Susan Raber Bray, a Vermont artist and CCV art faculty member, will have a show of her recent work on display at Frog Hollow in Burlington (85 Church Street). An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 7 from 5 – 8 PM.
The show is titled “La lumière intérieure des oiseaux et des chèvres” (The interior light of birds and goats) and will be on display from November 1 through 30, 2008. For more information on Susan Raber Bray’s work, visit her website at http://www.susanraber.com.
Gail Salzman, a Vermont artist and member of the CCV Burlington and St. Albans art faculty, will have some of her recent paintings on display from November 1 - December 2 at the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) in Manchester, Vermont (click here for directions)
The Bennington Banner reports that Salzman's "abstract paintings have their source in the elemental forms and rhythms of nature. Combining luminous layers of color with animated brushwork, she suggests both depth and continual movement, and reflects upon the shifting relationship between our internal and external lives. " (Click here for the complete article.)
Want to learn more about Salzman's work? Visit her homepage at http://www.gailsalzman.com.
CCV St. Albans will be hosting its 3rd annual College Transfer Fair on Thursday, November 6th from 4:30 pm—6:30 pm. This is a fantastic opportunity to talk with college representatives about transfer options. You will also be able to talk with a representative from VSAC about career decisions and financial aid opportunities.
The following schools will be represented:
CCV's spring 2009 semester schedule is now available! To view the schedule, visit this webpage:
https://andromeda.ccv.vsc.edu/Learn/Grid/SiteList.cfm
Starting Monday, October 27, Burlington students can call (802) 652-2087 to schedule an appointment to register for the spring semester (Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM - Noon & 1:00 - 4:30 PM). Registration will begin on Monday, November 3. For more information on course registration at CCV Burlington, visit this webpae:
http://www.ccv.edu/burlington/registration
Register early to get the courses you want!
CCV students are invited to attend the 2008 Champlain College Fall Internship Fair. This event is co-sponsored by Champlain College's Career Services office and Student Government Association.
The event will be held on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, October 27th, 28th & 29th from 2:30 until 5:00 p.m. in the Hauke Conference Room. Plan to attend all three days since the list of participating employers changes each day! 100+ employers will be in attendance!
For more information, including a full list of employers that will be in attendance click here. For additional questions regarding this event, send an email to Patricia Boera at Boerap@champlain.edu.
The following is a guest post submitted by Gary Walker, a CCV Burlington student in his third semester. He wrote this piece for his Fall 2008 English Composition class with Deborah Straw.
The Community College of Vermont is proud to again be a sponsor for the Vermont International Film Festival which is being held from October 23 -26, 2008, at Burlington’s Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center and the Palace Cinema 9 in South Burlington.
As a special bonus this year, all CCV students, faculty, and staff can attend for free! All you have to do is show your CCV ID at the door. The opening show on 10/23 is excluded from this offer as are any sold out events. See you at the movies!
Want to keep up to date on what is in store at the VT International Film Festival? If so, visit, and subscribe to, the VTIFF Blog: http://www.vtiff.org/blog/
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Mel Donovan, CCV’s Director of Student Support Services.
There IS help to succeed in college!
Students living in poverty, or even moderate income levels, face multiple barriers in taking advantage of educational opportunities. These students most likely hold down not one but two, three, or even four jobs in order to make ends meet. They often have children and other family members depending on them for basic needs. Finding trustworthy, consistent, childcare can be difficult in the best of circumstances. Transportation is a car that often needs repair or public transportation with an inflexible schedule. The dependability of a new car is more than offset by the loan debt, especially when fuel prices are added to monthly payments. Housing, food, fuel, and medical care also compete for any available income.
So how can financially strapped students pay for tuition, get to every class (and on time), find the time not only for classes but also for homework, find someone to watch the kids, and manage to pay for textbooks? Community colleges traditionally serve students from all economic backgrounds but are especially structured to serve low income students.
The Community College of Vermont (CCV) has flexibility built in: classes meet only once a week, days, evenings, and weekends; many are offered online. Tutoring and other crucial services are offered at the sites and online. Degree programs can be tailored to meet student interests. But best of all, CCV has financial aid advisors and academic advisors to help strategize ways to overcome each student’s particular set of obstacles.
