Germanna names C. Douglas Elliott VP for Institutional Advancement

C. Douglas Elliott has been named Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Germanna Community College.  He will also serve as Executive Director of the GCC Educational Foundation.

His responsibilities will include planning, leadership and implementation of all college fundraising initiatives, grant writing, planned giving, endowment, scholarships, and alumni research and records, grant writing, planned giving, scholarships and alumni and parent engagement programs. He will also be responsible for planning, leadership and implementation of all college marketing and public information activities and high-level support for community and government relations activities. Elliott will lead a team of development and marketing/public information professionals and administrative staff.

He was an instructor for a number of years at Rollins College’s Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center.

 Elliott has served in leadership positions in advancement and marketing for a diverse group of nonprofit institutions from higher education to social service agencies to global entities such as the Smithsonian Institution and the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

At the Smithsonian, he was Director of National Development from 1997-2003. At the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, he served as Vice President of International Development and Marketing from 2003-2006.

Previously, he had served as vice president for several publishing firms and then as president of his own award-winning company, Elliott & Clark Publishing, which he founded.

He coauthored two books, Florida Rediscovered and Vietnam:  Images from Combat Photographers.

Elliott is an avid outdoorsman and student of American history.

 

C. Douglas Elliott

Germanna to offer classes at UMW's Dahlgren campus

Germanna Community College will begin offering classes in partnership with the University of Mary Washington at UMW’s Dahlgren campus for the fall 2013 semester on Tuesday, Aug. 20 as part of a pilot program to gauge interest.

The first three classes Germanna will offer at Dahlgren are Calculus with Analytic Geometry 1, Calculus with Analytic Geometry 2 and Introduction to Engineering.

 “Germanna is continuously seeking new ways of responding to the educational needs of area active duty members of the armed services, veterans, and their families,” said GCC Vice President for Academic Affairs and Student Services Ann Woolford.

 “Hundreds of potential students at the various Dahlgren installations would find the UMW Dahlgren campus accessible and convenient,” Woolford said, “Germanna is exploring how it may offer these students meaningful college programs designed to meet their specific needs. To that end, we are exploring several options of program delivery, including online, hybrid, and face- to-face classes leading to a certificate or degree.”

The three classes  are part of the college’s Engineering curriculum. Students who earn an Associate of Science degree in Engineering at Germanna and transfer to a four-year college or university  are on a less expensive path to  a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. Dr. Davyda Hammond, Germanna’s Engineering Department chair said.

 Because Germanna has guaranteed admission articulation agreements with both the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech,  Hammond said: “If you get at least a ‘B’ in all your engineering and science and math classes at GCC and an overall GPA of 3.2, you’re guaranteed admission into the schools of engineering at  U.Va. and Virginia Tech. They get so many applications at Tech that automatically knowing you’re getting in is a real advantage.”

Germanna Recruiter Kimberly Viarella will present information sessions for potential students on Wednesday, July 31 at the Dahlgren campus.

1500 - 1600     Assistance with application and admission paperwork for Aug. 20, 2013 classes

1600 -  1700   Overview of Germanna programs.

1700 - 1800     Germanna representatives will answer questions and accept unofficial transcripts.

For more information, call Germanna Recruiter Viarella at 540-834-1961 or email her at Kviarella@germanna.edu.

The UMW Dahlgren Campus Center for Education and Research opened in January 2012, and is designed to support the continuing educational and professional development of the region’s engineers, scientists, and administrative professionals by providing educational programs, services, and leased facilities to the Naval Support Activity South Potomac commands, defense contractors, and the professional community.

 The center is located at 4224 University Drive in King George County.

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GCC Center for Workforce Dean Martha O'Keefe named to national board

Martha O’Keefe, Dean of Workforce and Professional Development at the Germanna Community College Center for Workforce and Community Education, has been appointed to the board of the National Council for Continuing Education and Training.

NCCET, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, is committed to keeping members up to date on new trends and cutting edge programs from across the country.

O’Keefe was appointed one of three At-Large Directors.

She has worked at Germanna for 12 years. She says of her work at GCC’s Center for Workforce: “It's an opportunity to directly impact the lives of others, by opening doors and possibilities that might otherwise have been closed to them.”

In November 2012, O'Keefe received the Patricia Lacey Metzger Award for achievement during the 19th annual Leadership Colloquium for Professional Women at the University of Mary Washington.

Center for Workforce Dean Martha O'Keefe

GCC interns learning an 'incredible amount in a very short time' at NIH

Sara Tenda, a 2013 Germanna Community College graduate, is spending her summer as part of a group working on developing better treatments for high-risk neuroblastoma patients.
She’s doing lab research at the Cell & Molecular Biology Section, Pediatric Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute, near Bethesda, Md.  According to the National Cancer Society Web site, neuroblastoma is a form of cancer that develops in the nervous system of embryos and fetuses and affects young children.

Sara Tenda

Tenda and fellow Germanna student Ulisses Santamaria are part of the 2013 National Institute of Health Community College Summer Enrichment Program. It’s intended to boost the number of community college students who plan on careers in health care and research as they transfer to four-year colleges and universities.
In addition to doing full time research in a laboratory or on an NIH project, they take courses and attend workshops.
Tenda and Santamaria are early success stories for Germanna’s new Experiential Learning internship program.
“It’s much more intense than I expected it to be,”  Tenda, who is transferring to Virginia Commonwealth University says of her internship. “There has been quite a learning curve for me. It’s an incredible amount in a very short amount of time. That makes it very intense.”
She says she hadn’t decided whether she wanted to go into medical research or become a practicing physician. Now Tenda is leaning toward clinical research or becoming a physician. She plans to apply to medical school after getting her bachelor’s degree at VCU.
Tenda, who is 36 years old, lives in Spotsylvania County. She’s a graduate of Potomac High School in Dumfries.

