At its meeting this morning, the Board of Trustees of Greenfield Community College voted on recommendations by the Academic Affairs Committee for changes in rank or status of selected faculty.
"Without exception, we were very impressed with the quality of their teaching, with the quality of their advising, with their scholarship, and with their contributions to the college," said Patricia Crosson, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee, in putting the following recommendations before the Board: a change in rank from assistant to associate professor for Angela Russek, Matthew Shippee, Thomas Simmons, Patricia Wachter and Douglas Wilkins; a change in rank from associate to full professor for Cheri Ducharme; and that Dovi Afesi, Norman Beebe, Jennifer Burrill, Thomas Simmons and Patricia Wachter receive tenure.
The committee's final recommendation would award the honorary title of professor emeritus to Robert Welsh, chairman of the department of business and information technology and a member of the GCC community for 36 years. "This is an especially high honor at GCC," explained Crosson, "given to those who have served with exceptional dedication to students and the college for many years and for their outstanding achievements in teaching, scholarship and service, and for contributions to the college community. The recommendation for emeritus status requires a rigorous process starting with nomination by a majority both of the divisional faculty and colleagues who have been at the college for many years. The recommendation for emeritus status has been made with great enthusiasm by Professor Welsh's colleagues."
Trustees unanimously approved the recommendations of the committee.
"In the black by 2009," predicts Dean of Administrative Services
The FY 2006 budget snapshot as of March 31 showed that revenue was down due to under-attainment of enrollment projections by 6% in the fall and 4% in the spring. "Hopefully, that will level off and turn around," says Richard Hillier, Dean of Administrative Services. The good news, according to Hillier, is that the deficit is more than offset by savings in payroll expenses as a result of positions not filled or filled later than expected, retirement buyouts below budgeted levels, resignations and retirement of employees, some filled, some left vacant and other savings. "Hopefully, with further savings, we can roll six figures into next year's budget," says Hillier. "Our projections also include a balanced budget in the sense of being in the black by 2009."
President Pura: Senate Task Force Report on public higher education moves closer to approval in state legislature
"For the first time in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in part as a result of the leadership of Senator Rosenberg, legislation is being debated that takes a very long-term perspective on a commitment to public higher education," reported GCC President Robert L. Pura. "It's long overdue. Public higher education in the Commonwealth has been cut more significantly than any other component of the state budget since 2001 in comparison to the rest of the states in the United States. That's embarrassing; that just shouldn't happen. But the Senate Task Force Report on public higher education was submitted and approved by the Senate in its first go-round unanimously. It then went to the House, where it was debated; now it will go back to the Senate. If that gets approved, it will be the first of its kind in the Commonwealth."
Greenfield Community College was represented at those deliberations by President Pura, board of trustees chair Kevin Parsons, and trustee Patricia Crosson.
Core refurbishment steps up
The most difficult part of the refurbishment project, that of the central core of the campus with its cafeteria, library and other facilities, is under way. "The Department of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) has made a very strong commitment to this project," said Pura. "Originally projected to cost under $20M, it will probably will add up to about $55M. So they've made a very strong commitment. They've indicated that this will get done on time, and it will be done the right way."
GCC wins accolades
Recently the Valley Advocate in its readers poll identified GCC as the best community college in the Pioneer Valley. "That's great news. And I know you've read the Bill Cosby quote from a recent speech at UMass: Dr. Cosby declared Greenfield Community College to be 'one of the best community colleges on earth!'
"Last August, right here under the tent at GCC," continued Pura, "Cosby said that, without community colleges, there would be no United States. Taken together, those two quotes suggest that the significance of the community college movement is linked to the success of the United States. If you under-fund, or if we do not commit to the community college in the United States, democracy is at stake. Without GCC, we fail to live up to the promise of America, here in the Pioneer Valley."
