Germanna mourns the passing of Dean Mary Gilkey

Germanna Community College Dean of Nursing and Health Technologies Mary Gilkey passed away Tuesday, June 25 at VCU Medical Center in Richmond of apparent heart failure. She had been battling an autoimmune disorder for some time. She was 55.

“With the passing of Dean Gilkey, Germanna has lost a leader whose boundless energy and enthusiasm helped the college double the size of its nursing program and graduate two classes a year,” said GCC President David A. Sam. “Our communities have lost a champion for quality health care for all their citizens.

  “Dean Gilkey worked diligently with area hospitals to anticipate and meet health care needs,” Dr. Sam said.

 “She loved her students and the College dearly.  The students she inspired will be her legacy. She will be missed.”
 Dr. Sam said the College’s deepest sympathy goes out to Dean Gilkey’s husband Charles and their three daughters, Claire, Caroline and Chelsea.

When Dean Gilkey, who came to Germanna in 2009, was 15, she began training as an aide in a nursing home. She said she was appalled by the inhumane "warehouse" approach in dealing with the elderly there. She decided to devote her life to improving care for patients.

 “It gave me a passion to take care of people,” she said.  “I’ve never stopped learning. And I’ve never stopped having that passion in my belly.”

Kim Casey, a 2013 Germanna nursing graduate, talked about Dean Gilkey coming to an awards ceremony in May despite being ill. "I went over and hugged her and told her daughter Chelsea how much it meant to us," Casey said, her voice filled with emotion.
In addition to working in hospitals and as a health insurance company in her native Hampton Roads area, she had a private practice as a psychotherapist.

Dean Gilkey had said her dream was to expand Germanna’s nursing and health technologies facilities at the College’s Locust Grove Campus.

 Dr. Patti Lisk is serving as Germanna’s Acting Dean of Nursing and Health Care Technologies.

Friday, June 28 7:30 p.m. Visitation 
Holloman-Brown Funeral Chapel
6568 Indian River Road
Virginia Beach, Va.

Saturday, June 29 11 a.m. Funeral Mass
Saint Matthew's Catholic Church
3314 Sandra Lane
Virginia Beach, Va. (this is just a few blocks from Holloman-Brown)

Interment following the Mass
Woodlawn Memorial Gardens
6309 E. Virginia Beach Blvd
Norfolk, Va,

Agreement with U.Va. eases path to BSN

A new agreement between  the School of Nursing at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Community College System, including Germanna Community College, will guarantee admission to the school’s RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program.

The part time, 21-month program is designed to make it easier for full-time working nurses  to get their BSN. There will be one class a week, with a  clinical settings program in the second year that allows students to practice what they’ve learned in class.

“Germanna has gone a little bit further,” said Dr. Patti Lisk, acting Dean of Nursing and Health Technologies at GCC. “We have made it possible for students to attend the University of Virginia classes here on campus at Germanna through interactive video for their first year of study.” She said the classes will be broadcast from U.Va.to Germanna and that students at GCC will be able to converse with University of Virginia faculty as if they were in the same classroom..

Germanna will begin offering the program in the Fall of 2014.

Dr. Lisk said Germanna students will save both in terms of commuting time and on travel expenses  because they will only travel to U.Va. for the second year. 

“Germanna Community College is pleased that our ongoing partnership with the University of Virginia has resulted in yet another opportunity for our graduates,” GCC President David A. Sam said. “This program makes it very easy for RNs to earn their BSN by offering the program at Germanna. We wish to thank all who made this possible, including Culpeper Regional Hospital and Connie Kincheloe.”

Culpeper Regional Hospital and the U.Va. Medical Center have been partners since 2009.

Connie Kincheloe is a member of the GCC Educational Foundation Board, the U.Va. Medical Center Operating Board and Culpeper Regional Health System Board.

 "Congratulations to the U.Va. School of Nursing, the Virginia Community College System, and particularly Germanna Community College for this groundbreaking agreement,” Kincheloe said.

