Tag Archives: NECC

Arts and Entertainment

NECC Music Program

 

By Sarah Tiso

The Music Department at NECC is a small yet strong department that is searching for a voice and proper space on campus. With countless problems in this program, it can seem that this department doesn’t supply a good education for a music students. However, this program is a stepping stone for young musicians that want to go on and make a career out of music.

Dr. Langer, the Music Department Director, said, “What I want to see happen is that people in the college and the community see that we have an active and engaging program.”

Ingrid Marstaller, 74, attended NECC as a music major from 2006 to 2012, and is now a music theory, aural skills and piano tutor at NECC. She said, “The music department has excellent teachers but is being undermined by the administration through pay cuts and other restrictions. Both Dr. Langer and Professor Dietrich, a piano instructor, work very hard to maintain the quality of instruction.”

Lindsey Michaud, a 20 year old music major, said NECC offers “four semesters of theory, aural skills, applied music, and more. Other community colleges only offer a couple of music classes, not enough to complete a degree. These classes are also transferable to lots of state schools.”

It isn’t the program that needs expansion — music majors need the room to play and sing comfortably, along with proper equipment.

“My goal has been to produce the best quality program that we can possibly offer with what we have. Students that come here to major in music should be able to transfer successfully to any four-year institution they choose because they have been well prepared,” said Langer.

Michaud is observing the conditions of the department as a student, and said, “The pianos are incredibly out of tune which is due to the lack of climate control in these rooms. The air is dry, breathing in to play an instrument or sing dries your throat.”

Marstaller says, “We have to (ask) for money to replace defective keyboards and benches, getting pianos tuned and keeping computers running. Our hardware is outdated and
several of the practice room pianos don’t always work.”

The classroom TC220 is all the department has for ensemble rehearsals. Michaud said, “The walls and ceiling are not constructed with the proper acoustics so the sound we produce is
pretty crappy honestly. We also do not have a proper performance hall or auditorium.”

Feelings of being isolated from the rest of the school is a consistent tone in this department as well. Marstaller said, “It has always seemed to me that the music department was an afterthought and not considered important.”

“Being a music student, I don’t feel included as much as students of different majors,” said Michaud. “Some of the faculty on campus even seem to not take us seriously because we choose to major in music. If we had a performing arts center, I think people would recognize us more and realize that we are just as important as any other student.”

Langer says that students “often have to take more classes and are expected to be active as students as well as developing and performing musicians both individually and within groups.”

Michaud said, “I am so glad to have actually been able to be a music student, taking 6 or more music courses each semester, and receive a fantastic education at an affordable cost.”

Funding is an issue for all the departments on campus, but Marstaller said it’s more than that. “I would like to see the college administration support the music program both financially and by promoting it throughout the campus as well as in the advertising. Flyers don’t usually even mention that it exists.”

Michaud said that the department needs high schools to know about the department.

“None of us knew about this program before deciding to go to NECC. I didn’t know until browsing through a course catalog. By the time I graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in music education, I will only have about $15,000 in loans to pay off. Anyone who went to a 4 year university right away is probably looking at over $80,000 they will have to pay off. That is what this program has done for me.”

Sports

NECC Snow Plans For Spring Season

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With the spring sports season ready to get underway within the next two weeks, NECC is trying to find a way to cope with all the snow that still blankets all the playing fields. While the baseball team has their yearly trip to Florida for the start of their season, they will still return to a snow-covered diamond. The softball and track team face the same dilemma.

Athletic Director Sue MacAvoy has been looking for places to play in the meantime.
“We’ve been talking to some places around here with turf fields, like Haverhill Stadium,” she said. “Baseball and softball have been practicing there a bit, with track running around the perimeter.”

But Haverhill Stadium has one of the very few turf fields in the area, making it hard to find time to get out there.

“Every school around wants to practice and play out there,” MacAvoy said. “It’s just hard to find times that work for everybody.”

MacAvoy estimates that the fields on the Haverhill campus won’t be ready until at least mid-April, especially with the snowfall this past weekend. In the meantime, the Knights’ baseball team has one game scheduled at Haverhill Stadium, against Bunker Hill Community College on Saturday, March 28.

