GCC opened four new associate degree majors this academic year, allowing students to enroll in programs such as environmental conservation, human services, justice studies and a pathway for allied health students to transfer into a four-year program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of great health and helping professions programs here \u2014 medical assisting, EMT, paramedic, etc. \u2014 but we\u2019ve never had a transfer pathway that would allow allied health students to go into a four-year degree program,\u201d Vice President of Academic Affairs April Parsons said. \u201cOur faculty worked, especially in conjunction with [the University of Massachusetts Amherst\u2019s School of Public Health & Health Sciences], to create a pathway that would prepare students to transfer.\u201d<\/p>\n
In spring 2025, the college will graduate students who opted to pursue its first-ever human services major, which originated from a common liberal arts focus. Parsons explained the human services major is tailored to students wishing to pursue a vast array of careers, such as entry-level counseling, drug and alcohol recovery support, and case management positions across fields.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a certificate in drug and alcohol addiction support that students can work to acquire in conjunction with this,\u201d Parsons added. \u201cAny kind of human services agency that the state supports for families, some students can graduate and get entry-level jobs in those agencies now; whereas, others may go on to get a bachelor\u2019s degree in social work or a counseling degree, depending on what their tracks will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the justice studies program branches off from GCC\u2019s criminal justice studies program, broadening the field beyond law enforcement, according to Parsons.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to build up a program that was more of a transfer pathway and a more holistic vision of the field of justice studies,\u201d Parsons said. \u201cThat way students could not only train to be police officers, which is a valuable career, but also prepare for career transfers in political science, social work, social justice studies to become co-responders [or] work in other justice-related advocacy programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new environmental conservation major combines environmental science, biology, chemistry, math and economics with elective options in biology, chemistry, geology, math, astronomy, physics, meteorology and soil science.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these programs were initiated by faculty members who saw needs for our students and directed the curriculum in a way to support those needs and support future student opportunity,\u201d Parsons said. \u201cThe faculty here are incredibly responsive to student needs and setting students up for success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GCC opened four new associate degree majors this academic year, allowing students to enroll in programs such as environmental conservation, human services, justice studies and a pathway for allied health students to transfer into a four-year program. \u201cWe have a lot of great health and helping professions programs here \u2014 medical assisting, EMT, paramedic, etc. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,33,31,32],"class_list":["post-4183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alh","tag-enc","tag-jus","tag-lhs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4397,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183\/revisions\/4397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}