4Cs Member, Former Southbury Woman Wins Community-Engaged Educator Award

WINSTED – Former Southbury resident Tara Jo Holmberg, Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges (4Cs) member and Northwestern Connecticut Community College Professor of Environmental Science and Biology, was recently named the Connecticut Community Engaged Educator of 2016 by the Connecticut Campus Compact.

Holmberg received the award for significantly influencing student civic learning and development. She did this through creating and furthering a culture of engagement by working with campus leadership, supporting faculty/staff engagement, and fostering meaningful community partnerships.

“Tara Jo is a perfect example of the 4Cs Culture of Commitment in action,” said 4Cs President Bryan Bonina of Bristol. “From Norwalk to Norwich, throughout our 12 community college system, faculty and staff members like Tara Jo are going the extra mile to make a difference in the lives of students.”

“They’re pursuing advanced degrees on their own time, adopting new approaches to their courses and establishing new linkages with the community to give new meaning to the phrase ‘community college education,’ ” he said. “Hats off to them for their dedication.”

The 4Cs is a union representing some 4,000 community college faculty and staff.

Throughout her 14 years at NCCC, Holmberg has incorporated a number of different service-learning and civic-engagement projects into classes such as Ecology, Botany, and Environmental Science. Students in her courses learn about natural systems and give back to the community by monitoring local impaired watersheds over time, collecting information on local forests to identify changes in the forest ecosystems, gathering behavioral data on rare and endangered waterfowl, and constructing rain, pollinator, and buffer gardens on campus to repair natural habitats along the Still River, which runs through the NCCC campus.

In November, she will be presenting the results of this work at the National Association of Biology Teachers conference in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to the outreach within her classes, she has developed environmental and conservation educational programming for the larger community of the northwest corner of Connecticut. She has been a Board Member of the Northwest Conservation District since 2010 and has served with several other community organizations over the years.

She is the Department Chair of the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math departments and currently advises for the Environmental Science, Natural Resources, and Engineering/Manufacturing programs. She also serves as the Chair of the Community Engagement Committee and the Chair of the Sustainability Committee.

On June 2, she was recognized with several other Campus Compact award winners at the Civic Action Summit held at Southern Connecticut State University.

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