The weather has certainly played a part in the limited numbers for the track program so far, making it hard to new head coach Beau Couture to get a feel for his team.

The softball team has been throwing the ball around in the gym on campus for the most part. They’ve been practicing since about January, and have been outside at Haverhill Stadium four times. The girls are just itching to get out on the field, and they’ve ramped up their practices to five days a week. The Knights are scheduled to begin their season on Saturday, March 28 against NHTI. The game is scheduled to be played on the Haverhill campus, but there is a possibility that it will be moved to NHTI’s home field in Concord.

This will be the first season that softball will be a full varsity sport at NECC.

So while the snow plows try to move some of the snow off the track to help get the weight off it, MacAvoy will continue to look for ways to get her teams out onto the field for the spring sports season.

Sports

Women’s basketball gearing up for season

 

NECC women’s basketball coach Brent Bass has been working since last winter to bring a competitive women’s basketball team to the floor for the 2014-2015 season.  Coach Bass, in his first year as the head coach, has been recruiting at high schools all over the area over the past year in hopes of bringing in new talent.

Bass spent a lot of time speaking with local high school coaches and asking about players they have who are interested in attending NECC.  High schools in Lawrence, Lowell, Methuen, Haverhill and southern New Hampshire were all contacted.  Bass also attended various summer leagues and camps for high school players, hoping to scout recruits for this year and possibly the 2015-2016 season.  Over this past summer, Bass has spent time following up with many of these recruits and gauging their interest in the program.

In addition, Bass has taken advantage of the many open houses that NECC offers, and he has gotten plenty of exposure for the program, which has been an issue in the past.  Coach Bass’s goal is to make the program more visible not only around campus but also in the community.  He understands that there are other programs for these players to choose.  Bass even admits that he has lost a few recruits to nearby Middlesex Community College and other Division III basketball programs, which he says is “just a part of the game.”

“There’s a lot of options out there, so you really have to sell the NECC product to these girls.  That means education and basketball,” said Bass.

Coach Bass has plenty of work still to do with his team.  Once he has a satisfactory amount of players to commit, which he hopes will be 10-12, he has to make sure that those commitments are kept.  Bass knows that, as community college students, there are many other commitments, such as a job or a family, that can take priority over basketball.

In response to this, Bass is making an effort to make the team much more accessible for the players.  One way he is doing this is with the flexibility of practice times.  On Mondays and Wednesdays, which are known to be heavier schoolwork days, Bass runs practice later in the day at 7 p.m.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the lighter workload days, practice begins at 3 p.m.  In addition, the will be practice on Saturday mornings.

Bass hopes that this staggered practice schedule will help those players who may have work after class some days during the week, or have one day where classes run until the evening.  This way, all of the players will be able to make it to some practice over the course of the week, even if they can’t make it to every single one.

As far as the way practices are run, coach Bass has a system that he’s been using in his years as an AAU coach in the area.  He has a simple playing philosophy that he is always repeating: “defense, rebound, and run.”  In order to play this style well, Bass focuses on many different skill work drills, such as dribbling and passing, in order to help ensure ball control.  Ball control is a large part of Bass’s game plan, as well as a tight, clamp-down defense.

Bass is a big proponent of playing smart basketball.  His practices are very regimented, focused on building up players’ fundamentals and learning to execute plays.  He also knows that basketball is a game of running and jumping, so conditioning is a big part of his preparation.

“I think it’s one of the more physically taxing sports out there, and you need to be able to run,” said Bass.

Practices are fast-paced, changing between drills with little rest, and consist of various cardio-workouts and team drills.

Practice begins on Monday, Oct. 6 in the Sport and Fitness Center.  This gives the Knights just over a month to prepare for their first game against Lincoln Technical Institute on November 8.  This season, the schedule is heaviest in the months of November and January.  The Knights kick off the season with six games before Thanksgiving break, and there are 10 games in January once winter break is over.

Coach Bass uses his past experiences as a coach and instructor to help him lead the Knights this year.  Bass has been an AAU instructor and coach since 1999.  In those 15 years of experience, he has been a coach for the Bay State Blizzards programs and has also coached various ages from both genders.  Bass came to NECC in 2012 as an assistant coach, and took over the head coaching position in the summer of 2013.  He knows that the key to getting good players is selling the school as well as the program, and he’s already been doing so.

