students. They will participate in a new seminar on international marketing developed and taught by Professor Thomas Simmons.
Finally, Parsons and Pura found further reason for optimism at a recent meeting in Boston with Chancellor of Higher Education Judith Gill and Chairman of the Board of Higher Education Steven Tocco:
"You really do see the pendulum starting to swing back,"? said Parsons. "People are starting to think positively, talking about new initiatives and about actually starting to fund some things, instead of just slash and burn. The corner is being turned and I think it's going to be a good time to be involved in public higher education."?
For more information, please call the Office of the President at (413) 775-1410.
Greenfield Community College President Robert L. Pura begins a one-year term as the newly elected chair of the Massachusetts Community College Presidents' Council. The purpose of the Council, which is made up of all of the presidents of the commonwealth's 15 community colleges, is to work collaboratively to strengthen the community college system.
A high priority of his tenure as chair of the Community College Presidents' Council, says Pura, is to strengthen relationships with key stake-holders in public higher education, such as the Board of Higher Education, the executive branch of the government, all legislative bodies, and the state colleges and university.
Additionally, he intends to work with the leaders of the Senate Task Force Report on Public Higher Education and the Board of Higher Education to develop a strong advocacy network on behalf of public higher education. "Over a million lives are touched annually by public higher education,"? Pura points out, "and yet we have a handful of people representing their issues. I believe that, collectively, those million voices could speak about the future of public higher education in a most profound way. Pulling their voices together is going to take a lot of work, and I hope to be a part of making that happen."?
The Community College Presidents' Council is a crucial group, explains GCC Trustee Patricia Crosson, because it brings together all of the presidents of the community colleges to talk about issues and to forge a common position on many policy questions affecting public higher education both on the state and national levels.
"President Pura is the perfect person for the presidents to have chosen,"? says Crosson. "As we have seen at Greenfield Community College, he has enormous leadership skills, communication skills and talents, so he will no doubt be a very effective chair of the Community College Presidents' Council."?
For more information, please call the Office of the President at (413) 775-1410.
To meet the growing needs of adults learning to speak English, Greenfield Community College is adding its first evening course in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) to its traditional daytime line-up. "Most of our students work at least part-time, and some work full time, so we need to be as flexible as we can in our programming,"? says Kit Carpenter, department chair of English for Speakers of Other Languages.
To meet this growing need, the ESOL Department came up with a reading course for the evening, "because we feel that vocabulary is so central to language skills,"? Carpenter says. ESL 123 & 124 will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. starting Sept. 7th. The bi-level course combines intermediate and upper intermediate students in one class. "The two groups work together, but they have different levels of objectives,"? explains Carpenter. "We'll spend some class time discussing what we read, which is a multi-level activity for everyone, and some class time will be spent reading at the levels of the students. So there is both an individualized component and a group component,"? says Carpenter.
Carpenter expects to serve students like Ion and Vera Placinta, Turners Falls residents originally from Moldova. Ion and Vera have taken daytime courses at Greenfield Community College. "The courses have helped us a lot,"? said Vera recently, "because when we came here, we didn't speak English at all and we learned a lot from GCC. To live here, we must speak English: to go to the store, to find a job, to work, to join anything, to just survive here. Now my husband has a job and he wants to work during the day and have classes in the evening."?
"It's important for current students who are now working during the day to continue to help their language-learning grow,"? notes Carpenter. "This reading course is important for communication in the community, for enhanced work opportunities and for cultural adjustment."?
"All the teachers at GCC are very, very nice people who help at a time when we are having problems,"? says Vera Placinta. "We appreciate their work."?
The new evening course for students studying English as a new language starts Sept. 7th. For more information, prospective students may call Kit Carpenter at (413) 775-1226.
In a move that means state-of-the-art training for Paramedics and the highest quality of care for their patients, Greenfield Community College and Springfield Technical Community College are joining forces in a unique collaboration that offers the first Paramedic training course in the northeast to utilize the resources of a "virtual hospital,"? the SIMS Medical Center located on the STCC campus.
"The students that we're going to be educating will be the best prepared, highest qualified paramedics that can be made available,"? says Judi Singley, Associate Dean of Health Occupations at GCC.
Additional benefits to students who enroll in the 16-month course are that it is being offered both in Greenfield and Springfield, so that students attend evening classes at the most convenient location, with some Saturday seminars that take advantage of the facilities of both campuses, and that students are eligible for all of the benefits of a college setting, such as advising, tutoring, and financial aid.
