Community colleges fill needs of local employers

The Union-News and Sunday Republican. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
August 3, 1998
John Appleton, Staff writer

A $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to Springfield Technical Community College last fall confirmed what JavaNet's founders already knew: That the college is a national center of excellence in telecommunications.

The initial $3 million, along with other public and private investments, has enabled STCC to establish the National Center for Telecommunications Technology, a partnership that will develop education programs in telecommunications, textbooks and CD-ROMS, while keeping tabs on developments in the industry.

Right across Federal Street in the STCC Technology Park, JavaNet - a three-year-old Internet service provider - found office space for lease, training for its existing workforce, a supply of well-trained new workers and access to a facility with technical expertise.

As STCC President Andrew M. Scibelli says of his school, "This is not your father's community college."

Long thought of as the affordable stepchild of higher education, community colleges have taken on a major role in workforce training in recent years, and individually they have been redefining themselves in the ways they teach and interact with the business community.

Holyoke Community College still carries out its role of offering an affordable way of getting half-way to a bachelor's degree in many fields, and of providing two-year associate degrees and shorter term instruction that relate to many jobs.

But HCC is now also certified as the lead Work Keys Service Center in Massachusetts.

With this designation from American College Testing Inc., HCC provides job and occupational profiling for people looking for work, individual assessments for a company's current employees and competency screening for job applicants.

Keith Hensley, director of workforce development at HCC, said the Work Keys system will help high school students prepare for technical careers and help employers take some of the mystery out poor productivity by identifying gaps in their worker's competency levels.

Greenfield Community College has also redefined its role during the last decade. Ten years ago, the school's principal emphasis was preparing students for baccalaureate degrees at four-year colleges and universities.

While the institution still fulfills that role, GCC President Charles C. Wall said the school is much more a "multi-dimensional institution today."

The addition of evening courses has enabled the school to attract people who are changing careers. GCC has expanded its offerings to include computer courses that health care occupation education.

GCC has made a commitment to students in business, accounting and computer (training) so that they can earn a' degree without ever attending any day classes. We understand the importance of accommodating the student, who is most often a working adult, Wall said.

Programs focus on enabling students to redirect their working lives. The school also has a Career Resource Center, which is staffed by a fulltime person.

As for the future, Wall said GCC workforce development, entry-level training and adult literacy will grow in importance. "Our strength is that we are locally based - our mission is aimed at Franklin and Hampshire County and our well-being comes from helping people in this region."

The National Center for Telecommunications Technologies, ultimately a $10 million program, partners STCC with Verizon and other businesses, 24 schools around New England, and the New England Board of Higher Education.

The center - headquartered at STCC - the project will immerse teachers and guidance counselors in the tools needed to prepare students for jobs in the growing fiber optics and photonics fields.

Other energetic examples of community college adaptation and interaction with the economy are going on at STCC, which has an $8 million contract for re-training Verizon workers, several other workforce training contracts, and the STCC Technology Park, which is home to the college's high-tech programs, its Center for Business and Technology, rental space for high-tech companies and a future business incubator.

The technology park "enabled us to attract a company like RCN," said JavaNet president David A. Epstein. In mid-July, the New Jersey-based RCN telecommunications company announced it would buy the three-year-old, local Internet service provider for $15.8 million.

"If we were still in the basement of a cafe in Northampton, we would not have been on their list," Epstein said.

While he and his co-founder brought considerable expertise to the establishment and growth of JavaNet, Epstein said it was the move to STCC last year that allowed his company's phenomenal growth.

STCC offered convenient training for JavaNet workers, a steady supply of students who have become skilled new workers, engineering expertise from the faculty on setting up a computer room, and a nine-year lease on space equipped with the electronic lines an Internet access provider needs.

"STCC has had a major role in helping facilitate our growth," Epstein said.

"We have done contract training with them, taken advantage of their placement services, and they have provided us with raw talent to interview and bring in," Epstein said.

More than half of JavaNet's 90 workers in Springfield came from STCC, which Epstein calls "a feeder for us second to none."

Regardless of any future name changes, Epstein said JavaNet, Inc., which has 30,000 Internet subscribers and a contract to train Massachusetts teachers and provide them with Internet access, will continue for the length of its lease at STCC despite the sale to RCN.

STCC also has a contract with Verizon to teach the phone company's employees in courses on advancing technology, changing marketplace realities and customer service skills. The 262 employees will earn associate degrees over a four-year period, and their colleagues throughout New England will take similar courses at other community colleges, for which STCC will provide the curriculum and consulting.

"This is major corporate training," Scibelli said.

"Here is a company that has taken on a major commitment, $8 million worth, to ensure that thousands of its employees get state-of-the-art training, not just a course or two, but for an associate degree," Scibelli said. "They are saying they know they need to keep their workforce current, here are the expectations, and they will pay for it."

At HCC, in addition to the Work Keys program, there is work ongoing to teach English to 72 new, non-native-English-speaking grocery employees, the largest GED testing program in the state, a satellite branch of the federally-funded CareerPoint one-stop career center to help students and the public find jobs, and the HCC Jump Start program which provides office skills training and job placement assistance to about 70 welfare recipients.

HCC also belongs to the New England Consortium, which provides health and safety training for people who work with hazard materials.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

This material is based on work
supported by the
National Science Foundation
under Grant Number DUE 0302548.

Springfield Technical
Community College

The ICT Center c/o STCC, One Armory Square, PO Box 9000, Suite 1, Springfield, MA 01102-9000
(413) 755-6550 (phone) | (413) 755-6325 (fax)