Genesee Community College

Press release:

"Construction documents are almost complete and everything is on schedule," Kristin G. Schmitt, AIA, principal of JMZ Architects and Planners told Genesee Community College Board of Trustees at last week's monthly meeting. "It has been a smooth process, which is a testament to the College."

The construction bid packages with all the necessary documents for contractors to submit their cost estimates for the project are anticipated to be ready for review on Monday, Feb. 8. The proposed deadline for the College to receive the publicly opened bids is Tuesday, March 8. JMZ anticipates five different bid packages for Site Work, General Contracting, Electrical, Plumbing/Fire Protection, and Heating, Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC).

As stipulated by the Board of Trustees during the early planning process, JMZ is carefully crafting the bid packages to attract as many local contractors as possible. The two separate facilities, the 18,500-square-foot Student Success Center and the 56,000-square-foot College and Community Events Center, are being built on parallel construction schedules allowing contractors to bid on both projects or individual projects. 

"We anticipate good participation from the local construction community and will be reaching out to them," Schmitt said.

The project will also be announced in area media outlets and the Dodge Report. Once the bidding and project award process is complete, construction will begin in April with a formal ground-breaking ceremony scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday, April 28.

The College and Community Event Center located at the far west side of the Batavia campus near the turf field will begin first so as to not interrupt College's activities and spring semester traffic flow. The Student Success Center will begin after the Commencement ceremony on May 22. Project completion for both buildings is expected the following Summer in 2017. 

In addition to reviewing the construction schedule, Schmitt presented six different schematic presentation boards that illustrated both buildings employing state-of-the-art graphics that combine photographs of the existing facilities blended with the new architectural renderings. A dramatic Student Success Center is shown at night with the lights from the large glass foray reflecting out onto the Clock Tower Plaza. Viewers can also appreciate how the Student Success Center will connect with the Conable Technology Building through the second level bridge. Interior illustrations reveal an open lobby and lounge with two-story glass windows, an open staircase and a fireplace. 

"This will be the new front door to the whole campus," GCC President James Sunser, Ed.D. said. "The new facility is exciting, but more exciting is how it will allow us to reinvent how we support our students in being successful. Like a case manager, our new student success coaches will know what students need and proactively help them through the process." 

Interior and exterior renderings of the College and Community Events Center were also reviewed illustrating the dual facility. The sizable arena, which will be the largest open floor space in the GLOW region (Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties), is accented by a long, glassed-in arcade leading to the central entrance and lobby that connects the two buildings. The smaller building provides classrooms, locker rooms, coaches' offices, the fitness center, meeting rooms and a press box overlooking the existing turf field.

The large arena will not only accommodate an array of athletic competitions, but the open space will allow all kinds of civic, community, trade, industry as well as college events-from farm, boat and tractor shows to commencement ceremonies where a whole family can sit together. The new facility is expected to draw as many as 500,000 visitors to the campus each year. 

Both presentation boards included samples of different flooring, brickwork, ceiling and wall tiles, window mullions, paint, stair treads and countertops. Combined, the two projects will provide an additional 74,000 square feet of new indoor space at GCC, allowing the College to repurpose some of the existing space for labs and classrooms accommodating new academic programs such as Nanotechnology AAS. The overall building project follows GCC's Facilities Master Plan, which was approved by the Board and SUNY (State University of New York) more than two years ago.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s visit to Batavia on Tuesday included some hands-on education.

Hochul met for about a half hour with officials at Genesee Community College, who discussed the college’s workforce development initiatives and STEM — or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — career path training.

A subsequent campus tour included the third-floor science laboratories, where Assistant Professor Karen Huffman-Kelly was teaching a Cellular Biology class.

The lab is equipped with a luminometer, a hand-held swab unit that uses bioluminescence technology to test bacteria levels on food-processing equipment.

Hochul — under the guidance of Greg Sharpe, instructor for the college’s Food Processing Technology program, pictured above — used the device to test the cleanliness of a student’s cell phone.

“We’ll see whether I want to keep holding your cell phone,” Hochul told the student.

The verdict?

After a quick swab and a 15-second countdown, the device yielded a score of 136.

“Not too bad,” Sharpe said.

“Cell phones on average (score) around a 300,” he explained. “In the food industry, typically anything over a 30 we make them re-clean it.”

GCC launched its Food Processing Technology degree program last year. It was designed to meet the demand for skilled workers in the food manufacturing field.

The program already has an international reach, as Hochul learned by chance on Tuesday.

