Southwestern Community College’s (SCC’s) health sciences division is expanding thanks to a $500,000 grant from Dogwood Health Trust.
The funding will establish a Project SHIFT (SCC Health-career Initiative for Teens) office, which aims to recruit enough prospective students to maximize the capacity of the North Carolina college’s 16 healthcare career fields.
Included in the grant are salaries for two full-time positions and stipends for ambassadors to represent the health sciences programs. There’s also funding to endow scholarships for Project SHIFT participants and funding for mobile demonstration kits that can be taken to local high schools and community events to help demonstrate what’s involved in each career path.
The initial grant, which marks Dogwood’s largest investment to date at SCC, covers the Project SHIFT office for two years.
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Fayetteville Technical Community College (FTCC) trustee William “Bill” L. Hedgepeth II donated $5,000 to an endowed scholarship that honors his late father and mother.
He created the scholarship in December 2021 with a $15,000 donation as a surprise Christmas gift for his father, William Lee Hedgepeth, who was then 85 years old. His father died the following October. His mother, Lottie Moore Hedgepeth, died the following month.
The scholarship is for students enrolled in FTCC’s business program, with first preference given to students studying accounting. William L. Hedgepeth was a retired accountant, as well as a U.S. Air Force veteran.
FTCC also recently received a $1,700 donation from the Food Lion Feeds Charitable Foundation to help stock its food pantry shelves. The pantry opened in 2020 in response to the large number of students who were facing a loss of income because of the pandemic. It has assisted more than 3,000 people since it opened.
Georgia
Georgia Piedmont Technical College (GPTC) will use a $1.65 million grant to integrate technology that will help provide a safe learning and working environment for students and staff.
The funds are part of Georgia’s $83.5 million in Covid relief funds through the Public Safety and Community Violence Reduction (PSCVRG) Grant Program. A total of 118 agencies/projects have been approved for the funding. GPTC is the only college in the Technical College System of Georgia listed on the grant.
Over the next three years, the grant funds primarily will be used toward the installation of controlled exterior door access points, campus cameras and surveillance systems, as well as electronic license plate readers.
“We’re working smarter to adopt a strategy of implementing technology into our emergency response tactics,” said Chris Hughes, GPTC police chief.
Maryland
Montgomery College’s foundation is establishing the Islamic Community Building Opportunities Scholarship thanks to four donors from the Islamic community who have pledged $34,000 over five years.
Scholarships will go to students who show financial need and who are committed to increasing the representation of Islamic individuals in postsecondary education.
The donors’ aim is to increase college enrollment among young people in the Islamic community, including among new immigrant families for whom English is not their first language.
“We just felt like we want to be a community of giving, and charity is one of our core principles. Instead of trying to do everything on our own, we trust Montgomery College to establish a scholarship that everyone has access to,” said Thameem Khan, one of four founding donors to the Islamic Community Building Opportunities Scholarship. The other donors are the A & A Family Charitable Gift Fund, led by Aamir Saleem; Asim Shafiq; and Ali Khan.
Massachusetts
Bristol Community College has received a $75,000 capital grant through the Cultural Facilities Fund, administered by MassDevelopment and the Mass Cultural Council, for updated lighting and flooring at Bristol’s Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery.
The gallery supports the educational mission of the college, offers an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and enriches the environment of our communities. Each year, the gallery presents a variety of art exhibitions and educational programming that reflect the diversity and vitality of contemporary art in the region.
The Cultural Facilities Fund provides capital and planning grants to nonprofit organizations, colleges and municipalities that own or operate facilities primarily focused on the arts, humanities and sciences.
New Jersey
Bergen Community College has received a five-year, $4.5 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to help contribute to the growth of future food, agriculture, natural resources and human sciences (FANH) professionals.
With the grant, Bergen will develop numerous initiatives to serve approximately 600 students. It will enhance its current academic offerings to include learning opportunities on sustainable food production and safety practices, waste management and agribusiness. One of the initiatives will be to create a farm-to-table pipeline of food grown at the college for distribution at the Bergen Cares Center, which is an on-campus food pantry and social services resource.
Bergen will offer paid experiential learning opportunities, scholarships and enhanced coursework in fields related to the grant. The college offers several programs in FANH fields, including culinary arts, environmental science and horticulture.
Pennsylvania
A $6,900 grant will enable Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) to expand its campus ecosystem project and include the community in environmental education.
The grant comes from the Lehigh Valley Greenways Conservation Landscape and will create a partnership between LCCC and Promise Neighborhoods to develop an environmental program next summer for at-risk members of the community.
The grant will, in part, be used to adapt a field biology course to increase environmental justice, conservation and climate change topics, and it will support volunteer activities to increase awareness of the benefits of the natural world and the importance of conservation. Participants in the course will incude those engaged in Promise Neighborhoods’ PromiseCorps program.
