Ribbon cutting, reception for opening of GCC offices at Central Park set for Tuesday

The public is invited to a ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of Germanna Community College’s Educational Foundation and Marketing and Public Information offices and renaming of Central Park Town Center at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 1320 Central Park Blvd., across from Funland.

A donation by The Rappaport Companies  of 2,300 square feet of space for three years is providing the college with an address in the city. GCC has campuses at Massaponax and Locust Grove and centers in Stafford and Culpeper. No classes will be offered at the Central Park location.

Germanna’s Educational Foundation and marketing department have moved from the Locust Grove Campus to Central Park.

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It's never too late to learn new skills

From 2000 to 2009, enrollment of non-traditional students jumped more than 25 percent. NCES anticipates that number to swell another 23 percent between 2010 and 2019. The growth of students younger than that is expected to rise only 9 percent during that time period.

The trend is perhaps no more apparent than at Germanna.

BY KRISTIN DAVIS

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

James Powers started college 22 years ago. Then he stopped. There was marriage, children, his day job tracking satellites at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren.

Finally, in 2006, at the age of 50, Powers decided it was time to finish what he'd begun. He wanted to do it for himself. He also knows how important a college education is in today's competitive job market.

Powers enrolled in Germanna Community College, where he could take classes on campus in the evenings or online at his home in Spotsylvania County. He still worked fulltime. His children weren't yet teenagers.

But in May 2009, Powers earned an associate degree in general studies. He was 53. He earned a bachelor's in liberal studies online from the University of Oklahoma in December. Now he's working on his master's.

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USA Today story on war hero Germanna student helps ease stigmas

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USA TODAY: ARMY, GERMANNA HELP WAR HERO DECOMPRESS AND TAKE A BIG STEP TOWARD FULFILLING HIS  DREAM OF PLAYING DIVISION I FOOTBALL--FROM POST TRAUMATIC STRESS TO POST TRAUMATIC SUCCESS

Daniel Rodriguez’ fight was far from over after tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan that saw him wounded and decorated for valor.

The Germanna Community College student was a football star at Brooke Point High School in Stafford, but he was too small for a football scholarship. His father suffered a heart attack and passed away four days after Daniel graduated. Without a scholarship or a father, he felt he couldn't afford college, so he enlisted in the Army

 In Afghanistan, when his unit of 60 men came under attack by 300 Taliban, he saw a buddy shot in the head. Daniel exposed himself to enemy fire to help his friend and drag him out of the line of fire. Then he realized his buddy was dead. Daniel was shot in the shoulder and took shrapnel in both legs.

He returned home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and night terrors. Using the G.I. Bill, he's been attending  Germanna, and he credits he GCC with helping him decompress.

 Last week, USA Today featured Daniel in a story about the way the Army has changed its approach to dealing with mental illness due to the high suicide rate among active duty soldiers and veterans.

"It was tough for me to go to counseling," he told USA Today’s Gail Sheehy. "But as I opened up more and more, it helped me to get my feelings out and understand it's OK to talk about it to other people, my friends, my mom — don't bottle it up."

Join Germanna faculty, students, alumni on Spring Break 2013 tour of Italy

A group of people from the Germanna community will be traveling to Italy for Spring Break, 2013. The group will be visiting Rome, Florence and Venice seeing the highlights of this beautiful country.

Tour Itinerary

•

Day 1 Start Tour •

Day 2 Ciao Venice Meet your Tour Director, travel to Venice & check into hotel Dinner en route to Venice •

Day 3 Venice Landmarks Venice Guided Walking Sightseeing Tour with Whisper headsets St. Mark’s Square, Basilica, Doges’ Palace visit, Glass-blowing demo •

Day 4 Venice--Florence Travel to Florence Verona Tour Director-led Sightseeing Tour Romeo and Juliet balcony, Roman Arena Italian Pizza dinner •

Day 5 Florence Landmarks Florence Guided Walking Sightseeing Tour with Whisper headsets Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, Chiesa di Santa Croce, Ponte Vecchio, Duomo visit, Leather workshop, Gates of Paradise, Giotto’s Bell Tower, Dante's house Baptistery visit, Leaning Tower Dinner •

Day 6 Florence--Rome Travel to Rome Rome Guided Walking Sightseeing Tour with Whisper headsets Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel visit, St. Peter’s Basilica visit, Colosseum visit, Piazza Venezia, Forum Romanum visit Dinner •

Day 7 Rome Landmarks Rome City Walk Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona Authentic Trattoria Dinner •

Day 8 End Tour

Tour Fee Includes:

Round-trip airfare

6 overnight stays in hotels with private bathrooms

Full European breakfast daily

Dinner daily

Full-time services of a professional Tour Director

Guided sightseeing tours and city walks as per itinerary

Visits to select attractions as per itinerary

Guided sightseeing tours with high-tech headset as per itinerary

Tour Diary™

Note: On arrival day only dinner is provided; on departure day, only breakfast is provided

This trip has limited availability left so be sure to get in quickly to secure your place! Tour fees will go up on June 26. The tour is being organized and led by Germanna faculty.