She was introduced to Arsenio Ferreira, 22, who is in his second year of the FPT program.

Ferreira hails from the southeast Asian island nation of Timor-Leste, which became independent in 2002. He told Hochul he will bring new skills back to Timor-Leste, to help with its economic and social development.

Hochul called New York’s community colleges the creative engines of the SUNY System, with the flexibility to meet changing economic needs.

“I think we’re very lucky because we have a strong reputation as far as the academic quality of this institution,” said GCC President James Sunser, Ph.D.

The Food Processing Technology program, he noted, was developed in cooperation with Cornell University.

“Their willingness to work with us — and to accept our students in transfer — is in large part because of our strong academic reputation.”

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, right, speaks Tuesday at Genesee Community College with Arsenio Ferreira, an international student from Timor-Leste who is studying Food Processing Technology.

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Jim Lachman likes to tell people that in 1968 he went to Vietnam to kill Vietnamese, but in 2012 he went to paint their nails.

Lachman, of Brockport, is a 2010 graduate of Genesee Community College and is currently pursuing a Bachelors in Social Work at the College at Brockport. 

A Vietnam veteran, Lachman had the opportunity to return to the battleground this past year -- not as a soldier, but as a guest. Through Brockport's Vietnam Program, he earned 15 college credits studying Vietnamese culture and completed many hours of community service in the city of Danang. He chronicled his experience in a blog called "Danang again." (There's a link at the end of the article.)

On Nov. 13, he contrasted his two experiences in Vietnam in a speech titled "A Forty-Year Journey from Vietnam to Vietnam," which was held at his alma mater, GCC. We invited him to sit down with us and share some of his insights for readers of The Batavian.

Lachman and his wife, Bernie -- who joined him for part of his stay in Vietnam -- were interviewed at Coffee Culture in Batavia last week.

What did you do in the Vietnam War?

Jim: I was part of the C-130 Squadron in the Marines. I worked on large airplanes called VMGR 152s. We were stationed in Okinawa, but we had a sub-unit in Danang. I was there for three months, then I went back to Okinawa. Then I spent three months with the flight crew as a plane mechanic, so I was in and out of Vietnam, Thailand, and up and down different airstrips. We flew cargo and troops back and forth. Most of the missions I flew were flight-refueling operations.

So you didn't see any combat, correct?

Jim: No. I was one of the lucky few who weren't exposed to any of that.

How did you get involved in Brockport's Vietnam Program?

Jim: I was in a U.S. History class at GCC in 2010, and there was a little Asian woman sitting next to me. I asked her where she was from, and she said Vietnam. We developed a friendship -- I asked questions. She told me about a study abroad program in Vietnam at Brockport, and I said "Oh, okay..."

What exactly did you do while studying abroad in Vietnam?

Jim: I probably got about 100 hours of community service while I was in Vietnam.  There was a large community service component.

Each week we spent an hour and a half in a nursing home with ladies in their 80s and 90s (there were some men, too). We helped them pick mulberries and peanuts, and they loved to have their nails trimmed and painted.

Then we did an hour and a half a week at Agent Orange group home, and we also did home visits to kids who were too sick to come to the group home.  

Bernie: We know the effects of agent orange on American soldiers, but we don't know about the effect it had on the people who live in Vietnam. It has affected three generations with birth defects, mental sickness, (etc.) 

Jim: The way I like to put it is, we put poison in their backyard and it's still there.

We also did English instruction two nights a week and delivered food and medical supplies to a leper village. Then we got 15 credit hours studying Vietnamese history, politics, culture and language.

What was the big difference between your first visit and your second?

Jim: I contributed to the death of two million Vietnamese people by being part of the war. By contrast, in 2012 I learned about the culture and the people, and I connected with them on a human level. And I fell in love with them.

A former Viet Cong chairman who now writes for "Da Nang Today" (a Danang newspaper) interviewed me for an article on a "former invader who was coming back to do good." He asked me questions, and he was very curious. But if we had met 40 years ago, someone would have been taken prisoner.

Today, Vietnam is a wonderful vacation spot. You see people there from China, Australia, Russia...They have wonderful and very cheap accommodations, beautiful beaches...and the Vietnamese people don't like the sun, so we'd have the beach almost to ourselves (during the day).

Bernie: I came to visit Jim for a month. It was a two thousand dollar round trip by airplane, and that was the most money I spent the whole time.

I shopped at the tailor stores, which are family owned businesses. The Vietnamese are known through much of the world for their tailor-made clothes.

