Lakes Region Community College is investing millions into new programs, equipment and facilities to make sure its students, and the college, remain competitive. Last year the college opened its $6 million Health and Science Building complete with new classrooms, faculty space and practice labs for its nursing, fire safety and science students. The college committed another $3.3 million to the first phase of a new automotive garage with 17 bays, which breaks ground this month. Phase two of that project will be new classrooms for the automotive program.
“Honestly, our other spaces were looking old and we need to make ourselves attractive to students,” says Scott Kalicki, president of Lakes Region Community College in Laconia. “It was important for us to upgrade so that we could take advantage of better technology. It was important for us to look better for students who are shopping around, and it was important to us to give our faculty all the tools in their areas that allow them to do what they do best.”
In that vein, the college has also added both credit and non-credit certificate programs in its science and technology programs, started an advanced manufacturing program and expanded its culinary arts program. “We’re constantly looking at associate or certificate degree programs that we feel would be attractive for students or for employers needing workforce development,” says Thomas Goulette, vice president of academic and community affairs at Lakes Region Community College. “In working with our community partners we always try to find out where we can align our curriculum with the needs of business and industry.”
Located just off of Route 106 and Belmont Road, Lakes Region Community College began in 1967 as Laconia College. The two-year college has approximately 1,400 students per semester in its technical, professional and transfer programs. Around 62 percent of the students are enrolled full time in a degree or certificate program, 38 percent are non-matriculating students (those not enrolled in a degree earning program), and 3 percent are enrolled in non-credit courses. Students aged 24 years or younger make up about 60 of the population, but the school does offer a variety of options for nontraditional students.
Hot Programs
The new 24,000-square-foot Health and Science Building, which opened in 2013, is a unique infrastructure investment for the college, which had added only two other buildings in the past 34 years. The main campus expanded in 1980 when the Robert H. Turner wing was added. Twenty-five years later, the college added the Center for Arts and Technology, which is now home to Computer Technologies, Electrical Technologies, Fine Arts, and Graphic Design and Printing Technology.The Health and Science Building includes new classrooms and labs for the college’s nursing program, fire science program as well as biology, chemistry, microbiology and physics classes. Kalicki says the faculty of nursing and fire and science programs worked together to design areas of the new building so that they were adaptable and accommodated the latest equipment, technology and teaching methods.For the Fire Science program, which has an enrollment of 75 students, that means a lab that allows for live fire simulations, hoses to learn about water pressure and experiments with various flammable materials.
“Our fire program is the second largest program in the country. This new lab allows the students to work in that live environment,” Goulette says.The new facility now has the space and equipment to do proper EMS training, Goulette says. “More and more fire departments are focused on having trained professionals on their ambulances. As a matter of fact, what we’re learning is that when they have a position advertised for a firefighter now, the EMS piece is as important to them, if not more so, than the actual firefighter piece. So I feel this gives them a good mix of both, and we’re really pleased with it. It’s excellent programming.”As for the nursing program, which is capped at 32 students, LRCC now has an eight-bed nursing simulation lab set up like a hospital where nursing students work on high-tech mannequins that simulate medical conditions ranging from heart attacks to giving birth. There’s even a dedicated room for pharmaceuticals similar to those found in hospitals.
“It perfectly simulates working in a hospital,” says Kalicki. “It allows students to immediately step into that lab and have the expectations set by the instructor, but also by the environment itself that you are now in a hospital, and you are going to conduct yourself that way. Everything lines up that way. It makes them more comfortable and mirrors exactly what they will see in their clinical work and then when they graduate and go into a nursing position.”
Marty Pasquali, interim chairperson for the Department of Nursing at the college, says the simulation lab adds another dimension to the clinical practice experienced by students. “The way the mannequins work, they are almost lifelike and really put the students into an almost lifelike situation where they have to respond, and they have to intervene based on their assessments and what they think is going on,” Pasquali says. Instructors are also able to observe students through a two-way mirror in the middle of the lab and offer immediate feedback. Pasquali says that this will allow students to process the experience and to understand what they did right and wrong.
Another critical component of the new building is the science labs. “We had science labs in the old building, the Turner Building, and they were small. They were 1968 construction,” Goulette says. “So by adding the new science labs, it not only allows us to serve the biological science needs of the nursing lab, but to serve expanded health related programs like our new health science degree and other biologically based programs. So we now have a new chemistry lab, a new physics lab, and we’re really excited about that.”
The new health and science building also includes new classrooms and a hybrid auditorium-classroom that can be used for conferences, classes, lectures or a banquet hall for 80 people.
Automotive Revs Up
Next year students in the automotive program, which has 24 enrolled this year, can expect similarly swanky new digs. The new garage, which will have 17 bays, up from five currently, will allow the college to expand its automotive technicians program and its automotive service education degree.
Michael Parker, associate professor and department chairman for automotive and marine technologies at Lakes Region Community College, says the automotive technology class can accommodate 16 students and that “overfills every year. We have a waiting list for that class.” He says the college has about 55 students in the department altogether, and with the new facility, it will be able to take on another 15 students.
The facility comes with a hefty price tag—$3.3 million—which is why it is being built in phases, Kalicki says. “We’re starting with the shop area. Brand new equipment, well designed for students to have a comfortable working environment, a safe working environment, and again a building that is economical and efficient,” he says.
During the second phase, classrooms will be upgraded to allow the instructor to drive a car into the classroom so students can watch demonstrations. This phase will also include office space for faculty.
Part of the reason for the expansion of the automotive department is the college’s collaboration with General Motors Corporation and its dealerships in the region, says Goulette. The automotive service education program, known as ASEP, is a training class for prospective GM technicians. Students enroll in the program with a sponsoring GM dealer. For 21 weeks, students divide their time between the classroom and working at the dealership, for which the student is paid.
“The uptick is being driven by the industry,” Parker says. “The auto dealerships are just dying for technicians and they need well-educated technicians …They need technicians that have not only the technical skills, but the other skills we provide students; those self-directed, lifelong learning skills that they can continue to grow as the products keep evolving.”
Business Collaborations
The culinary program, which is the college’s fastest growing area of study, has joined forces with Canterbury Shaker Village to operate the restaurant at the Village, allowing students access to a commercial kitchen and hands-on experience. In the spring, the college had 80 students in the program due, in part, to interest in the collaboration as well as the addition of a pastry arts certificate program.
Finally, another collaboration with 22 manufacturing partners led to the opening of the college’s advanced manufacturing program, which offers certificate and degree programs. “One of the things that we discovered when we talked to our partners in manufacturing is that there is a tremendous shortage of people who can do repair and troubleshooting on equipment. There is some very, very sophisticated equipment,” Goulette says.
This has led to the college offering an electromechanical technology program to teach students the technology, math and science associated with the repair and maintenance of manufacturing equipment.
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