Theme: Connecting Education and Personal Growth

Our event will bring together the amazingly brilliant members of the Holyoke Community College community - students, faculty, alumni, and local leaders. It will be a day full of conversations on how we learn and how that is changing in today's world, what it means to struggle as we learn about the world - and ourselves, and how we can come together to support one another in the learning and growing process.

303 Homestead Avenue
Holyoke, Massachusetts, 01040
United States

Carin Zinter

One part COO, one part educator, and one part beekeeper, Carin Zinter enjoys wearing multiple hats. As former COO at The Daily Dot — an online media start-up — she was the trusted sidekick overseeing finance, legal, HR, sales, and myriad other functions. Prior to joining the Dot, Carin spent more than 15 years working in the educational services sector in every capacity from teacher to senior operations director. She maintains a presence in the education world by continuing to teach as a senior lecturer in management and communications at Western New England University. To keep life buzzing, Carin is a beekeeper who, through her business, C & C Orchards, provides raw, local honey to restaurants and pastry chefs in the northeast. In her spare time, Carin enjoys training for and racing triathlons and ultramarathons and has her sights set on running a 100 mile race next year.

Casey Dion

A Holyoke native and former HCC student, Casey Dion is currently the owner and director of the Kung Fu Academy of West Side in West Springfield, where he works with students ages 6 and up. Volunteering his time with younger students at the Kung Fu studio where he grew up, training is what first inspired the passion for teaching that has led Casey down the path of an educator. His teaching approach is based on the philosophy that progress is a process, and with each failure comes an opportunity to grow.

Jay Ducharme

Jay Ducharme has been a Professor of Electronic Media at HCC for nearly two decades. He is also the author of a history on Holyoke’s famed Mountain Park amusement park, and has also written a book chronicling the successful campaign to save the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round. Ducharme is also a prolific composer and an avid follower of technology trends.

Kelly Keane

In my role as Nursing Educational Specialist, I assist students through a variety of modalities, such as weekly Supplemental Instruction reviews held after each lecture and content reviews held prior to exams. I also run workshops as needed in areas such as test-taking strategies, dosages, and calculations. I provide one-on-one assistance, as well as lab workshops for specialized skills practice. I am also a tutor through the Northeast Consortium of E-tutoring; through which students can access tutors from across the state. I was contacted directly by Martha Keochareon, who wanted to “give back,” a few months before her death. I gratefully facilitated and participated in this touching experience with students from the Holyoke Community College nursing program.

Matt Reed

Matt Reed has worked in the community college sector since 2003, holding senior level management positions at colleges in New Jersey and Massachusetts. He is also the author of “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” the most widely read blog on InsideHigherEd.com, and of the book “Confessions of a Community College Administrator” (Jossey-Bass, 2013).

Meghan Armstrong

Meghan Armstrong is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research is focused on intonational meaning in both adult and child speech. She has done extensive work on intonational meaning in Puerto Rican Spanish and American English. Professor Armstrong is also involved in community engaged projects with Latina communities in Holyoke and Springfield.

Melissa Weise

Melissa is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and has been teaching social sciences at local colleges for seven years. Additionally, she has designed and implemented award winning social programs for at risk populations on both the West and East coasts. Currently, she runs her own counseling group practice and is working on designing and teaching college classes and learning communities, specifically about at-risk populations, advocacy and empowerment.

Ruben Sepulveda

Ruben Sepulveda moved to Holyoke in 2007, after experiencing homelessness for several years in New York City. He became a tutor at the Adult Learning Center and, at the encouragement of its Director, began thinking about continuing his education. Ruben enrolled here in the fall of 2008, at 33 years old. He received his Associates in 2010, transferred to Amherst College, and graduated with a degree in Sociology in 2013. Ruben helped found the Paulo Freire Social Justice High School in Holyoke. He now works as an Education Advocate at a nonprofit in New York City, where he assists families in transitional housing by helping them with the barriers that interrupt their children’s’ academic achievement.

Thomas Neal

Tom became a certified Parent and Child mediator 27 years ago, serving as a volunteer mediator for the Center for Human Development. Tom has 14 years of experience as an Organizational Ombudsman for United Technologies Corporation. This role gave him extensive experience in intercultural conflict management while he was covering the Asia-Pacific and Australasia region. For the past 5 plus years he has taught a course titled Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Holyoke Community College. Tom enjoys the enthusiasm his students show for the subject.

Tzivia Gover

Tzivia Gover is the author of several books, including Learning in Mrs. Towne’s House, which chronicles her experience teaching poetry at The Care Center, an inspiring and innovative program for teen moms studying for their high school equivalency diplomas in Holyoke. She has also been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Creative Nonfiction, and over a dozen anthologies. Tzivia received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

Vanessa Martinez-Renuncio

Vanessa Martinez-Renuncio, Ph.D., is a trained cultural and medical anthropologist, whose research specializes in how social inequities impact access to medical care and educational opportunities. In March of 2014, she defended her doctoral research, analyzing the question of the efficacy of using community based participatory action research as a methodology for the creation and implementation of sustainable and culturally relevant community health interventions in Springfield Massachusetts. Holding three different positions here at HCC, Vanessa is the queen of multi-tasking, and an advocate for liberatory teaching. Having “fallen into” the profession of teaching, she often shares her struggles with defining an educational specialty, given her desire to DO IT ALL.