As a woman in Danang, I could walk safely at night. I couldn't do that in Batavia.  All the stores (in Danang) are street-level. (Store owners) got to know me, and I knew that if anyone ever tried to molest me in the street, they'd be all over them.

I went into a bookstore once, and no one there knew English. So they went two stores down and found someone who did. That's what they want -- they want to communicate.

And they revere the elderly. One time we went into a coffee shop, and one of the first questions they asked before seating us was, "How old are you?" Because we're over 40, we were always in the most honored spot.

Jim: And (accepting that courtesy) was part of my being a guest, part of accepting the culture as it was. One of the things the Vietnam Program page on the Brockport Web site says is that as students, we are guests of the Vietnamese government. So that's how I conducted myself. The last thing I wanted was to be an "ugly American."

At every other place I had served (in the Marines), I had the opportunity to connect with the people and the culture. Going back to Vietnam, it was like I had a second chance, you know?

Even if I didn't like an experience, I would try to write about it in a positive way on my blog. At the exit dinner (held at the end of the program), one of the chairmen said, "We've been enjoying your blog" -- "we" meaning the Communist Party.  When I told my son about that, he said: "Well, did you think they wouldn't?"  Honestly, I never thought about it -- I just wrote from the heart.

What would you want people today to know about the Vietnam War?

The man who taught my politics class was in charge of the Liberation Front (the enemy) in Danang back in '68. He said Vietnam has a "market economy with a socialist orientation." It seems to me that their government works as well for them as ours does for us. I often wonder what would have happened if the U.S. had allowed the Vietnamese to have their elections the way they had planned. When the U.S. got involved, it went from 1956-1975 until (the Vietnamese) could unify their country.

Bernie: People our age will ask us, "Did you go to North Vietnam or South Vietnam?" It's just Vietnam now.

Jim: I can think of two men in history who wanted to preserve national union: Abraham Lincoln and Ho Chi Minh. They both wanted the same thing.

After doing some research, I found out that what I was taught about Communism and Ho Chi Minh growing up might not have been the truth.

So then you would say that the Vietnam War was not worth it in the end?

Jim: In humanistic terms, I would have to say no. It wasn't worth all that death.

What I was told when I went over was that I was being sent to stop Communism.  After I came home, I discovered the real reason: The U.S. military was serving as the hired guns of capitalism. The reason (for the war) was that the capitalists in charge of the U.S. government wanted to control all trade in and out of Southeast Asia.

We would have been better off staying out of the whole thing and allowing the Vietnamese to have their elections and be the government they were going to be. It would have saved a lot of lives.

As an American military man in Vietnam, how were you treated when you returned home?

Jim: When I came back in July of 1969, I had heard the stories. So when I came into Travis Air Force Base in California, I put on civilian clothes in the bathroom. I made the choice not to call any attention to myself. Even today, I choose not to wear (my Marines hat), because I just got used to that.

Bernie: When I was a sergeant instructor in the Reserves (in the 1970s and 1980s), we were taught not to wear our uniforms when travelling on a civilian conveyance. Then when the Vietnam veterans insisted that the Desert Storm soldiers be honored, the culture changed. It went from "we're against the war" to "we support our troops."

What led you to speak about your experience at GCC on Nov. 13?

Jim: I was there because of Josephine Kerney, who was my sociology professor (at GCC). She does a lot of study abroad stuff, so in association with the Vietnam Program I'd run into her at fairs and such. I talked about the contrast between my first trip to Vietnam and my second, and it fascinated her. She wondered if I would come in and talk to her class about it, and that led to it being a larger event where anyone could come.

Do you have any thoughts on the current war in Afghanistan?

What I learned from my Vietnam experience was that I can't trust the government. I wonder what my government is lying to me about now. Is (the war in Afghanistan) about money? Is it about pharmaceutical interest in what we can extract from the poppy that grows there?

I've heard it said that "Afghanistan is where empires go to die." Alexander the Great tried (to invade), the Russians tried it, and now it's us.

A Kodak retiree, Lachman returned to school in 2008 out of a desire to become a counselor for military veterans. Currently in his junior year at Brockport, he plans to go on for a master's degree so that he can counsel veterans "who saw things that no one should have to see."

For more information on his experience, go to www.danangagain.blogspot.com.

The first day of classes for the fall semester is August 27, 2012 — just three-weeks away — but there is still time to enroll at Genesee Community College to launch or boost a career in any one of 67 different degree and certificate programs. Scholarships and grants are still available for students who qualify, and the admissions staff can help with the application process.

