Editorial: Welcome back to NECC

Summer semester is over and NECC is preparing to welcome new students and old into the Fall 2014 semester.

There has been construction re-paving areas by the Sports and Fitness Center and Spurk (C) building on the Haverhill campus, and Lawrence has seen considerable progress over the last year in expanding campus and construction of the El Hefni Allied Health and Technology Center.

Photo of Northern Essex Community College's Campus, featuring the library and the Behrakis One Stop Center
NECC is freshly landscaped and ready for a new semester. Photo by Faith Gregory

New students: check out the Follett Bookstore on the second floor of the Behrakis Building (also known as the One-Stop) on the Haverhill campus as well as the Nexdine Cafe in the Spurk building.

The NECC Observer has seen some changes as well. We welcome three new editors: Mike Alongi in Sports, Kim Whiting in Arts and Entertainment and Rebecca Westerman in Features.

We’re also saying farewell to last year’s Editor in Chief, Matt Gingras, as well as Kathryn Gagnon, the Campus Life Editor, Everson Taveras, the Features Editor and Esther Nieves, the Sports Editor.

Faith Gregory has moved from Arts and Entertainment to the position of Editor in Chief, and is excited to step into the role and attempt to fill Matt’s shoes.

We’re also excited to announce the launch of our new website. We’ll be posting stories from the print paper edition, as well as exclusive extended and advance content. It’s a high priority of ours to add new value to our readers’ experience on the website, not just duplicate the print content. Particularly, we’re looking forward to more comprehensive event tracking and breaking news.

Lastly, the NECC Observer would like to announce that we are looking to hire a new Lawrence Campus Editor. The Lawrence Campus section will be replacing the Campus Life section, because we’ve noticed that, for the purposes of our paper, ‘Campus Life’ and ‘News’ mean the same thing, so we figured we could make better use of that page and job opening.

We’re looking for a student who has taken at least Journalism 1 or is in enrolled in it for the Fall 2014 semester, and who would be interested in focusing their coverage on events taking place on the Lawrence Campus. Contact the NECC Observer’s advisor, Mary Jo Shafer, at mshafer@necc.mass.edu if interested.

We’re also always interested in a dialogue with the students of NECC: submit letters to the editor to observer@necc.mass.edu.