CCV also offers the TRIO Student Support Services Program. This federally funded program is designed to help students from moderate income succeed in meeting their educational goals. Each year, 200 students receive academic services, leadership and cultural opportunities, as well as close advising relationships thanks to TRIO funding. Beyond serving these 200 students directly, TRiO works to help CCV address barriers to educational attainment for all students.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Amy E. Stuart, LiCSW, a Coordinator of Academic Services at CCV Burlington.
First some disclosures: When I was growing up people never talked about how much money they “made.” Ostensibly, parents considered talk about income “impolite.” I knew early on I was a member of what is called the “upper middle class.” My dad, a dentist through my childhood, easily earned what would now be about $150,000/year. I liked that my parents taught me to save some of the money I received (birthday gifts) or earned (from my summer job). I also liked that my parents taught me to share the money I had. I didn’t have to get a job to help my family pay the bills – ever.
Now I am a full-time employed woman, married to a full-time employed man.
I earned a Master of Social Work degree in 1989; my husband earned a Master of Education degree in 1998. I am a step-mother to two school aged girls whom we care for every other week. Our gross household income was about $67,000 in 2007.
The income for 87% of all households in the United States in 2007 was less than $100,000/year. Smack-in-the-middle middle income households earned between $36,000 and $57,657. The poverty level for a family of four in 2007 equaled $21,200 or less. I spent one year of my life from Sep. 1984 through Aug. 1985 as a Jesuit Volunteer earning $365/month. And, while during that year I was “living simply” (college-educated speak for living on a very low monthly income) I really have no experience living in poverty. I don’t write about poverty from personal experience. I do write about poverty from what others have taught me through their stories and research.
For a class I taught at the Community College of Vermont, I assigned a journal article from the May, 1999 issue of Social Work titled “The Likelihood of Poverty across the American Adult Life Span.” Authors Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschl revealed from longitudinal studies that “…60% of 20 year olds in America will experience poverty at some point during their adult years.” The authors continue, “What this analysis strikingly reveals is that rather than being an event occurring among a small minority of the US population, poverty is an experience that will touch a clear majority of Americans at some point during their adult lifetimes.”
Alarmingly, other studies at that time showed that most of us believe that encountering poverty is a remote possibility, even people who are statistically living in poverty. The implications of such false beliefs contribute to our sense “that won’t happen to me…” and more dangerously to the shame or resentment we often hold towards ourselves or others who need cash assistance, food stamps or other public benefits. The reality is that “those” few of us are actually most of us!
Today we hear daily about the incomes, bonuses and benefit packages of some of the wealthiest executives in our country. We hear how much money millionaires lost in the last 20 minutes. We hear thousands are losing jobs, retirement income and homes. I’m so glad more people are talking about what for some of us used to be considered impolite, even taboo.
I’m having these conversations and I hope you do too. I’m also combining conversations about money with current, clear, unarguable data readily available from the Census Bureau. Speaking the truth rather than silencing ourselves, we are poised to change as-we-know-it economic policy. Economic laws and policies impact my wages, how much I pay for utilities, taxes and tuition, how much I spend on health care and the dollar amount of my individual retirement account… Air currently pours out of the largest hot air balloon – our stock market. Talking together about income, savings, spending and debt will help us create ethical economic policy changes and behavior. By talking openly and clearly about the realities, we’ll be able to create new economic policy on our experiences and needs. We are the majority.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Kelsi Powers, a CCV student, Student Advisory Board representative for CCV Burlington and AmeriCorps volunteer.
Seven and a half months ago I walked into the local food shelf to volunteer my time. I thought I encompassed the very definition of a good Samaritan - young female, college student, AmeriCorps volunteer. It doesn't fill me with a sense of pride to admit that my first thoughts upon walking into the building was that not only did I have nothing in common with any of the people I'd be serving, but that I was better than them. I thought my education and my commitment to volunteering somehow placed me above everyone else. What I've come to realize through hard work, laughter, tears, frustration and satisfaction, is that I could not have been more wrong.
