Dec. '24 News Blog
News briefs from the HCC campus and beyond
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Bowl Buzz
The crowd came hungry. Not only for their choice of a dozen or so homemade soups, but for their choice of a handmade vessel to fill with them. On Dec. 11, faculty, staff, and students lined up early outside the ceramics studio on the third floor of the Fine & Performing Arts Building for the scheduled 11 a.m. opening of the 2024 HCC Empty Bowls benefit. Lining the studio tables inside were rows upon rows of handmade ceramic bowls, about 250 in total. The $10 tickets were in such high demand, they sold out before the start. “This is our first time doing Empty Bowls since right before the pandemic, and we were a little nervous when we began, so we decided to start off modestly,” said Felice Caivano, chair of the Visual Art Department and co-organizer of the Empty Bowls event along with ceramics teacher Margie Rothermich. Bowl production ramped up, though, after the Visual Art Club voted to dedicate the proceeds from bowl sales to a new HCC scholarship created in the memory of an alum and longtime HCC staff member JoAnne Wrobel ‘02. “They’ve been the real champions of this project,” Caivano said. Once endowed, JoAnne’s Helping Hands Scholarship, established through the HCC Foundation by her daughter, HCC Registrar Allison Wrobel, will be awarded annually to an HCC student involved in community service work. Including outright donations, the Empty Bowls benefit raised nearly $3,000. Allison Ranger, a work-study student in the ceramics studio, made more than a dozen bowls. “I love ceramics, and I liked the message,” she said. “I think it’s good what we’re doing, that we can put our art toward a good thing.” PHOTO: Ceramics teachers Margie Rothermich, left, and Felice Caivano, right, with HCC Registrar Allison Wrobel, who established JoAnne’s Helping Hands Scholarship in memory of her mother, HCC alum JoAnne Wrobel.
HCC Delivers
For the 23rd year, the HCC community delivered – 302 holiday gifts for consumers of four area nonprofit agencies: Homework House, the Holyoke Veterans Home, WestMass ElderCare, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. For more than two decades, the college has organized a Giving Tree campaign, inviting faculty, staff, and students to fulfill gift requests for those less fortunate. Representatives from each of the four agencies collected the gifts during a closing celebration on Thursday, Dec. 12. “Without community partners like you, we wouldn’t be able to create moments of joy for our veterans,” said Colleen Strunk-Ackerly, volunteer coordinator for the Veterans Home, formerly the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home. Brittani Bey, prevention programs supervisor, for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, noted that many of the agency’s clients can’t afford to buy gifts for their children. “Many of our families are homeless, don’t have family support, and are struggling with their day-to-day needs,” she said, “so being part of the HCC Giving Tree allows them just a little peace during this time of year, so thank you.” PHOTO: Gloria Caballero Roca, Homework House director of programs, left, and David Haslam, Homework House executive director, right, collect gifts for the children in their program, with the help of HCC Giving Tree committee member Mary Starzyk. See more photos from the closing celebration in our Facebook photo album ...
Challenge Accepted
HCC students Jacob Bissonnette and Anjou Edwards took home the top prize at HCC’s first-ever Innovation Challenge on Saturday, Dec. 7, for Green Computer Processing, their idea to create a net-zero-energy computer processing system. A panel of four judges declared their team the “Ultimate Achiever,” which recognized the pair for excellence in all aspects of the competition: pitch, poster, feasibility, and overall creativity. The HCC Innovation Challenge was based on an annual national competition that encourages community college students to come up with solutions to real-world problems. “Innovation education gives students the ability to showcase their coursework as they apply critical thinking, communication and presentation skills,” said accounting professor Michele Cabral, co-organizer of the Innovation Challenge with BSTEM dean Elizabeth Breton, who noted that the student competitors worked on their projects on their own time and for no class credit. About 25 students initially attended a STEM Week brainstorming session and Innovation Challenge kickoff event in October. Half ultimately participated. Students Kiara Martinez, Jesus Gonzalez, and Layla Bermejo won the Design Excellence Award (most visually stunning promotional materials) for the Guardian Crib Mattress, which employs optical sensors to monitor the vital signs of newborn babies to combat SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Johnathan Santiago, Hex Love, and Brittanie Larzazs-Rule received the Real World Award (most practical potential) for the PetSafe Pak, an emergency evacuation harness for medium to large dogs. Cabral encouraged all the teams to participate in the national Innovation Challenge in the spring. Edwards and Bissonnette said they plan to. “With the right guidance, we’ll take this as far as we can,” said Bissonnette. PHOTO: (Thumbnail) Innovation Challenge Ultimate Achievers Jacob Bissonette and Anjou Edwards.
Click here to read the winning pitch from Jacob and Ansou ...
(Above) Innovation Challenge judge and HCC alum Ed Germain ‘71 (retired engineer), judge Lamis Jarvinen PhD (RIDE Space at Westfield State University), students Anjou Edwards, and Jacob Bissonnette, judge Donna Byron (software engineer at IBM), and entrepreneur and HCC alum Myke Connolly ‘04 (Stand out Truck).
