When Jacob Barry graduated from Andover High School four years ago he knew he wasn’t ready for college. But a lot changed in four years and now the 22-year-old is excelling at Northern Essex Community College where he recently received the Raney Family Memorial Scholarship.

He is one of 190 NECC students awarded 222 scholarships totaling more than $200,000 for the 2015/2016 academic year.

“It felt good to be rewarded for getting good grades,” he says. “It helps me financially to be able to continue with school.”

His academic about-face is quite an accomplishment for a young man who says studying was not a high priority as a high school student. Friends and fun came first, he says, which didn’t leave him with many options following graduation. For a time he considered the military, but eventually went to work for his dad’s landscaping business.

After a few years of hard work and self-reflection, Barry was ready to challenge himself – but how? Wistfully, he remembered visiting the NECC campus as a day camper in NECC’s College for Kids summer program while his mom, attended graphic design classes. When his mom died in 2004 of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, the magical life his mom had created for the two of them dissolved and Barry went to live with his dad and started a new child/parent relationship.

Barry believes his mom would be pleased with his decision to attend NECC. He knows he is. After completing the EMT class and earning good grades, Barry decided it was time to work toward a degree. More specifically, a liberal arts degree. A degree that would allow him to explore different disciplines.

“I decided if I was going to college I was going to give it my all,” he says. “I became addicted to getting good grades.”

His American Literature professor Joe LeBlanc recognized his commitment to education. He nominated him for a scholarship, writing, “This is no ordinary student. Jacob thinks critically and reads and listens perceptively. He writes with increasing confidence. He speaks well and participates actively in class. His comments about ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ were thoughtful and some of the most eloquent I’ve encountered in years. His late mother inspires Jacob…Her effort to return to college motivates him.   “

Barry was so pleased with his experience at Northern Essex he talked his best childhood friend into enrolling too. In high school one would talk the other into skipping class. At NECC they competed against each other for better grades. Barry also convinced his girlfriend into attending Northern Essex.

He is on track to graduate from NECC in May of 2016 and intends to transfer to a four-year college and earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

The Raney Family Memorial Scholarship honors the late Margaret Raney, a long-time, beloved faculty member in the college’s Business Division, and her son Joseph Raney. This scholarship is awarded to a student studying Business or Liberal Arts.

 

When Northern Essex Community College Professor Barbara Stachniewicz reviews Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” in her British Literature class this fall, she will share her own tales of Canterbury.

Canterbury was just one of the literary destinations for Stachniewicz and seven NECC students who participated in the short-term study abroad program this summer. In addition to Canterbury, they toured other noted literary sites including London, Stratford-upon- Avon, and Bath, England for her course “International Experience in Literature”.

Stachniewicz was one of three professors to teach courses this summer in NECC’s increasingly popular short-term study abroad program. While she was in Great Britain, on another continent, Marcy Yeager, director of the NECC International Studies and co-instructor of “Field Studies” along with NECC Professor Ken Thomas, were traveling through Ecuador with 10 NECC students to study the biological and geological connection between the Andes Mountains and the tropical rain forest.

The courses, funded in part by the NECC Foundation, will serve as a literature and science electives respectively. Both courses met for several Saturday mornings before the end of the school year in early May. As part of the literature curriculum each student researched one of the venues they would be touring and presented to the class. In preparation for the visit to Stratford-upon-Avon birthplace of William Shakespeare they read his “The Merchant of Venice”, and for the Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, they read “Canterbury Tales”.

Once in Ecuador the students put their hypotheses to the test as they physically explored each ecosystem they previously researched and analyzed. Students visited Quito, the capitol of Ecuador, the hot springs at Termas Papallacta, the bird sanctuary in Baeza, the Napo River, spent five days in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, and climbed the slopes of Cotopaxi the world’s highest active.

Across the world, in England, NECC students rode the London Eye, toured the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, The Chaucer Museum, the Canterbury Cathedral, The Jane Austen Center and the Roman Baths. They had tea in Bath’s famed Pump Room and danced in the Assembly Rooms of the Fashion Museum.

All students were required to keep a travelogue. Both courses culminated in a writing project.

These short-term study abroad programs are designed for students, who for financial or family reasons, cannot study abroad for a full year or even a semester.  Each trip is approximately 10 days in length. Students enroll in an NECC course and meet on several occasions (usually Saturdays) before departure and at least once on return to the U.S. While abroad, lectures and field trips will occupy part of each day. While students will have some free time to explore on their own, these trips are designed to be academic experiences, not vacations.

Past short-term trips included Italy and Belize. Next year’s trips are to The Azores and Italy.