“I would love to build a program here.  It’s going to be a quality program that will represent the school well,” Bass said.

The test begins on October 6, when Bass and his new recruits begin their preparations for a great 2014-2015 season.  With a tough schedule on the horizon, the hard work is going to have to begin right away.

Sports

NECC Knights softball preparing for Spring 2015

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The NECC Knights softball team is preparing for the second year in the program’s history, and their work has already begun this semester.  The Knights will be playing a short scrimmage season this fall, with practice through October and highlighted by two scrimmage games, one on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014 against New Hampshire Technical Institute and another the next day, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014 against Southern Maine.

Both games are home games for the Knights, in the softball field next to the Sport and Fitness Center on the Haverhill campus.

While the Knights would love to play more than two back-to-back scrimmage games this fall, that is all that is allowed by NJCAA protocol.  In addition, once practices end this fall, coach Robert Gillespie won’t be able to have team activities all winter.

However, many players on the softball team are planning to take part in a kickboxing club in order to stay fit over the winter break.  Coach Gillespie fully supports this, saying that he “would just like to see them stay active.”  Practice will begin again in mid-February, and more preparations for the main spring season will be made.

The first season in the program’s history was mainly a building year.  Unable to become a varsity team due to the uncertainty of fielding a full team, the Knights were classified as a club team, meaning they would not play a full schedule.  With the addition of terrible weather last spring, the Knights were only able to play nine games all season.  This year will be different, however.  The Knights have become a varsity squad this year, and coach Gillespie assures that they will play at least 20 games this spring season, a full schedule.

The Knights are certainly looking to be competitive this spring with nine returning players from the first year of the program.  In addition, Coach Gillespie has done a great job of recruiting, bringing in all-around talent like Tarah Reilly of North Reading, who Gillespie said, “has a great glove in the field and knows how to swing the bat.”  Coach Gillespie will be bringing in six or seven recruits to the Knights’ team this year, and he fully expects the team to be competitive.

Gillespie said, “we’ll really have a truer test with the scrimmage games this week, but we look good so far and I expect us to really compete this year.”

A big part of being competitive this season according to Gillespie is pitching.

“To me, pitching is huge.  We have a pitcher this year, which is what we were missing,”  said Gillespie.

The pitcher he is referring to is one of the new recruits that Gillespie has, Nodine Webster.  Webster, a Wells, Maine native, throws a lot of strikes and is “a legit pitcher” according to Gillespie.  He knows that the main problem last year was that the Knights had no good pitching, and it was almost entirely the reason they failed to win a game last year.

Gillespie hopes that with the additions of Webster and the other recruits, as well as his stock of returning players and a full offseason to get work in, the Knights are going to push forward in a big way this season.

Another way coach Gillespie hopes to improve this year is having a better mental approach to the game as a team, and playing the game with more flow and fluidity on the field.  He is convinced that this will certainly be improved as a result of their improved pitching staff and additions to the lineup.  These improvements will speed up the game for the Knights, keeping all the players ultra-focused and fully invested in each game.

Coach Gillespie is certainly happy with the improvements his team has made since the first season of the program, but he also knows that his work spreading the word about the softball team at Northern Essex is far from over.  Gillespie is always recruiting, telling prospective players about the advantages to not only playing softball at NECC, but also going to school there.

“I’m a firm believer in the community college system, so it’s easy for me to tell players about the advantages of coming here,”  said Gillespie.

He has also been spending time talking to high schools about the program, and pushing graduating seniors to come play for him.

Gillespie knows about the issues that some students have with playing sports in college, whether it’s other commitments such as a job or classes.  He would like to sit all of his players down with an academic advisor this winter so that they can work all of their class schedules in sync and have plenty of time for practice and games in the spring.

Sports

Come to the Sport and Fitness Center

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There are plenty of activities at the Sport and Fitness Center on Haverhill for students to participate in and to help get their blood flowing while dealing with classes and heavy workloads this semester. The school year can be stressful, and the Sport and Fitness Center can be a great place to unwind.

The Sport and Fitness Center offers programs for all kinds of students, no matter their physical or schedule limitations.

There are group programs available during the week throughout the semester, including functional movement, cardio-boxing, and bootcamp.

