A few years ago, when thoughts of local community college were a bit of a pipedream, Tom Leary, President of the Luzerne County Community College came to us and said: “If you’ll be my community, I’ll bring you, my college.” Words such as those make you ‘sit up and pay attention.’
Further, he promised us that once this center for a community college was established, he would personally see to it that a local advisory committee would be formed to guide the course offerings, curriculum, and to offer up people from the area as subject matter experts. Pulling up a chair at the inaugural local advisory committee meeting and leaning in to catch everything Melissa Day, the LCCC-Greater Susquehanna Valley Site Administrator, had to say, I had this thought: “These people get it.”
Ms. Day moved rapidly through her introductory slides, showed us some matrix related to enrollment and then immediately moved to what I really cared about, our ever-increasing labor shortage. Community college advocates have long held the opinion that a center such as the ones in Berwick, Shamokin, and Watsontown would serve as a critical bridge or mezzanine between un-skilled laborers or even paraprofessional to professional careers.
What I heard Melissa say, backed up with well-sourced data, is that our opinion was in fact—fact. We’ve reported before that the Greater Susquehanna Center had a 143% growth semester-over-semester. Yesterday, I visited the Shamokin Center and saw, firsthand, that the classrooms were modern and filled with eager learners. Early college offerings have now expanded to several additional school districts.
As far as course offerings go, the Fall 2022 Semester at the Greater Susquehanna Center include 15 different sections with classes being held each weekday, both daytime and evening. Course offering can be grouped into three areas: Healthcare (Anatomy, Microbiology, Physiology, Ethics, CPR, and Basic EMT), Education (Early Childhood, and Education Psychology), as well as standard post-secondary classes (English comp, First Year Experience, Statistics, Fundamentals of Speech, and Sociology).
In addition to the course titles, Melissa also demonstrated to me and my fellow advisory committee members the ‘transferability’ of each of the class to the other colleges and universities who enjoy articulation agreements with LCCC. These schools include Bloomsburg, Penn State and Susquehanna as well as a dozen other schools. It’s this ability to transfer credits that turns LCCC Trailblazer (yes, that’s their mascot) certificates and degrees into pure gold.
For me, LCCC with their Berwick, Shamokin, and Watsontown Centers, is producing ‘a dollar out of every nickel’ that we’ve invested in them. A personal word of thanks to the Warrior Run School District and particularly to their School Board members for their far-sighted investment in providing the space for the Greater Susquehanna Center. Also, to CSIU for the educational oversight and wisdom, and grant writing umph, they’ve provided for our exciting and growing Community College.