The cost runs between $3300 and $5000 depending on the length. Financial aid can used to help support these courses.

The trips are usually planned for the end of May, right after graduation. In the future, trips may also take place in January during the semester break and in March during the spring vacation.

For additional information on all study abroad programs contact Marcy Yeager by email at myeager@necc.mass.edu. Or visit the NECC Study Abroad website.

Dr. William Heineman, vice president of academic affairs, Northern Essex Community College, is pleased to announce the appointment of students to the Dean’s List for the Summer 2015 term.

To be included, students must attain a grade point average of 3.3 or higher within the term, carry six or more credits within the term, and be matriculated in a degree program.

For more information, visit the website at www.necc.mass.edu.

Dean’s list students include: Summer 2015 Dean’s List

Emily Knox, a student in the Radiologic Technology Program at Northern Essex Community College and resident of Stratham, New Hampshire, has received the $2,500 Jerman-Cahoon Scholarship awarded by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists Foundation. Knox was one of six recipients chosen nationally by the committee and the sole recipient from a Massachusetts program.

To be eligible, applicants must be enrolled in entry-level radiology-related programs and demonstrate leadership skills, academic prowess, and financial need.

In addition to accepting a scholarship award, which will help defer future tuition costs, Knox was invited to participate in the ASRT’s Student Leadership Development Program for aspiring radiologic technologists. The program provides Knox and other college students the opportunity to hone critical networking skills and learn from national leaders of the radiological sciences field. In June, she attended the ASRT Educational Symposium in Albuquerque to meet other student awardees and radiation therapy professionals and took part in the foundation’s Annual Governance and House of Delegates meeting.

The ASRT Edward Jerman and John Cahoon award was made possible by support from the ASRT Foundation Patrons and the ASRT.

Northern Essex Community College offers an associate degree in Radiologic Technology, which prepares students to become radiologic technologists or other types of specialists in the diagnosis of trauma and disease. To learn more, please visit www.necc.mass.edu. For additional information on the American Society of Radiologic Technologists Foundation, including its scholarship eligibility requirements, visit www.asrtfoundation.org.

With campuses in Haverhill and Lawrence, Northern Essex Community College offers over 70 associate degree and certificate programs as well as hundreds of noncredit courses designed for personal enrichment and career growth.  More than 7,400 students are enrolled in credit associate degree and certificate programs on the Haverhill and Lawrence campuses; and another 6,700 take noncredit workforce development and community education classes on campus, and at businesses and community sites across the Merrimack Valley.  Northern Essex is the only state college located in the lower Merrimack Valley Region of Massachusetts. For more information, visit the website at www.necc.mass.edu.

As an award winning columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, Northern Essex alumna Helen Ubiñas covers hard-hitting news stories, such as the Baltimore riots and the fatal Amtrak train crash outside of Philadelphia.

When news happens, she’s on the scene, frequently putting herself in the center of chaos and often in the way of danger to interview sources and get the story.

Her job is both exhilarating and rewarding, and she is clearly not one who is easily intimidated or flustered, whether she’s interviewing a reticent politician or a grieving parent.

As comfortable as she is covering a breaking news story, public speaking is one thing that is definitely outside Ubiñas’ comfort zone, which is why she was more surprised than anyone when she accepted NECC President Lane Glenn’s invitation to be this year’s featured commencement speaker.

“I realized that NECC was giving me an opportunity to thank them for the role they played in my life. And to remind the students who are graduating what a gift that school is,” she explains about her decision to accept.

In her inspiring speech, Ubiñas shared how Northern Essex changed her life, saying “I found myself and my future here.” (She also met her future husband Michael Dunne, formerly of Newburyport.)

Ubiñas says she arrived at Northern Essex in the fall of 1990 feeling “lost” after a less than stellar semester at a four-year university. She had always loved to write which is why she was drawn to the journalism program while at Northern Essex, eventually serving as editor of the NECC Observer, the college’s student newspaper.

After Northern Essex, she transferred to Boston University and landed a job out of college with the Hartford Courant, where she was awarded a number of honors including a team Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News coverage of a 1999 murder-suicide at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters that took the lives of five people. In 2000, she became the Hartford Courant’s first Latina news columnist.

In 2011, she left the Hartford Courant, and in 2012 joined the Philadelphia Daily News, where she continues her great work. In 2007, she was one of 12 journalists in the United States to be awarded the prestigious John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University.

Ubiñas says that as a journalist, she’s motivated “to try to keep the powerful honest and give those without power a voice.” Her insightful coverage has provided a voice for many who have been underrepresented, and Northern Essex is proud that she discovered her voice here.