Task force to explore nursing program expansion
Trustees chairman Kevin Parsons has called upon President Pura to form a task force to investigate the feasibility of increasing the capacity of GCC's nursing program. "I personally believe this is needed to not only answer the call of our commonwealth of Massachusetts' dire need for nurses, but also our local community," said Parsons. A report may be completed by as early as next fall.
"The challenge to increase capacity is significant," responded President Pura, "having not only to do with resources so that we can get more faculty, but it also has a lot to do with clinical sites; it's a multi-layered, complex issue and having approached the Franklin Medical Center and Congressman Olver's office, the state, the federal government and the global community need to come together. I'm confident that we can put together that kind of group that can think clearly about all of those issues as they impact our community."
For more information, please call the office of the president at (413) 775-1410.
Perennials for your garden! Saturdays, May 6 and June 10, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Enjoy healthy, garden-dug perennials for the price of a donation to the GCC Foundation, from the Sobek-Rosnick garden. This is the eighth year GCC Professor Peter Rosnick has thinned out his beautiful gardens for the benefit of the GCC Foundation Annual Fund Campaign. "I have a large variety of plants ranging from short, medium to tall, spreading to compact, sun, part-sun or shade, spring, summer or fall, and a rainbow full of colors," says Peter. "I will be there rain or shine!"
The address is 125 Academy Hill in Conway (I-91, Rte. 116, second left after Greenfield Savings Bank in Conway). In the seven years they have been doing this, Peter and Sandra have raised $4,906 for the Foundation.
Greenfield Community College and the Franklin County Collaboration for Children will present the fourth annual Educational Forum for early education and care professionals on Friday, April 28th in the GCC café from 7:30 to 10 a.m. The event is free and open to early education and care professionals, GCC faculty, school administrators, business and development leaders, parents, and all other stakeholders in the care and education of children in Franklin County.
Resource tables staffed by childcare-related businesses and organizations will offer attendees opportunities to meet and chat with colleagues as they gather the latest information and enjoy a continental breakfast.
The Keynote speakers are two recent Schott fellows: Marcia Ferris, Executive Director of the Mass. Association for the Education of Young Children, and Marie Enochty, Coordinator of the Cape & Islands Early Childhood Resource Center and founding member of FREED, "Fighting Racism, Educating for Ethnic Diversity," who will discuss the importance of "Supporting Cultural Competency in the Early Childhood Community." The speakers have recently helped to develop a discussion paper for the legislature and the new Department of Early Education and Care about this topic with the goal of developing a more culturally competent workforce in the state of Massachusetts.
"Culture," explains Kim Audette, academic advisor at Greenfield Community College, "is a complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs and other capabilities acquired by members of society. It's the essence of who we are. For professionals in the field of Early Education, recognizing the importance of culture means understanding and respecting children's cultural heritage as the basis for who they are and as a foundation for their cognitive and social development. It is also a reminder of the importance of partnering with families as a way to get to know children and build relationships that will enhance learning at all levels."
It's a very topical subject for early childcare professionals, according to Audette. "As we learn more about how culture affects our way of experiencing the world and begin to appreciate the diversity in our community, we need to incorporate this into our work with families and children. We hope this forum will introduce the idea of cultural competency and provide the spark to encourage local agencies and practitioners to further their understanding in this area."
A follow-up discussion panel will bring the issue closer to home by talking about how this topic affects programs and families living in our area. It will feature Robin Jurs, program director, Stonybrook Children's Center, Rosemarie Freeland, Advisor and Coordinator of the Women's Resource Center at GCC, and Jim Ayres, executive director, Center for New Americans.
The event culminates with the presentation of the second annual Abigail Adams Eliot Early Education and Care Award to an outstanding Franklin County Early Education and Care provider.
(Space is limited. Please RSVP to Kim Audette at audettek@gcc.mass.edu or 775-1270 by Wednesday, April 26.)
Composer discovers "the music hidden in the words"
"I am fascinated with the combination of words and music," says composer, conductor and teacher Alice Parker, "thus have concentrated on choral and vocal works, using the very best texts that I can find."
