CCV Announces New Academic Dean

In March, CCV President Joyce Judy announced that the college’s next academic dean will be Deborah Stewart; she will start on July 1^st. Today, Debby announced plans to officially change her name to ‘Linda Gabrielson’ in a cost savings effort that will allow the academic dean’s office to use the same name placard, business cards, and stationary. The original Linda Gabrielson was seen in her office attempting to come up with a new name for herself. She is fearful of the ramifications of Debby’s announcement. Linda (the original Linda) is stated she was concerned about how her retirement plans will be affected in such areas as her ease of passing through TSA’s screening at the airport (because who REALLY knows about Debby’s background), the impact on her planned career as a poet (as people might confuse her work with Debby’s), and how she and Debby’s grandkids will keep the two straight. It is expected that details will be ironed out by April 11^th.

New Degree Program Plans

After hearing about the many problems Vermonters experienced with the rollout of the website to register for health care benefits through the affordable care act, outgoing academic dean Linda Gabrielson announced plans for a new Computer Systems Management degree program at CCV. She convened industry partners, faculty, and staff to discuss planning for the new degree.  Gabrielson stated that she envisions courses where students can better learn about the “world wide web,” wireless access, networking, and a variety of computer features. She was quoted as stating that “Now that computers are so central to daily life, it would be good to have such a major.’”  At the meeting, associate academic dean Darlene Murphy rolled her eyes and said to Linda, “We already have that major and the content is far more current than you are suggesting.” The dean was heard muttering ‘never miiind’ as she walked out of the meeting. In an interview session by Josh Larkin following the meeting, Melissa DeBlois said “What code has she been reading? What did she think I’ve been managing all these years?!?”

Single payer college system

Consistent with Vermont’s plans to roll out the nation’s first single payer healthcare system in 2017, CCV’s dean of administration Barbara Martin announced a planned 2015 rollout of a single payer college system for CCV. The initiative, funded by the Bill Gatees foundation, will provide each degree student with free tuition, a new PC desktop computer, a weeklong spring break trip to Springfield, Vermont, and employment at Microsoft.  When asked about the single payer college initiative, CCV Montpelier student Nada Willing, said, “Sounds fine, but I was hoping for a Macbook Air and a job closer to home.” Joyce Judy announced that faculty and staff will not be eligible for the single payer system due to existing options for participating in courses. However, she revealed a new program – Wielding Enrollment from Within (WEW; pronounced ‘whew’) that will be of interest to faculty and staff.  WEW provides a 50% salary bonus for each new child born to a faculty or staff member if the CCV employed parent signs a contract assuring that the child will attend CCV full-time through degree completion once they graduate from high school. Between the single payer initiative and the WEW program, 2015 enrollment is expected to increase.

Foreign Cultural Experience Course

In preparation for CCV’s Fall 2016 foreign cultural experience course Holiday Traditions: The History of Ukrainian Easter Eggs, CCV Winooski has been offering a 3-semester language sequence (Ukraine I, II, and III) paired with the co-enrollment sequence Poultry 101, Ukrainian Egg Grading, and Natural Dyes and Shell painting 101. Enrollment for fall 2014’s Ukraine III course is lagging, and executive director Dee Steffan reports that students have recently been requesting the opportunity to pair Russian I with the Natural Dyes and Shell Painting. In a heated academic debate about the requests, associate academic dean Diane Hermann-Artim is said to have stated: ‘No substitutions will be allowed. Putin is not invading our academic programming. We are, after all, in the United States.”