The functional movement class uses stretching and bodyweight exercises to help create strength and mobility throughout the whole body, helping to prevent injury and improve general wellbeing.

Cardio-boxing is an intense 30-minute interval workout, implementing boxing techniques with three-minute rounds of workouts with one-minute rest periods in between. Utilizing a circuit training program, bootcamp offers a quick, high intensity, full body workout that tones muscle and burns calories.

Each of these group programs have already begun their classes for the semester on Sept. 15, but there is no registration necessary, and new students are welcome anytime.

Classes are offered at different points during the week in order to try to accommodate student schedules, with functional movement being held on Thursdays at 11 a.m. in room D133, cardio-boxing on Tuesdays at 12 p.m. in room D133, and bootcamp on Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. in room D133.

The Sport and Fitness Center also offers a student personal training program where students can meet one on one with a student personal trainer. The trainers are usually movement science majors, although sometimes they include recent graduates as well.

The program consists of meeting with a student personal trainer for one hour a week for 10 weeks. With their trainers, students will create and work to meet specific personal fitness goals. These programs are generally for beginners, but all skill levels are accepted. All programs are supervised by Rob Parker, MS CSCS NSCA PT.

Parker says that they are always looking for new participants at the Fitness Center, and welcome anyone to come in and use the equipment with a valid school ID.

In order to draw some of these new members in, the program offers small incentives for achieving various workout goals through the 10 weeks. Students can win prizes such as headphones, a backpack or a Northern Essex sweatshirt. Parker hopes that these small incentives at the beginning will entice exercisers to stick with the program, and the fitness improvements will then speak for themselves.

Students who are interested in the student personal training program are encouraged to contact Rob Parker at (978) 556-3823 or stop by the Sport and Fitness Center in room D133 on the Haverhill campus.

One professor at the college has found an interesting way to get students involved with the Sports and Fitness Center. Professor Liliana Brand is a math professor who offers bonus points to students in her classes if they go and utilize the Sport and Fitness Center. This includes group programs, the student personal training programs, or just using the gym and the facilities at leisure. Twenty five visits to the gym in the semester will earn a student the bonus points from Brand.

One student in one of Professor Brand’s calculus II classes, Chienell Coleman, is certainly enthused by the prospect of getting bonus points simply for getting exercise.

Coleman said, “Not only is she strengthening our minds in class, she is encouraging us to strengthen our bodies as well.”

Rob Parker is also a fan of Brand’s plan to get students to use the Sport and Fitness Center.

When asked about the bonus points opportunity, Parker said, “S=she really values the health benefits, and also getting students involved on campus, which is great for us.”

Regular open gym hours for the fall semester are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Mon. through Thurs., and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday.

Students who may be interested in being active on campus but don’t want to use the actual gym can participate in intramural sports. Sports such as soccer, flag football, volleyball and others are played throughout the week on the field in the courtyard outside of the Sport and Fitness Center and Spurk Building. Just last Friday, a group of 16 students of all backgrounds and genders organized themselves, picked teams, and had an hour-long soccer match on the field.

Students interested in playing or signing up for intramural sports should visit the recreation/intramurals bulletin board in the main lobby of the Sport and Fitness Center on Haverhill campus. All students are encouraged to participate.

Features

NECC student Olivia Lucey takes on NECC and UNH

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NECC student Olivia Lucey is crouched on a hardwood floor holding her two large breed dogs, Buddy and Maisy.
Photo by Christina Hillner. Olivia Lucey with her two dogs, Buddy (left) and Maisy (right).

Classes are back in session at both NECC campuses, and student Olivia Lucey will be attending not only NECC, but the University of New Hampshire as well.

This is Lucey’s second semester at NECC; she also completed a semester in the fall of 2013. UNH will be Lucey’s third college: she transferred the credits she received last fall and took her studies to the University of New England for the spring 2014 semester.

“I started off as a General Studies major at NECC, only wanting to get my core classes done so I can save some money, and focus on Animal Behavior at UNE,” said Lucey.

Lucey has been interested in animal behaviors since she was very young. She’s has had three dogs in her lifetime: a female Cocker Spaniel named Clover, a male mutt named Buddy and a female lab named Maisey.