The stories have affected me the most. It’s easy to assume you’re better than someone else until you take the time to talk with them. Once the pathway of communication is open between two people you come to realize that you’re not that different. I heard the story of a woman who had been faithfully married to her husband of 50 years before he died. She sat in the chair across from me, tears in her eyes, not knowing how to pay her bills anymore. How easily I could relate to her sorrow, as I have lost too many loved ones in my life. I’ll see her time and again, in for her monthly groceries, and she is still as strong as ever, just trying to get by. I have also been moved by the middle-aged man, 19 years sober, who is down on his luck right now. The mother with bone marrow cancer who has to have her legs removed is trying to support her three children through these hard times.
I have come to realize that for every client that comes through the doors of the Food Shelf, their reasons for being there are pretty much the same. Through no fault of their own they have fallen into a patch of bad luck and need a little extra help to get by. I’m not better than any of these people. Having a college education doesn’t make me superior and it certainly doesn’t give me the right to walk around like I own the world. Some of the people I serve are educated, some of them are not. Some of them are black, some are white. Some are young and some are old. I see families and I see individuals. No matter what label is placed upon a person, we are all human and all deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect.
Despite not being proud of my first opinions, I am proud to admit that I was wrong. The learning that has taken place in the last few months far outweighs any other I've yet to experience. Here is what I have learned: Poverty has no simple definition and affects us all. Poverty is our neighbor, our tenant, our parents, our siblings, our coworkers, our loved ones, our grandparents, and our struggle. No one is above poverty and no one is a lesser person by being affected by it.
This too I have learned – we can all help put an end to poverty by volunteering, donating, or making or serving a meal. Before we can begin to alleviate this issue, however, we must first admit that it’s an issue, a big one, that doesn’t leave a single one of us untouched.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Beth Kuhn, a Project Director at the United Way of Chittenden County.
Community colleges have not one but three unique and powerful roles to play in ending poverty:
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Emily Spence, a CCV graduate and financial aid counselor in Burlington.
According to the US Census people with college degrees earn more than people without. This fact shouldn't surprise us as we see its evidence every day. So what's the problem? Why aren't more people making the move to enroll in college? What are the barriers preventing some of our potential students from attaining their goals?
College is expensive. It requires a large commitment of time and money, both hard to come by when you're living in poverty. Financial aid is available for students but often, even with grants and loans, students do not have enough to cover the cost of their tuition. They struggle to find a way to pay for college while at the same time keeping up with their everyday bills. It's true that scholarships are available, especially for high school achievers, but many people living in poverty don't go through high school planning for the next step of college. Those living in poverty, especially the intergenerational poor don't view college as an option, or if they do, don't know how to go about preparing for higher education.
Another barrier is that many students coming from a background of poverty are first generation college students. This means that they may not have the resources available within their own families or support networks as students with a family history of college. Not only do they not have the internal resources available but they don't know how to access the external resources that may be available to them. There are several programs like TRIO available to help students but the issue remains that they often don't know about these programs or how to utilize them.
Once a potential student overcomes these obstacles they can still suffer during the course of their education due to external stressors. When a student is worried about childcare or paying the rent or is skipping a class to pick up an extra shift at work, their academic work suffers. Because other matters are so pressing, education cannot be the priority.
Depressing isn't it? What can we do? We can demand an increase in funding for higher education both federally and locally. Increased funding would mean that the cost of tuition for students could be kept lower and therefore more affordable. We often hear politicians lament about "brain-drain" and the lack of a well trained, ready to work force. Education is the key to both of those issues so let's support higher education with more funding. Institutions of higher learning also need to get in on the act. We need more colleges and universities to make a commitment to creating and maintaining economic diversity on their campuses. Do what you can, whether it be allocating a portion of your endowment to low-income scholarships or hosting public information sessions to help low-income students find out about the resources available to them.
As individuals we can do more. Volunteer in a learning lab, encourage high school students to attend a college fair or help someone fill out their financial aid paperwork. We can all be doing things, both grand and small, to help those in poverty realize that higher education is an option for them if they so chose.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Yasmine Ziesler, an academic advisor and coordinator for Social Science courses at CCV Burlington.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Adam Warrington, an Academic Advisor at CCV Burlington.