Among those texts are the poems of Archibald MacLeish, which have inspired Parker to discover "The Music Hidden in the Words: Setting the Poems of Archibald MacLeish." On Wednesday, May 3rd, at noon, Parker will read poems which she has set in Songs for Eve, and talk about the process not only of finding the rhythms and pitches for singing, but also echoing the poetic form in the music, when the Friends of the Archibald MacLeish Collection at Greenfield Community College hold their annual tribute to the author and poet. The event will be held at the GCC Downtown Center and includes a light luncheon. ($10; please RSVP to Margaret Howland at 775-1835 or howlandm@gcc.mass.edu) All are welcome.
Hawley resident Alice Parker describes herself as a devotee of folk songs from many cultures, as well as the rediscovery of Christian hymns from many centuries. "Melodies which last teach me about the nature of melody itself," she says, "and I never tire of composing, arranging, conducting and teaching from these everflowing sources." Her latest book, "The Anatomy of Melody," will be released this year. She is the recipient of four honorary doctorates and the Smith College Medal.
The MacLeish Prizes in the Humanities will be awarded at the event, and an annual meeting will be held at 1:30 p.m. All are welcome.
Bales of paper reveal layers of meaning in book of images co-authored by Professor Tom Young
You've probably driven past the Erving Paper Mill on Route 2 countless times, seeing but not seeing the huge bales of paper sitting on the lot. For landscape photographer Tom Young, professor of art at Greenfield Community College, his first glimpse of the site in 1968 planted the seed for a project that grew into the publication this spring of "Recycled Realities," a book of photographs co-authored with John Willis, who teaches at Marlboro College. (Published by the Center for American Places in association with Columbia College Chicago; 80 pages, 60 color plates, $45)
"The first time I drove past the Erving Paper Mill was probably in 1968, when I was coming out this way from Boston on Route 2," recalls Young. "I looked down and saw this landscape of paper that stood before a natural landscape of forest and hills and in back of it was the factory itself. I thought it was an intriguing landscape.
"In 1979, when I moved out here to start teaching, I drove past it all the time and was fascinated by it. I had been working on many projects with a colleague and friend, John Willis, and we often go out shooting together. One day we were driving around and we decided to go to Erving. We stopped in at the office there and explained who we were and asked if we could photograph in the paper stacks.
"All of the paper in those stacks carried images out of our contemporary and past culture, there to be reformed into new paper products. We were fascinated."
Over the next three to four years, Young and Willis would return to Erving Paper Mill as often as once a week, photographing its continuously changing landscape. They photographed bales of paper up close, teasing out "found " images that peeked out of the wire-bound bundles; they photographed from a distance, capturing an architecture of stacked bales against a natural landscape of forests.
What emerged was the juxtaposition of a natural landscape of forest and its end product " paper printed with images of our time " caught in the process of being recycled into new images reflecting contemporary mass culture.
"I'm primarily a landscape photographer," says Young, "but I'm interested in how a series of landscapes can build a narrative. Most of the work I do is about personal narrative."
In this project, says Young, the story is more about place rather than the photographer. And yet, sometimes, the two become entwined.
"What intrigues me," muses Young, "is that when one is experiencing some thing in life, one goes out to the landscape and finds some kind of remnant or some kind of landscape that seems to address that thing.
"For example, in a very literal way, one time I came to Erving Paper Mill from the dentist's office, where I had just had a crown done, and everywhere I looked, there were dental images! There was a dental book, dental advertising, reams of paper everywhere with these images of teeth. I find that happens all the time when I photograph and it's part of what interests me: We find what we're looking for."
In the same way, Young declines to assign a "story" to the 60 photographs chosen for the book. "I think that when one takes time and goes through the book, one starts to see and understand strands of ideas and starts to put together a kind of meaning. So I would rather leave that to the viewer."
To the untutored eye, the pictures at first seem to be in black and white, and that's how they started out. Young used a 4 x 5 view camera, which is a large camera mounted on a tripod, to shoot black and white film in a very slow, careful process. But that was only the beginning. He then scanned the film into the computer to make a particular kind of digital print.