Buddy was adopted into her family because the previous owner could no longer care for him. He joined Clover for a couple years until she passed on in 2011 due to kidney failure.

“For the last couple months of her life, we had to give her IV fluids to help her,” said Olivia’s mother, Maryanne.

Soon after Clover passed, Maisy was introduced to the family as a puppy.

“I’ve seen a lot happen over the years with my dogs. Whether it was the way they acted lazy, energetic, or what has happened with them medically, It has helped steer me toward my goal of becoming a seeing eye dog trainer and veterinarian technician,” said Lucey.

After Lucey’s fall semester in 2014, she attended UNE for the spring semester only.

“I chose UNE for the program they had, which was well known for animal behavior. It is one of six colleges that I know of in the United States that has an excellent program-major,” Lucey explained.

During the summer, Lucey reconsidered what she wanted to do for the fall 2014 semester.

“It took a lot of thought, but in the end I withdrew from UNE. It was my dream college since high school, but it turns out I had other plans in mind instead,” said Lucey.

Throughout the summer, Lucey had been gathering all of the necessary material needed to transfer her credits from UNE to NECC and UNH this semester. Lucey is taking one class at NECC and three at UNH at the Thompson School of Applied Animal Science.

“I have to take the one class at NECC because it is just one class I need to get out of the way,” said Lucey.

She will be a commuter student at UNH this semester because she’s not a full time student there, and it was a last minute decision.

“I plan on attending UNH as a full time student in the spring of 2015. If all goes well, I will hopefully stay there,” says Lucey.

It will be difficult to manage this upcoming semester, because of the commute. 

Lucey resides in Methuen, Mass. which is approximately an hour from UNH in Durham, N.H. and 15 minutes from the NECC Haverhill campus.

“I live close to the highway, which is beneficial, and I may stay with my aunt in Hampton, N.H. some nights. I know the travel will become too much, and it is pointless to go home some days because of the times and the classes I am taking,” says Lucey.

Lucey also volunteers at the Service Dog Project in Ipswich, Mass. and has a babysitting job near home.

“It will be very interesting to see how this semester plays out. I have a lot on my plate, and it comes down to time management. I have to play my cards right, because this semester is no easy walk,” said Lucey.

Lucey’s major at UNH will be Small Animal Care. She is currently trying to tie the pieces together to have the outcome she wants, which is to be a trainer and work with guide dogs, with the additional specialty of being a veterinarian technician.

News

Market Basket strikes cause strife

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With the Demoulas family fighting and the Market Basket chain coming to a near halt, it has affected some students here at NECC.

It was early July when the Market Basket board of directors headed by Arthur S. Demoulas fired Arthur T. Demoulas who had been serving as president of the company since 2008 according to an article in the Boston Globe.

An uproar took place when employees walked off their jobs and customers boycotted the stores. The loss of Artie T, led to both customers and employees going to the Market Basket headquarters in Tewksbury and protesting.

Within a couple weeks, Market Basket’s profits were falling sharply. With no food coming out of the warehouses and stores slowly emptying of merchandise, the Market Basket Board of Directors decided it was time for the stores to cut all hours to part time employees and schedule employees to the store’s needs.

Viviana Padilla, a NECC general studies student said, she has worked part time in the Lawrence store for 5 years.

“It was my first job,” said Padilla. In Padilla’s store they started scheduling part timers one day a week then eventually told her do not not bother looking at the schedule as there were no hours for her.

With school starting around the corner and hours being cut, Mariah Cruz, a liberal arts student who worked part time in the Haverhill store started to worry. She lives at home with her single mother and siblings. She helped her mom out with bills and food for her family. She also worried about the added cost that was coming due to starting school. 

“I now have no income,” said Cruz.

Some students were not given the official word they were laid off. Matthew Gagnon, a business transfer student who works part time in the Haverhill store said he technically still has a job but would not be given any hours. 

“I have not been able to pay bills, and I usually help my dad out with bills. It has been a little bit of a struggle,” said Gagnon. 

Gagnon also said he will be given hours for this week.

For weeks there were assurances that Market Basket was moving closer to a deal, but there no deal until last week, causing students to look elsewhere for work and shoppers other places to shop in the meantime.