 She called the agreement “a great opportunity for our colleges and our students,” and “ an enormous value to the Commonwealth of Virginia with the growth statewide of our BSN workforce,"

 Germanna Educational Foundation Board member Joe Daniel said: “The University of Virginia has confirmed the quality of the students and the instruction at Germanna with this articulation agreement..  U.Va. Is an outstanding school and I am confident that the Germanna students will perform at the very highest level."

Math in Action Conference simply adds up for area teachers

Students who’ve sweated out a summer school math class while their friends were at the pool might smile at the idea of their math teachers brushing up on their skills in June.

But the teachers really want to. That’s what Germanna’s Center for Workforce and Community Education learned when representatives visited every school system in the region to ask in what areas they needed assistance.

The result is Math in Action: A Conference for Math Teachers by Math Teachers to be held at Germanna's Fredericksburg Area Campus from 8:30 a.m.to 4:30 p.m. on June 24.

“It’s the first time we’ve done something like this,” said Kimberly Rodenberg, GCC Business & Career Coordinator. “We went around to the school systems and asked how we could help with professional development. Hands down, math teachers wanted help dealing with the strict changes in math requirements.  We partnered with all of the schools to bring in teachers who could share best practices with each other. We hope to make this an annual event.”

The conference is designed for teachers interested in helping students achieve at the highest possible levels in math.  Attendees will hear the latest about mathematics instruction from the Virginia Department of Education’s Dr. Deborah Wickham and Christa Southall.

 Teachers will then have the opportunity to participate in break-out sessions focused on instructional strategies for the teaching of math.  All break-out sessions will be conducted by teachers sharing best practices, helping to build a network of support throughout the region

 “The teachers will be sharing their methods and skills,” said Brenda Tanner, a former superintendent of Madison County schools who is working with Germanna’s Center for Workforce as a consultant. "That makes it somewhat unique.” She  believes the conference will have a lasting effect, creating a virtual network of “teachers supporting teachers.”

Breakfast and lunch will be included.

The conference registration fee is  $79.

To register, call 540-891-3012

Germanna may soon be a step closer to a Stafford campus

A Stafford Planning Commission meeting might produce a major step forward in the effort to establish a Germanna Campus in the county. But significant steps in the process would remain, GCC President David A Sam tells Bill Freehling of The Free Lance-Star and Frederickburg.com


The proposed Germanna campus in Stafford might look like this.

.

GCC Middle College scholarships available for Fall 2013

Germanna Middle College graduate Terra Painter of Madison County

Four $500 scholarships are available through funds awarded to Germanna Community College's Middle College  by the Community Foundation of the Rappahannock River Region, Youth in Philanthropy organization. These funds were awarded to assist Middle College graduates in their pursuit of higher education at Germanna Community College. The application deadline is 5 p.m. Friday July, 12 2013. To learn how to apply, please contact Carolyn Bynum, at cbynum@germanna.edu or call 540-834-1053. Any Middle College graduate is eligible to apply.

The Middle College Program is designed to meet the needs of those between 18-24 years old who have not graduated from high school. The comprehensive goal of the program is to have the students complete the Middle College Program, enroll in a certificate or degree program at Germanna, and enter the workforce. Academically, the focus of the program is to help students prepare for the GED and earn college credit simultaneously. Our small class setting provides a unique environment that engages the students in critical thinking and problem solving. Every staff member serves as a mentor, advisor, and student advocate.

As Culpeper drops pounds, GCC gains support for its nursing program

When Culpeper's Drop It! The Healthy Living and Weight Loss Challenge 2013 wrapped up Thursday it had produced a total of over $300,000 in donations to Germanna's Nursing and Health Technologies programs since the annual event began in 2010, according to GCC Educational Foundation Director Mike Catell.

Joe and Linda Daniel and the Culpeper Regional Health System have donated funds toward Germanna’s nursing and health programs since the beginning.

Joe Daniel is president at Culpeper Wood Preservers and a member of the GCC Educational Foundation Board. The couple donates $20 to Germanna for each pound lost. This year's total of 2,502 pounds lost works out to a $50,040 donation. CRHS donates $30 a pound to health care programs. Some of that $30 has gone to Germanna in the past. No announcement has been made about that yet for this year.