"The kinds of prints I'm making," explains Young, "are called tri-tones and, at times, quad-tones, which means it's a gray-scale to which I am then plotting in a little bit of color " a little brown, a little yellow, and at times a little red. With this printing process, I can add a little bit of color or a little bit of tint in a selective way. So the book is printed in four-color, meaning it's a full-color plate, to pick up the subtlety of color in the photographs."
The book has already won critical acclaim.
"'Recycled Realities,'" says Emmet Gowin of Princeton University, "is a book by two true visual poets, and it is difficult to imagine a richer or more fortunate collaboration. John Willis and Tom Young have made splendid, positive, lyrical images out of the waste and debris left over from our busy lives."
Sylvia Wolf, of the Whitney Museum of American Art, says, "The photographs in 'Recycled Realities' imbue the discarded stuff of everyday life with beauty, significance and grace."
Young hopes that readers will feel like they have entered another world, experiencing a sense of getting "tapped on the shoulder" that raises questions about what they're looking at and where the images came from.
Along the way, readers will find what they are looking for.
Five students from Greenfield Community College were chosen by the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation to receive monetary awards for their hand-on involvement in business activities at the Grinspoon Foundation's annual banquet on Wednesday (April 5) at Chez Josef in Agawam, announced Thomas Simmons, professor of economics and adviser to the business club.
William McRae of Erving received an Entrepreneurial Spirit award of $2,000 for his home-based business, Concrete Statues by McRae, through which he creates and markets landscape sculptures and figurines. "I produce different animals, angels, sun hangers, welcome hangers," explains McRae. "You hang them on the side of your house or your doorway, or you can put them in the ground. They make your place look like an estate rather than just a yard." McRae markets his products by loading up his truck and visiting garden shops and setting up at flea markets in southern Vermont and New Hampshire, all of Massachusetts, and northern Connecticut and Rhode Island. He is expanding to the point where he is hiring GCC students to work for him this summer. He plans to use his $2,000 award to make repairs to his truck and buy a new cement mixer.
Keith Bohonowicz of South Deerfield received an Entrepreneurial Spirit award of $1,000 for his invention of a new process to extend the life of soft-bait fishing lures. Called the "Wacky Worm Saver," Bohonowicz will use his award to fund the process of obtaining patent protection for his product.
Weldon "Chip" Gregory of Greenfield won an Entrepreneurial Spirit award of $1,000 for Morningstar Entertainment, his wholly-owned DJ and Karaoke service. He provided the music at the banquet's social hour.
Kyle Leith of Amherst received an Entrepreneurial Spirit award of $500 for negotiating the rights to market Kirik Jenness Martial Arts instructional videos on the internet and for the resulting profit-sharing arrangement with him.
At the banquet, students selected by each of the 12 colleges participated in an "elevator pitch" competition, an honor for which each received $100 from the Grinspoon Foundation.
"The concept," explains Simmons, "is that an entrepreneur might only have 90 seconds to pitch his idea to a venture capitalist in an elevator, and so each students gets 90 seconds to go up to the microphone and convince a panel of bankers to fund them for a business idea they have that is not yet in operation."
GCC's entrant was Ben Riseman of Brattleboro, who received $100 for being chosen by his fellow business club members to represent GCC. "My idea," says Riseman, "is to start a lawn and garden store that specializes in backyard birding supplies."
All of the GCC winners of the Entrepreneurial Spirit awards as well as the elevator pitch contestant are members of the Business Club, which offers a wide range of activities including an award-winning, student-run coffee bar, a trip to the New York City financial district, a series of financial literacy "conversations" for women, developing marketing strategies with local businesses, a holiday gift-wrapping fundraiser, a student exchange program that brought two SIFE students from India to GCC last fall, and charitable outreach efforts that benefited flood victims and the club's holiday adopt-a-family program.
