GREENFIELD — Kicking off its 2018 campaign, hoping to raise $825,000 this year, Greenfield Community College Foundation each year selects a current student, an alumna and a new campaign co-chair to set the tone.
One theme that ran through the three speeches at the Foundation’s annual fundraiser kickoff Friday morning was how the college played a role in shaping their careers and view of the world around them.
“That middle word ‘community’ is really key,” new campaign co-chair Lindsay Stromgren said. “That’s the word we’re focusing on.”
Stromgren, the assistant fire chief of Amherst, brings with him four different connections to the college.
He remembers being a young boy and coming to the college when his father was a professor in the early years of the school.
Then, Stromgren remembers coming back to GCC for his associate degree in 1995, for a degree in firefighting, after earning a bachelor’s from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Shortly after, Stromgren became an adjunct professor at GCC. Through his time there, he has seen leaders in the firefighting community come out of the program, from a peer to a student he taught, going on to become the fire chiefs of Northampton and Easthampton.
Now, Stromgren’s daughter is finishing up a degree at the college, before she heads to UMass, he said.
“Graduates who become the professionals in the community,” Stromgren began, “that’s what it’s all about.”
Michael Heitke-Felbeck, a student now, shared his story of how he came to GCC.
There was a dozen or so years of odd-jobs, which he would do until he got bored. Eventually, he found himself at the college studying engineering and chemistry, supported by in-house scholarships. Soon, Heitke-Felbeck will be headed to UMass to continue his education, all with the help of the Foundation and its financial scholarships.
Alumna Corrine Fitzgerald, Class of 1980, shared a similar story of finding community at the college.
She spoke about coming from eastern Massachusetts, unsure of what the college could bring her, but hoping to pursue art. Along the way, she fell on tough times: her car broke down, her Deerfield Street apartment was broken into and her grandmother’s ring stolen, and her father felt it was time she started to pay for things on her own.
That’s when an art class professor offered her some advice: “He goes, ‘Listen, it’s not a question of whether you can do it; it’s a question of whether you want to do it.”
Since then Fitzgerald has used that advice to motivate herself and others through life.
“Not only did he change my life, but he helped change others,” Fitzgerald said. “The model back then was the right to think and the will to learn … This school had such a major impact on so many lives and it always will.”