During a press conference at Powell Wellness Center, Joe Daniel explained why he and his wife Linda donated $20 to Germanna's Nursing and Health Technologies program for approximately 12,000 pounds lost through Drop It! over the years. "The goal of this program is to improve the health of the whole community," Joe Daniel said. "The other thing is education. ... "You talk to any hospital executive or administrator and they'll tell you nurses are the lifeblood of their hospitals… It’s a great partnership. The bottom line is it’s about health, education and jobs.”

The program, Daniel noted, has enabled Germanna: “to expand its nursing program—to double the number of folks who are getting nursing or nursing-related education. And this has a huge, long-run impact on the community. Let’s say we graduated 50 people today. What’s the average age? Thirty. So they have 30, 35 years to work. That’s 1,500 work years. Multiply that by the number of patients they’re going to see--many tens of thousands of people are impacted by that educational experience. And next year we’re going to do the same thing. And the next the same time.”

He said there’s no way to measure the long-term impact. .

“When you do the return on investment, “ he said. “When you see the work people are going to have-- the improvement in health, the improvement in their lives, I’ll tell you what, I’m happy to invest in it and I think it’s one of the best investments Linda and I have ever made.”

Linda Daniel said: "I worked in the health profession for almost 40 years. I think health is so essential to keeping your whole mental outlook and your emotional outlook as well as your physical well being and we all want to get older and better and stay healthy and the best way to do it is to move and keep involved in a program like this." Germanna President David A. Sam said the college is grateful.

“We want to thank the Daniels for their long term support for Germanna in many ways, especially the nursing program and health care programs,” Dr. Sam said. “Thanks in large part to them, Germanna now graduates two RN classes a year in December and in May.

“The support you give us is instrumental in terms of scholarships,” Dr. Sam said. He said the Daniels’ generosity has made it possible to buy equipment, including high-tech human simulators used in Germanna’s Virtual Hospital.

“We also deeply appreciate the long partnership with Culpeper Regional Hospital and Culpeper Regional Health Care System.They provide clinical instruction, clinical sites. They’ve contributed $1 milllion over the years to our programs.” .

Germanna set to host Startup Weekend Fredericksburg June 7-9 with free registration for some GCC students, faculty, staff

Startup Weekend - Trailer from Eighteen Eighty on Vimeo.

Startup Weekend Fredericksburg has free, sponsored slots for Germanna Community College students, faculty and staff. For more information, email Christine at cgoody2shoes@yahoo.com.

The event, which helps fledgling entrepeneurs launch companies, is set to begin with pitches at 5:30 p.m. Friday, June 7 at Germanna Community College’s Workforce Development and Technology Center on its Fredericksburg Area Campus in Spotsylvania and culminate in the best startup ideas being chosen Sunday, June 9 and the event ending at 9:30 p.m.

Christine Goodwin, CEO and co-founder of WishStars, an online platform that brings corporate donors and educators together, was tabbed in December for one of the Center for Innovative Technology’s GAP 50 Entrepreneur Awards. She lives in Locust Grove and is a graduate of Spotsylvania High School and what was then Mary Washington College.

Goodwin credits WishStars taking off to her experience at a Startup Weekend in Reston last year.

Startup Weekend is a global organization with a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. she said.

Startup Weekend Fredericksburg is a 54-hour event, Goodwin said, “designed to teach methodologies to enhance creative, focused, and collaborative innovation. For those participants who want to pitch an idea, Startup Weekend helps them form a team, work on the concept, and refine it so that they can launch a startup.”

To date, there have been 1,068 Startup Weekend events held in 478 cities around the world and from these events over 8,000 startups have been created. Goodwin said that for the rest of the participants, Startup Weekend is an opportunity to get experience that enhances creative and critical problem -solving, to try new skills, and to get expert instruction on new methods of brainstorming.

WHO ATTENDS A STARTUP WEEKEND?