Teresa Lorenco, a former CCV student, and her son, Dylan Elliott recently posted a video to the "Change Means..." series on YouTube in which they give a glimpse into the difficulties of affording a college education in today's society. I believe that their story yet again helps eximplify the catch-22 that many American's experiencing poverty face... higher education is a necessary step toward relief from poverty and a livable wage... but individuals in poverty find the costs of affording a college education more and more out of reach. I'll hope you'll watdch the video below.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Dee Steffan, CCV’s Northwest Regional Director for Academics
I remember sitting in a graduate class at UVM in 1980, listening to a professor in a higher ed administration course forecast the cost of college 20 years hence. My jaw dropped to the floor when he noted that, by the year 2000, four years at a competitive private college was likely to cost students $150,000. I thought he had taken leave of his senses! Having recently graduated from such a college, and knowing it had cost my dad just over $25,000 for my gilded sheepskin, it seemed preposterous that those costs would multiply six times over by the time then-current toddlers walked across the stage to collect their undergraduate degrees. Honestly, I dismissed his projection as poppycock.
As it turns out, he was right and I was woefully wrong. It now costs about $50,000/year to attend my alma mater, where the annual tuition increases at it and schools like it are rising four times faster than the overall inflation rate. Tack on the expense of textbooks, and the fact that federal aid to education now takes the form of loans much more than outright grants, and it’s easy to see why graduates and their families are struggling under the weight of education-driven debt. Even in our public colleges and universities, rising costs have put an undergraduate degree out of reach for poor and middle-class families struggling to pay the competing costs of mortgages, health care, food, and gas. My daughter’s sister, who attends UVM as an out-of-state Mainer, plunked down $37,500 for tuition, room and board as an entering freshman last year, and that did not include books, laundry, and the occasional slice of pizza at Mr. Mike’s.
For decades, economists, sociologists, educators, and politicians have been able to agree on at least one fact of life: the definitive, causal relationship between educational achievement and poverty abatement. This relationship exists on an individual level (the higher one goes up the education ladder, the better off one is likely to be economically), as well as on a collective level (the better educated a society, the less vulnerable it is as a whole to the ravages of poverty). And in fact, the most recent census figures reaffirm the economic value of a college degree.
Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day. The following post is submitted by Pam Chisholm, CCV’s Director of Financial Aid.
What role do community colleges have in helping break the cycle of poverty? A huge one. Always has been, always will be, and it is perhaps even more important now with our economic issues and the disparity between income levels.
Community colleges are access institutions. We welcome students for whom other colleges’ doors won’t open. The majority of our students are first generation college students (first in their family to go to college) and who come from low income backgrounds. Many do not come to us right out of high school, but start later when the economic realities of working two or three minimum wage jobs hit home. They come to us hesitantly, not sure they know all the hidden rules of higher education, not sure how to pay for it, but somehow knowing they need that piece of paper to break the cycle of poverty.
I work at a community college where we enroll approximately 8000 students a year at twelve sites across our small, primarily rural state. They stop in, they stop out, but many ultimately graduate. We hold our commencement ceremonies in the spring at a central location in the state, with about 500 graduates...and 4000 people attend, because our students bring every family member and friend who supported them for however long it took to earn their associate degrees. It is a true celebration of hard work, sacrifice, accomplishment and new beginnings.
And it is why we do what we do. And we can’t forget that, even as more middle income and college ready students start enrolling at our institutions because of our lower costs. There’s room for everyone at the community college table; we just need to make sure we save the head of the table for those from poverty.
Title: Bridges and Pathways in and out of Poverty To read all of Bridges and Pathways in and out of Poverty by Richard Maxwell, Jr., click here. Today, the Community College of Vermont is participating in Blog Action Day 2008. This annual nonprofit event aims to unite people around the world on one issue on the same day. This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day.
The following post was submitted by Richard Maxwell Jr. , a 2008 CCV graduate and current Johnson State College student. The text below is the abstract for his final research project for Seminar in Educational Inquiry (HUM-2010, CCV's graduation seminar course). A link to the full text of the paper is available via the link below.