"What these activities all have in common," says Simmons, "is teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills to others." This is also the mission of the Entrepreneurial Initiatives branch of the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation.
On March 27, eight business club students who competed in the regional competition for Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) in Boston won the category for entrepreneurship, besting 14 other teams, most of which were fielded by four-year colleges and universities.
"The activities that our students are involved in are all real-life, hands-on businesses," notes Simmons, explaining the team's success at the competition.
For more information, please contact Professor Thomas Simmons at Greenfield Community College, (413) 775-1482, or Brenda Wishart at the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation located in West Springfield, (413) 565-1229 or brenda@hgf.organization.
"Sustainability is the magic word," says Harry Gaines, director of physical plant at Greenfield Community College, "so you use 'smart' materials."
Gaines has been involved in energy conservation and building facility operations since the 1960s and he calls it "the love of my life. It's what I have to offer," said Gaines recently. "I spent 35 years of my life getting to this point of where I can make valuable contributions to the operation of the college. Being director of the physical plant here at GCC is my gold ring."
Gaines uses his "gold ring" in pursuit of two objectives: 1) Creating the optimum physical environment for learning to take place in, and 2) saving money for the college doing it.
His most recent achievement is winning a grant from the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs (EOEA), Office of Sustainable Energy, in the amount of $5,700, which fully funds a pilot project to install solar window film on 104 windows on the south side of the East Building.
The problem: radiant energy from the sun was overheating the south side of the building, but cooling it down resulting in making the interior, core spaces too cold; these spaces then had to be reheated by firing up the boilers at a cost of $2,000 a month throughout the spring, summer and fall.
The "smart" solution: solar window film, a product made by 3M and installed by American Window Film.
"The window film will filter about 70% of the radiant heat energy that can be transmitted from sunlight through the window and into a room," explains Gaines, who has already tried the product on the windows of the dance studio, a space that gets heavy use by lots of very warm bodies.
His first grant application failed to get funded by the EOEA. "They said, 'We have to have a better handle on what the payback on investment is,'" recalls Gaines.
By conventional calculations, the payback on investment, even using new energy prices, was 14 years: not good enough. So Gaines went back to the state with additional documentation that looked at payback in a different way.
"I said, 'OK, you have to step out and beyond the normal thinking on payback on investment,'" he postulated. "I'm talking about avoidance of unneeded expenditures for energy. My payback here is that, if I have the window film on and I reduce the solar load on the south side, then I will not have to run my reheat boilers at $2,000 a month throughout the spring, summer and fall."
It was a lesson in thinking "outside the box" that won over the Office of Sustainable Energy. Within a month, Gaines' second grant application for solar film had been approved. With its installation in May, Gaines will be sparing the college a utility expenditure of $2,000 a month, making the East Building a more comfortable learning environment for students, faculty and staff and serving as an example of sustainable design for municipal buildings throughout the commonwealth.
"It's only smart," says Gaines.
Terry Boyce of Bernardston has accepted the offer by Greenfield Community College as Dean of Student Affairs, announced President Robert L. Pura. This position involves overseeing all the areas that make up student support, including but not limited to testing, advising, transfer, career services, counseling, disability services, health services, admission, registration and financial aid. "My work is to ensure that services are available for students," says Boyce, "and that they work smoothly and seamlessly."
Boyce earned an associate's degree from Herkimer County Community College, a bachelor's degree in therapeutic recreation from SUNY Brockport, and her master's degree from the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. She has been at GCC for almost nine years as a faculty member, interim associate dean, interim assistant dean, and interim dean. Last year, she participated as a Fellow in the year-long Community College Leadership Academy. "I think the learning that I did at CCLA allowed me to understand the local institution better as well as its role within the community college system and within the state organization of government," says Boyce.
"My goal for this position is to make sure that each student is fully supported throughout their education at GCC."
For further information, contact the President's Office, 413-775-1410.
Greenfield Community College | One College Drive | Greenfield, MA 01301-5129 | (413) 775-1000 (tel) | (413) 775-5129 (fax)