Jasmine Montilla, a radiology student works at Stop and Shop and is seeing the influx of customers that once shopped at Market Basket. It has affected her in a different way by putting stress on her.  “I am getting complaints from customers about the pricing and how expensive Stop and Shop is compared to Market Basket.” Montilla understand the customer’s anger but does not understand the complaints that are coming her way being a cashier.

The Market Basket saga of the summer of 2014 came to an end last week when Arthur T. Demoulas bought the remaining 50.5 percent of the company giving him soul ownership with his three sisters.  This deal could not come soon enough for some students, as they want to get back to work and start helping out with their families.

News

NECC to bid public safety

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Public Safety is an important department on any college campus. NECC contracts with a private company called Eagle Investigative Service, Inc., or EIS, for its public safety.

“Eagle was the public safety company that was under contract [four years ago]; so this was bid out before I got here, and I think they’ve been here 12 years,” said Vice President of Administration and Finance and CFO David Gingerella.

EIS provides 24-hour surveillance in Haverhill and surveillance in Lawrence during operating hours. Safety officers on campus were hired and trained by EIS.

The head of Public Safety is former Lawrence police officer Gene Hatem. Hatem was an officer for 32 years, and he spent much of his time as a Sergeant Detective in Investigations.

“College keeps us very busy,” said Hatem.

EIS was founded in 1996 and specializes in private security, crisis response training, public safety and private investigative services. The company is located in the Christine Building (Second Level), at 236 Pleasant Valley St., in Methuen, Mass.

Training for NECC’s current public safety officers was completed in 2012.

EIS is currently looking to hire at least one additional part time security officer for Haverhill and Lawrence.
The basic requirements stated on the posting are a minimum of associate degree or the equivalent in related experience. CPR certification and first aid is required, and trainees must be able to pass a 40 hour training program.

Candidates must: have a Mass. driver’s license, basic computer skills, be able to lift up to 50 pounds, and pass a full background check.

EIS prefers if speak and understand Spanish, and have one to three years of related experience and former police experience. These criteria are not mandatory.

Public safety also publishes Annual Safety Reports which contain crime statistics and information about the Public Safety Department. The latest report available is from 2013 and contains crime statistics from 2012.

On page eight of the Annual Safety Report, it is says, “Public safety officers do not operate with police powers and do not carry weapons.”

The Jeanne Clery Act and Campus Crime Statistics Act make the Annual Safety Report a requirement.

NECC puts out an RFP, or Request for Proposal, when looking a to contract a new company. The RFP is posted on a state site known as CommBuys, a “procurement system for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Departments,” according to the site.

“This year, we’re taking the next step. We’re preparing the RFPs. We have a consultant that helps us do the RFPs; he’s a lawyer out of New Jersey that actually does this for a living,” said Gingerella. “We have his major contracts.They’re called the Berkshire Group, the group that helps us do this. They write the RFPs [and] they go out and help us find people to solicit and do the bidding. The two big ones that we’ll be doing will be Public Safety and the Day Care Center.”

The Berkshire Group is based out of New Jersey and provides financial consultation to many institutions of higher education such as NYU, Brown University and the Massachusetts Higher Education Authority.

The RFP for Public Safety is being written now, and it should be published sometime in November. Bids from security companies should come back by early January.

If EIS is not contracted again, it will finish out spring semester and a transition will be made to the new company

“The date is June 30, if we were going to switch contractors. We would start doing the transition sometime in April or May, and then July 1 we’d do the final switch-over,” said Gingerella.

“It’d be up to the new company to tell us how they would be able to handle [hiring the guards from the other company],” said Gingerella. “More than likely, we would say that some of the individual that had been there have a significant amount of time and knowledge; if we were changing companies [the current security guards] could certainly stay with EIS if EIS had a contact where they could move them. But if they didn’t, they would be laying them off anyway, so they would be applying for the jobs and would be more than likely be considered for them.”

“We are being extremely careful on how we do this because we know how important public safety is to faculty, staff and students of the college,” said Gingerella.

NECC public safety can be contacted by calling (978) 556-3333. In an emergency, dial 911. Public Safety can be found on the first floor of the Spurk building on the Haverhill campus, or in the Franklin Building on the Lawrence campus.

 

Editorial, Photo Gallery

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.