GCC offers a wide range of flexible class options to fit an individual’s time, interests and location. Students can attend classes full-time, part-time, online or on Sunday. Visit online to check out all the options.

• Albion – 456 West Ave. (585) 589-4936 
• Arcade – 25 Edward St. (585) 492-5265 
• Batavia – One College Rd. (585) 343-0055 
• Dansville – 31 Clara Barton St. (585) 335-7820 
• Lima – 7285 Gale Rd (585) 582-1226 
• Medina – 11470 Maple Ridge Rd. (585) 798-9765 
• Warsaw – 115 Linwood Ave. (585) 786-3010

Today was the inauguration of Genesee Community College's fourth president, James M. Sunser, Ed.D. He replaces Stuart Steiner, who recently retired after serving as the college's president for 37 years.

Sunser is pictured up front and center in the above photo, along with the distinguished guests -- including GCC officials, members of the Genesee and Orleans county legislatures, officials from the SUNY system, private colleges and some representatives from the state government.

The fact that GCC has only had four presidents in the nearly 45 years of its existence made this a particularly significant event. Mary Pat Hancock, chair of the Genesee County Legislature and the third speaker at the ceremony, lauded the college's thorough and careful selection process during this "crucial transition."

In his speech, Sunser expressed his enthusiasm for the job.

"It is my honor and privilege to stand before you to reflect on this significant and special day," he said. "I am humbled and honored by the confidence you have shown in me, and I assure you that I will aspire toward the highest standard of excellence, for which this college is known."

He also said that he was proud to be part of a college with such a legacy of "resourcefulness, dedication and faith in the future," pointing out the ordinary citizens who "banded together against conventional wisdom and the community's expectations" to found GCC 45 years ago.

Sunser believes that not only meeting, but exceeding expectations is the challenge of education and anyone who wants to make a lasting difference in the world.

As examples of people who have done this, he talked about key historical figures like Albert Einstein (who grew up with a speech impediment) and Rosa Parks, as well as the aforementioned citizens who pushed for GCC's foundation and the pioneers who first came to this region 200 years ago, "pushing beyond expectations."

"I promise to meet and exceed your expectations at GCC," he said. "I believe there is no more powerful, no more enduring gift than education. (At GCC), we will develop programs and curricula that will bring the best to our work force and help shape the vibrant economic prosperity of the region."

Toward the end of his speech, Sunser also encouraged his partners in the community and ordinary citizens to make a difference.

"Each of us can help change our community," he said. "Let us leave a legacy that makes those who follow us proud."

Sunser is an alumnus of Onondaga Community College (OCC), Syracuse University, SUNY Brockport and the University of Rochester. Before coming to GCC, he worked at OCC for 22 years -- first as bursar, then as vice president of finance, and finally as vice president for continuing and extended learning.

OCC president Debbie L. Sydow, who was one of the greeters at today's ceremony, spoke of Sunser's passion for education and dedication to the service of others.

"He always puts the students' interests first (at OCC)," Sydow said.

She described Sunser as "no-nonsense yet good-natured, smart yet down-to-earth."

For more information on President Sunser, see his biographical page on GCC's website.

Photo courtesy of Kevin Carlson.

Press release:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's priorities for the State University of New York are good news for SUNY's 64 campuses and for New York State taxpayers, Genesee Community College President James M. Sunser said today.

Gov. Cuomo, in his 2012 legislative address delivered yesterday at Daemen College in Amherst, called the state university system a "precious New York asset" and a "great equalizer for the middle class." The governor said that his new SUNY2020 plan will spur economic development and job creation. SUNY2020 will provide seed money for innovation and economic development initiatives.

President Sunser noted that the governor's plans will further support SUNY's role in spurring business and job growth across the state.

"Our state university system provides a net positive return to New York State residents," Sunser said. "SUNY graduates provide the backbone of many of our critical and emerging industries, and pay state and local taxes far in excess of the investment that taxpayers make in their education.

"Also, SUNY campuses across the state work directly with business organizations, bringing training and knowledge resources that help business leaders build productivity, profit and jobs."

Sunser noted that last year an independent research firm found that Genesee Community College alone has an economic impact of $126 million on the Genesee-Livingston-Orleans-Wyoming region.

Sunser said that last year, The BEST Center, Genesee's highly acclaimed business training division, helped more than 650 business organizations.

"We at Genesee Community College, and the other 63 SUNY campuses, are a driving force for economic stability and growth," he said. "Gov. Cuomo recognizes the critical role that SUNY plays in our statewide economy."