Two Texas colleges in the Dallas County Community College District will provide training for Dallas-area workers with grants from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Mountain View College received a $429,573 Skills Development Grant to partner with the Dolco Packaging Division of Tekni-Plex Inc. to provide training for the company’s Dallas-based workforce. Customized training will help 189 new and current workers get educated on industry-related topics. Instruction will focus on circuits, control systems, welding, tooling and molding construction. When they complete the training, Dolco workers will earn an average hourly wage of $17.65.
El Centro College will use a $126,000 Self-Sufficiency Fund grant to help 60 individuals transition into the workforce by providing them job training for occupations such as licensed insurance sales producers. The funding also will assist the college in developing the technical education and learning environment that will lead to industry-recognized certificates and credentials.
Alabama
Wallace Community College (WCC) nursing students will have more scholarship opportunities thanks to a $50,000 donation from Lew and Carol Humphrey. The funding will endow The Omar Lewis and Carol Baker Humphrey Nursing Scholarship, which will provide $2,500 in tuition assistance each year to a single parent majoring in a nursing field. The Humphreys both attended WCC and were members of the first graduating class in 1967. Lew Humphrey serves on the WCC Foundation board.
“As successful alumni, they demonstrate what can be accomplished through the quality education provided by WCC,” President Linda C. Young said of the Humphreys. “As endowed scholarship donors, they remind current and future students that those who have come before are willing to invest both today and tomorrow in WCC’s most valuable resources — our students.”
Arizona
Arizona Western College (AWC) will ramp up recycling efforts this spring using a $5,000 grant from the Arizona Recycling Coalition. AWC’s Greater Reduction of Waste (G.R.O.W.) Project seeks to expand the college’s current recycling program through the purchase of additional recycling bins for building lobbies and on the walkways between campus buildings. By adding more bins, it is expected that recyclables on campus will increase by 50 percent and reduce 20 percent of the Yuma campus’ trash sent to local landfills.
New York
Community colleges — and the students they serve — will benefit from a $1-million grant to New York University (NYU) from the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation. The grant backs the expansion of NYU’s Community College Transfer Opportunity Program (CCTOP), which partners with area community colleges to provide transfer opportunities to programs at NYU and provides financial aid packages to high-need students.
The grant will help 20 students from LaGuardia Community College and other two-year colleges in the region to transfer over the next five years into NYU’s College of Arts and Science. The students will complete their bachelor’s degrees with a major in the humanities. A portion of their studies will be devoted to the culture and history of Long Island and the larger New York region.
North Carolina
Forsyth Technical Community College was grateful this Thanksgiving for a $2.8 million gift from Robert L. and Elizabeth M. Strickland. It is the largest donation by an individual donor in the history of the college. The funding will endow a newly created director position at Forsyth Tech’s Career Center. The new director will provide leadership and vision in coordinating the development and operation of all career development programs provided by the college.
“Betty and I have both long believed that you don’t go to college simply to learn how to make a living — you also go to college to learn how to live,” Bob Strickland said in a release. “It is our fondest hope that this new Career Center will be able to give our community’s students an extra boost of the guidance, information and mentoring wisdom they’ll need to propel their Forsyth Tech education into exciting and productive careers — and thereby we hope, happy and fulfilling lives for themselves and their families.”
The college board of trustees has renamed the building the Robert L. Strickland Center. Strickland is the former chairman of Lowe’s Companies, Inc. and was a strong advocate for the development of the community college system through serving as a member of the North Carolina General Assembly from 1961-63 and as a founding trustee at Wilkes Community College in 1965.