Email Prof. Kellie Bradshaw at kbradshaw@germanna.edu with questions, and for sign-up information, or go to https://www.explorica.com/sign-up.aspx and enter Bradshaw-9149. This trip is open to students, alumni, staff, faculty, adjuncts, and their families.

Homelessness, Hurricane Katrina, cancer can't stop Germanna student who wins national award for work done while undergoing therapy for lymphoma

He was homeless as a child, lost his job to Hurricane Katrina, then developed cancer.

But John W. Tyler won't be stopped by anything.

Tracy Bell, editor of The Stafford Sun, reports on a Germanna Community College student who won a national award for technological innovation while undergoing cancer therapy.

He says only thinking of his young daughter kept him going through exhaustion and depression related to the treatments.

Now doctors tell him he's beaten lymphoma.

And John Tyler has a lot to live for.

New Science & Engineering Building and Information Commons a hit

Left to right, VCCS Chancellor Glenn DuBois, GCC Student Government Association President Morgen Jones, Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Ann L. Heidig, Germanna President David A. Sam, GCC College Board Chairwoman Jill Johnson and U.S. Rep Rob Wittman help Germanna President David A. Sam cut the ribbon today at the Grand Opening of the college's Science & Engineering Building and Information Commons. A crowd of 250 looked on, then toured the high-tech green building.

Fredericksburg.com story and photos on the event.

Steve Watkins' new book "What Comes After" a powerful local story of child abuse. He will do a reading from the book and sign copies at GCC March 29

Steve Watkins, author of "What Comes After," brings his new book to GCC's Frederickburg Campus at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29.

Award-winning journalist and author Steve Watkins will do a reading from his new book, "What Comes After," and sign copies of the new work at 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 29 at Sealy Auditorium at Germanna Community College's Fredericksburg Campus in Spotsylvania off U.S. 17 near Cosner's Corner.
The event is free and open to the public. He'll also sign copies of the paperback version of his award-winning book 'Down Sand Mountain."
"What Comes After" will be available at Germanna before it goes on sale on the Internet and in stores on April 12.
Watkins, an English professor at the University of Mary Washington, explains that "What Comes After" is based on a local incident:
“In a way, the story of Iris Wight in 'What Comes After' started several years ago when I was sitting in a juvenile and domestic relations court during an emergency removal hearing, reading an autopsy report on a little 5-year-old boy who had been beaten to death. His name was Donny. He had more than 40 pronounced contusions, two broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and a skull fracture — all in various stages of healing, indicating that he had sustained the injuries over an extended period of time. In the autopsy photos he appeared emaciated, as if he’d been starved. He also had two severe traumas to his abdomen caused by what the medical examiner said were powerful external blows. The second, and most recent, was the one that killed him.

“None of us who worked on that case, which lasted two long years and led to terrible revelations about even more physical and sexual abuse of Donny and his siblings, have ever been the same. It was my job as a Court Appointed Special Advocate to investigate Donny’s story, and the stories of his brothers and sisters, and to write a narrative that would bring those children to life for the judge presiding over the case — and, in a way, to bring Donny back to life, if only in my report, and if only for a little while, and if only for the court. None of us doubted that the surviving children would be scarred forever by what happened to them, but thanks to the love and dedication of a lot of people involved in the case —therapists, attorneys, social workers, foster parents, teachers — Donny’s brothers and sisters ended up with families who loved them and promised to take care of them. They had a chance — at least a chance — to recover, and grow up safe, and live meaningful lives.

“When I read an article two years ago in our local newspaper about a girl who had been badly beaten by her cousin, on orders from her guardian aunt, I was struck by how few details there were about the girl — though that is usual in the case of underage victims, who are rarely identified to the public by police or prosecutors. The article didn’t say what her life had been like before she was beaten, or what happened to her after, except for this one sentence: ‘The girl is now in foster care.’ The more I thought about that girl and what happened to her, though, the more I felt drawn to tell her story, too — as I imagined it — for a wider audience than the court. I knew she wasn’t just another foster care kid, and she wasn’t just another victim. She must have had a life, and a story worth telling. All children do.”