Great Bay Community College Honors Distinguished Leaders

From Great Bay Community College:

PORTSMOUTH, NH - Great Bay Community College hosted its annual Distinguished Leaders Award reception on Thursday evening, October 13, 2016. The event is the College’s largest fundraiser in support of scholarships and student support services and also serves to highlight the relationship between the College and its external community partners. This year, the focus was on the healthcare industry. Among those honored were Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Wentworth- Douglass Hospital, Exeter Health Resources and Frisbie Memorial Hospital.

“Our partnerships with the healthcare community span decades” said College President Will Arvelo. “They have provided input on curriculum, offered sites for clinical experiences that are essential to our students, served on our advisory boards and worked with us to develop programs to serve specific populations. We in turn, have been able to provide relevant programs and a talented pool of employees willing to work and stay in New Hampshire from surgical technologists, nurses, massage therapists, and medical assistants to administrative and IT workers.”

The featured speaker at the event was Rachel Rowe, President and CEO of Granite Health, a unique partnership of six of the leading healthcare systems in New Hampshire. With their network of primary care providers and specialists in over 150 practice sites, a broad scope of services, and a shared data driven population health management program, these six health systems leverage their shared resources to provide better, more seamless care for patients and better health for their populations.

“Ms. Rowe brought a broad view of healthcare in New Hampshire and how it is changing” said Arvelo. “Healthcare services and their evolution will continue to intersect with education and the need for a skilled workforce. Great Bay looks forward to continuing to collaborate with all Seacoast health services organizations to ensure together we are meeting the needs of our communities.”

Student speakers at the event included Dakota Vrotacoe of Barrington, NH, a first year student in the College’s Surgical Technology program. Vrotacoe was inspired to start a career in healthcare after being hospitalized for Lyme disease. “Before Lyme,” said Vrotacoe “I never knew that any of these medical procedures existed - that people actually had the skills and knowledge to do this stuff. After leaving the hospital, I wanted to work in healthcare.” After doing a cost analysis, he found that his first year’s pay as a Surge or Radiological tech, although good, would not equal even what the tuition would be for just one year of a four year program. “My two-year degree at GBCC in the Surgical Technology program would be paid off within the first year of working.”

For the first time, the annual event was held on campus at the College’s new 20,000 square foot Student Success Center in Portsmouth. The space was designed not only to support student leadership activities, but also to enable Great Bay to host events of this nature, according Arvelo. The facility was transformed for the evening to seat over 400 guests, with a dinner provided by Fosters’ Clambake. “Not only were we able to double capacity of this event from previous years, but attendees experienced firsthand the opportunities created by this new space on our campus.”

Since 2012, the annual Distinguished Leaders Award event has raised over $1.2 Million in support of student through corporate and individual generosity. To date over 300_students have received scholarship funds raised at the annual event. Major supporters of this year’s event included: Exeter Health Resources, Frisbie Memorial Hospital, Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Granite State College, Southern NH University, University of New Hampshire, SIG SAUER, Lonza Biologics, Safran Aerospace Composites, Albany International Corp., Willis Programs, LTC Partners, Little Harbour Charitable Foundation, David and JoAnn Hampson, Jackie Eastwood & Mike McClurken, Mike and Susan Daigle, and an anonymous donor.

“We do one major fundraiser a year,” said Arvelo “but this one event enables hundreds of students to take on less student loan debt and to complete their degrees in a shorter amount of time. For many that means a quicker road to employment, for others, borrowing less at Great Bay means they will have more financial resources to continue their education at a four-year school where their tuition costs will be higher.”

Great Bay Community College is a comprehensive postsecondary institution offering quality academic and professional and technical education in support of workforce development and lifelong learning. Great Bay Community College is part of the Community College System of New Hampshire, a public system of higher education consisting of seven colleges in Berlin, Claremont, Laconia, Concord, Manchester, Nashua, and Portsmouth. The colleges offer Associate degrees and career training in technical, professional and general fields, including transfer pathways to baccalaureate degrees. The college’s second campus, the Advanced Technology & Academic Center is now open in Rochester offering academic courses and a degree program in Advanced Composites Manufacturing. For more information on Great Bay Community College, visit here.

Images via Great Bay Community College