• Frontend Coders

• Backend coders

• Social Media professionals/enthusiasts

• Business professionals/Business development professionals

• Marketing professionals

• Graphic designers

• Writers

• Visionaries

• Project managers

“SUW is also a great professional development experience, she said. “I strongly encourage people with awesome day jobs who don't have a big idea to pitch or who aren't looking to start their own company to come and join a team so they will get an opportunity to get a rapid immersion education in a whole new way of thinking about how you do what you do and for executing differently. You will learn techniques for collaboration, problem solving, and product development that will help you improve many things including team dynamics, validating requirements and customer needs, determining product/market fit using metrics to quantify it, and using metrics to drive product development. A key tenet of Lean Startup is to fail fast - to use data to quickly validate - or invalidate - assumptions about needs, requirements, and preferences and to build out capability based on that data.”

All attendees will have a chance to network with some amazing people in their fields and in other fields and experience first-hand all of the dimensions of innovation in one event.

WHY DO A STARTUP WEEKEND IN FREDERICKSBURG?

“Startup Weekend Global takes multiple factors into consideration, but chief amongst those is the strength of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the community that is applying,” Goodwin said. “We started our interview by telling Startup Weekend that our region produced the ultimate startup- - The United States of America. And that we have a long tradition of innovation in this region.”

Virginia has the highest concentration of information technology skilled and professional services people of any place in the country - and the many of them live in our region, she said. “We have within 150 miles of the Fredericksburg region the highest concentration of universities and colleges of anywhere on the planet. Our greatest resource in this area is the incredibly talented human capital we have. And yet every day, we send more than 15,000 of them into Northern Virginia and D.C. to work. Too many people have resigned themselves to accept that to live here they must spend 12-14 hours a day five days a week getting to and from work in the worst traffic in the country.

“Several of us who are entrepreneurs knew that many other entrepreneurs were in our region working alone on their startups or their apps. We felt that our entrepreneurial ecosystem was too fragile and dispersed. And we felt that we needed to put together an event that showcased the cool things that have come out of this region on a global platform and also functioned as the foundational event for strengthening and building out our ecosystem. We felt that with the impacts of sequestration hitting our region it was important to move the economic needle in the direction of low-cost of entry, high growth startups and that the only way to do this was to bring local entrepreneurs, interested enthusiasts and local economic development authorities together with angel and venture capital investors from Silicon Valley, Washington DC, and Boston together for 54 hours to give the talent in this area a platform for launching.”

WHY HOLD THE EVENT AT GERMANNA?

“We have the facilities and support, and we work closely with the business community, so it’s a good fit,” said Germanna Center for Workforce and Community Education Interim Vice President Martha O’Keefe. Germanna is one of the sponsors of Startup Weekend Fredericksburg.

She said GCC’s Center for Workforce provides training and professional development for the region’s business community, including courses and programs supporting small businesses. And, she pointed out, two-year college degree are available, also meeting the needs of businesses in our service region.

“We work closely with the region’s offices of economic development to respond to workforce needs,” O’Keefe said. “We work collaboratively with offices of economic development, K-12 school divisions, other higher education schools, Chambers of Commerce, etc. to help connect the business community to programs and resources.”

O’Keefe said Germanna Workforce training pivots quickly to meet the needs of companies, including startups

A HEAVY HITTING LINEUP OF JUDGES AND COACHES

“People who are considering either pitching or who are just curious about a SUW event and are on the fence should know that if they don’t register, they’ll be missing a great opportunity to get plugged in to, network with, and benefit from the experience of our amazing line up of judges and coaches,” Goodwin said.

“We have startup gurus and investors like Paul Singh, founder of Dashboard io and Jonathon Perrelli of Fortify Funding judging. We have serial entrepreneurs, subject matter experts in web/mobile strategy and implementation, data analytics, commercialization, user interface/experience design, and Agile and SCRUM development methodologies, and marketing all in one place who are excited to meet with and help the teams. “

Goodwin said those interested in starting up businesses can't get the level of personal, one on one interaction, feedback, and networking from any other event for $100.

“We also have Whitney Johnson, who co-founded Rose Park Advisors keynote speaking and judging at the event. I met Whitney at a conference for women in business last June and we just really connected. She is a committed to increasing the number of women in business who have a dream they want to follow and aren't sure how to make it happen. “