Each college brings crucial strengths to the joint venture. "GCC is bringing a fully accredited Paramedic program which is greatly needed in Massachusetts, especially in these times,"? says Michael Foss, Dean of the School of Health at STCC. "They're well-recognized and highly respected."?
STCC brings its health department's state-of-the-art virtual hospital, "SIMS Medical Center,"? to the new collaboration. "Our students will really benefit from STCC's virtual patient simulation facility,"? says Singley, "which will enhance the educational offerings that we can provide, particularly in the Paramedic field."?
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of SIMS Medical Center is its patients--actually, sophisticated manikins that cost as much as $35,000 to $40,000 each. "They're amazing,"? says Deborah Clapp, Program Director for the EMS Department at GCC. "They can do everything but get up and walk away. They have real blood pressures, they have real pulses. They vomit, they get sick, they get better. They can literally talk to you. They've got microphones inserted inside of them that can be programmed as part of an actual scenario that is running. Or, what is usually the case, there's a controller who monitors what's going on through closed circuit TV and can actually be the voice of the patient."?
In this simulated hospital setting, which is realistic down to the working call bell on the wall, Paramedic students gain hands-on experience with what appear to be real patients who react in highly realistic situations in a controlled environment. A key result, according to Foss, is that it develops critical thinking skills in Paramedic students.
"We had two 'patients,' a man and a wife, brought in from a house fire. It was a smoke inhalation scenario,"? says Foss. "They were handed off to a pair of students who were told by the person playing the role of the doctor, 'Do what you normally do; I've got to go right now.' So it left these students there trying to determine, what should they do? And this is the really cool part: They both went to one patient, they both took off their stethoscopes and started to lean over at the same time to take vitals, and they both looked up at each other and one of them said, 'We both can't do the same thing at the same time. We have two patients. I'll tell you what: I'll go next door and take care of the other patient. You go ahead and do the vitals on this patient and then we'll get together in a minute to find out what we've got.' Talk about critical thinking! And nobody was in the room directing them. They simply had to figure it out on their own,"? said Foss.
Meanwhile, various cameras positioned around the room recorded the students' activities, and instructors in the control booth were always throwing the students a curve using the reactive capabilities of the manikins.
By putting them under very similar pressures to what they would face in a real medical emergency, students gained a new level of self-confidence. "They just acted differently after that,"? said Foss, "because they did so very well."?
All of this is very expensive, which is a factor that prompted the collaboration. "There are some things that are very expensive to duplicate,"? explains Clapp. "The start-up and running costs of a paramedic program can be very expensive because of all the equipment that's involved."?
"When you think about making the best possible use of the commonwealth's resources,"? says Singley, "it makes sense to look at ways that we can collaborate and work together to ensure that the workforce needs of the entire region are being met in the most effective way."?
But it wouldn't have happened without the collegial relationship that characterizes the leadership at GCC and STCC. STCC could have developed its own paramedic program, but "it just makes more sense for us to collaborate,"? says Foss. "That's also what I feel is our mandate: We think that we've done something nice here (with SIMS Medical Center), and that others can benefit from it. I feel ethically obliged to share that with my colleagues and to help in any way I can to spread patient simulation."?
It's an approach supported by the commonwealth's Office of Emergency Medical Services. "They're really excited about the whole process,"? says Clapp. "They're going to be watching our program to see what kinds of changes come out of it and how students do, because this degree of simulation training is cutting edge. A lot of paramedic courses have one or maybe two manikins, but there's no place around that has what STCC has to offer. This is the future of EMS education."?
"If this is successful,"? says Singley, "it's defining a new kind of collaborative relationship between the colleges, and we hope that it lays the groundwork for future collaborations, and not only in health occupations."?
Community colleges are very well placed to offer extremely realistic and advanced training and continuing education for workforce development, not only for those who hope to enter a health care field, but for those who are already in one.
"I think you're going to find in the future that community colleges are the place to go for that type of education,"? says Foss, "because we're the ones who are working together to make sure that we disseminate what we do best, to make it available -- that's what we're all about."?
"Patients are going to get a higher level of care,"? says Clapp, who invites prospective students to call her directly at (413) 775-1628. The course starts in September. Information and applications also may be downloaded from GCC's Website at www.gcc.mass.edu.
Judith Singley, Associate Dean of Health Occupations at GCC, may be reached at (413) 775-1627. Michael Foss, Dean of the School of Health at STCC, may be reached at (413) 755-4510. Deborah Clapp, Program Director for the EMS Department at GCC, is at (413) 775-1628.
Greenfield Community College | One College Drive | Greenfield, MA 01301-5129 | (413) 775-1000 (tel) | (413) 775-5129 (fax)