Abstract: In creating positive strategies to bridge the gap between poverty and upward mobility in American society one must first identify and understand the causes of poverty. My research led me to two programs designed to develop better understanding of issues surrounding poverty. My direct service work with impoverished populations in Burlington and Portland Maine, and growing up and living in the Old North End of Burlington have given me hands on experience and insight not gained from a book, class, or training. I will relay my interpretation of poverty and how to give a hand up and out of it by interweaving what I have learned, observed, and experienced.
Tomorrow, the Community College of Vermont will participate in Blog Action Day 2008. "Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion."
This year's topic is poverty. Messages from several members of the CCV community will be posted here throughout the day on this theme. We hope that our contributions to this world-wide event will help raise awareness about poverty both globally and locally.
We hope that you will check back early and often tomorrow. And if you are so inclined, consider contributing to the discussion by submitting comments.
The Hartness Library is offering free Live Library Sessions online for all CCV students! These instruction sessions presented by CCV librarians will be through Adobe Connect and will enable students to log in for research help and advice. Through December, three different sessions will be offered on a regular basis including...
1. Research Project Clinic: This is an open-ended workshop where students can get help identifying search terms, databases and other library and Internet resources. Students are encouraged to bring whatever they are working on and ask specific questions regarding their current assignments.
2. How To: Series – These interactive sessions teach how to search more effectively, get ideas, and other stuff. Two will be offered until the end of the semester (more to be added in the spring) including:
Can't Make a Live Session?
View one of the Library Instruction Video Tutorials.
Don't forget! Representatives from Smith College and Mount Holyoke College will be visiting CCV Burlington on Friday of this week (10/10/08) at noon. The meeting will be held in room 100 of CCV's 119 Pearl Street building. Join us for lunch and learn about two exciting transfer options for women 24 or older.
For more information, click here to view our previous post.
Cameron works from The Green Door Studio in Burlington with founder & paper artist, Drew Mattot, a former CCV staff member. Want to learn more about the Combat Paper Project? If so visit their homepage at http://www.combatpaper.org/ and check out the video below. 
Drew Cameron, a US Army veteran and former student at the Community College of Vermont has launched a cooperative called the Combat Paper Project which is now receiving national acclaim and being presented throughout the country. Uniforms are boiled into paper and used for written and visual expressions of war experience - as a transformative process for soldiers, as well as being an awareness campaign for everyone. 
The story of the soldier, the Marine, the men and the women and the journeys within the military service in a time a war is the basis for this project. The goal is to utilize art as a means to help veterans reconcile their personal experiences as well as challenge the traditional narrative surrounding service, honor and the military culture.
Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beat and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences as a soldier in war.
Sharon Webster, a member of CCV’s art faculty, was recently interviewed by the Burlington Free Press for her involvement in last month’s South End Art Hop. Webster has exhibited her work through the art hop on many occasions, but this time she worked in an unusual medium for the art hop… poetry. Professor Webster says that...I thought it would be fun to subvert the dominant paradigm this year and acknowledge the writing side of myself. I’ve always written poems and used my studio as a writing place as much as a visual art place. Also, spoken word is a kind of performance thing that lends itself to the Art Hop. It feels important to emphasize how the arts so often overlap. I think of myself half-writer, half-visual artist. There’s always been pull toward both. Sometimes it works in cycles; after an intense period in one genre, I’ll move toward the other. I’m also interested in how word and image can coexist in art forms. I am currently working on a show for 2009 at Flynndog Gallery with a small group of artists around the theme of word and image.
To read the entire interview, click here. Want to learn more about Sharon’s artwork (including information on how to buy some of her poetry books)? Visit http://www.sharonwebster.com/
I was born and raised in Indiana. While living there I received a Bachelors of Music in Music Theory/Composition from Ball State University. Before Graduating I was honored with an award of “Best Original Score” for the theatre’s production of Othello. After graduating I toured the Midwest and New England performing in various ensembles. I am classically trained in the alto saxophone and classical guitar. I have also spent many years studying Shakuhachi and Japanese notation.
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