Ulisses Santamaria

She said Cathy Walsh, her Biology 101 instructor at Germanna: “was extremely helpful. She wrote the letter recommending me-- and she must’ve done a very good job, because I’m here.”
Santamaria, an 18-year-old Spotsylvania County native and Courtland High graduate, is being mentored by Dr. Alon Poleg-Polsky in research involving the structure and function of the retina at the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke in Bethesda. The work involves investigation into how the retina performs preliminary image processing and transmits visual information to the brain.
In an email, he says he’s been studying contrast sensitivity in mouse retinal ganglion cells.
The work is not for the squeamish.
Santamaria writes: “We take mice and we unfortunately do kill them (very quickly, I promise), and then we extract their eyes and place them in a petri dish full of a saline solution and a carbogen (carbon and oxygen) tube to keep the cells in the eye alive. Then we cut open the eye and clean it out until only the shell of the eyes and the retina is left. Then we cut the retina in half to have two specimens to work with per eye. Then we take the retina and mount it onto a harp (A square wire of platinum with nylon strings going across it to keep retinas in place), and then put it into a profusion chamber (means that it's kept at the body's temperature, and constantly having saline solution in the chamber using a setup akin to a drip IV in a hospital) under a confocal microscope and view it using a monitor.”
Like Tenda, Santamaria says he’s learning a lot in a short time and he loves it.
Santamaria says Dr. Trudy Witt, an assistant professor of biology at Germanna,  is one of the teachers who made a difference for him.
For more information on Germanna’s internship program,  email Cheri Ober, its coordinator,  at cober@germanna.edu or go to http://www.germanna.edu/Students/Experiential_Learning_Center/for_students/

Please join us in a celebration of Dean Mary Blessing Gilkey's life Aug. 8

Please join us in a Celebration of Life in remembrance of Mary Blessing Gilkey, M.S.N., PMHCNS-BC, Germanna's Dean of Nursing & Health Technologies, to be held at 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 8, at the Daniel Technology Center, 18121 Technology Drive in Culpeper. The event is open to the public.
For more information, please email pshifflett@germanna.edu.

New Dental Assisting Program filling one area skills gap

 

Germanna Community College’s new Dental Assisting Program is helping to fill in some of the holes that make up our area’s skills gap.

The state of Virginia began requiring training for the job in 2010 on two levels. Since then, qualified dental assistants have been hard to come by.

“We’re putting trained people out there in the workforce,” said Misty Mesimer, GCC’s Dental Assisting Program Director and Dental Hygiene Program Local Coordinator.

 Dental Assistant I requires a certificate.  GCC’s certificate program prepares students to take the national dental assisting exam in one year. After passing that exam,  students are eligible to pursue a Dental Assistant II degree.

 Dental Assistant II requires an associate’s degree. Germanna and Northern Virginia Community College jointly offer an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Dental Hygiene through a distance learning partnership. Students may complete general education courses at Germanna.

Dental assistants with a degree may earn $17 to $21 an hour, Mesimer said.

 In one 14-day period, students and faculty at GCC’s Dental Assisting clinic provided $14,206.00 worth of dental services (exams, cleanings, x-rays, fillings, and extractions) to the community. 

 Germanna’s Dental Hygiene Program provided in kind dental hygiene services to adults with development disabilities amounting to $29,346 for all of the 2012 calendar year. 

 

 

New Germanna Dean Shashuna Gray: 'It [isn't] just about the answer'

Shashuna Gray had straight A’s until she took a biology class in the tenth grade. The toughest teacher she’d ever had gave her a B. But, because of his approach to teaching, she decided to become a biology teacher.

New Dean of the Arts and Sciences Shashuna Gray

“It wasn’t just about the answer,” says Gray, named Germanna’s new dean of the Arts and Sciences in June of 2013. “It was about why the answer was important and how it would impact you. Too many students just repeat facts, and they become disengaged and disinterested.” She says too many decide they don’t like science because they don’t understand how it relates to them as individuals.

 She believed that through teaching biology, she could ease the anxiety many have about the study of science in general.  “I wanted,” Dean Gray says, “to make the students feel comfortable in the classroom and make a difference.  I have a passion for teaching and for helping students succeed.”

 At Germanna, she says, helping students succeed goes well beyond the classroom.

Germanna students, she says, “find themselves in an environment where they can come to faculty when they have other problems--not just enrolling in classes and having their financial aid approved.

“I see so many students in Target and Panera who tell me about their lives,” Dean Gray says. “They really feel we care about them, whether they’re pursuing a degree or just taking one class.  And we do. They’re part of GCC family.” Both on the credit side and through the college’s non-credit Workforce Development side, she says, “We’re able to provide students skills and opportunities they might not otherwise have a chance to develop, and to find their passion.”

She has 19 years of college teaching experience.  Eight of those years have been in the Virginia Community College System. A doctoral student in Old Dominion University’s Community College Leadership Program, Dean Gray has both a bachelor of science degree and a master of science degree in biology from Alabama State University. She spent the last year serving for a year as acting dean of Arts and Sciences. Before that, she was a faculty member teaching biology and microbiology.

 
Dean Gray, who lives in North Stafford, has a daughter attending Germanna and two younger children.

“I love Germanna and I believe in it 100 percent,” she says. “I really believe in the community college system.”