NECC President Lane Glenn addresses faculty and staff during the Fall convocation Tuesday.

“Reimaging The Dream” was the theme of this year’s Northern Essex Community College Fall 2017 convocation held Tuesday, Sept 5, in the Sport & Fitness Center on the Haverhill campus. Hundreds of faculty and staff attended and participated in the morning activities.

NECC President Lane Glenn opened the morning with a with mention of how a few Northern Essex faculty and staff spent some of their summer including Jody Carson and Sue Tashjian who participated in an Open Educational Resource conference at UMass Amherst; Sarah Courchesne who continued overseeing NECC students banding gulls on Appledore Island, Maine; engineering and computer science faculty who taught 60 7th and 8th graders during the Summer Tech Academy; and Barbara Stachniewicz who traveled to the Dominican Republic.

New Employees

Glenn welcomed a number of new faculty and staff including Analcis Castillo, recruiter/enrollment counselor; Tia Roy, enrollment/academic counselor; Janel D’Agata-Lynch, coordinator of civic engagement; Todd Higgins, director of The Gallaudet University Regional Center; Donald Bellerive, faculty respiratory care; Karla Bulmer, nursing; Kim Foisy, nursing; Dr. Lori Johnson, nurse administrator; Eileen Pappalardo, practical nursing program; Lisa DeVita, coordinator of the Massachusetts Inclusive Concurrent Enrollment Initiative; Hilmar von Strunck, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology; Liz Teoli, librarian; Kristen Arnold, director PACE; Jessica Rocker, transfer adviser; Douglas Leaffer, assistant professor engineering and physics; Mary Murphy, research analyst; Maria Campechano, bursar; and

It was a full house in the Sport & Fitness Center for fall convocation.

Linda Rohrer, director ValleyWorks.

Notes of Interest

Civic Action

NECC is moving ahead with its Civic Action Plan having appointed Janel D’Agata-Lynch as full-time coordinator. Northern Essex strives to create an environment that supports and encourages civic engagement among its students, faculty, and staff. Attendees were directed to the website for additional information.

Free Food for Everyone

Karen Hruska, director of the NECC counseling center, explained how Northern Essex has partnered with the Greater Boston Food Bank to bring free fresh fruits and vegetables to the Haverhill and Lawrence campuses every fourth Tuesday of the month via a Farmers’ Market. This wellness initiative is free to all students, faculty & staff. The only requirement is to preregister. For more information on this program go to the website. Last April Nearly 8,000 lbs of food was distributed to almost 300 households.

International Studies

In addition to NECC students studying abroad for a semester or earning college credits during a short course trip, NECC also offers One Geographic Region talks. This year the First Friday discussions will focus on the Caribbean and Central America.

Videos  

One of several new videos highlighting students, alumni, and faculty from various academic programs will soon reside on the new website. One of those videos focusing on the liberal arts area, was shown.

Faculty and Staff Exercise  

Under the direction of two facilitators from Achieving the Dream, attendees participated in roundtables that analyzed data collected from a college wide survey last spring. Using an institutional capacity assessment tool, participants identified strengths and areas of improvement in the areas of teaching & learning, engagement & communication, strategy & planning, equity, data & technology, leadership & vision, policies & practices.