A year and a half ago, when I applied to Front Range Community College, I had not idea that I would walk away from the institution with an Associate of Arts degree, a job as the editor of The Front Page and a lifetime of memories.
I remember attending orientation and registering for classes. My list of things to do kept growing, and I did not know how I could possibly accomplish it all. Not to mention, at the time, I thought that I wanted to attend law school. Since the beginning of high school, I had adopted the dreams that everyone else wanted for me: be a doctor or a lawyer, attend an Ivy League University. So, when I decided earn my Associate’s degree at a community college, my audience filled with confused faces.
In reality, I liked that FRCC provided quality education for an affordable price. As I began my studies, however, I grew accustomed to the small class sizes, interpersonal relationships and advancement opportunities. I fell in love with my English class, and decided to combine my love for writing with my love for fashion. After one semester at FRCC, I changed my desired career to that of a fashion journalist.
Not only did FRCC help me realize my dreams, but it also helped me achieve them. When I landed a job as a staff writer for The Front Page last June, I knew every minute brought me closer to grasping my dream career. As the editor, I acquired knowledge about journalism and working as a team. I am more prepared than ever to earn my Bachelor’s degree in journalism and further pursue my dreams.
It is with a determined mind and a heavy heart that I leave FRCC this semester. Within the next few years, I hope to see my name printed in a Condé Nast publication in New York City. While I am sad to leave the college that clarified my future, I am thankful for all of the wonderful staff and students that helped me along my journey.
I want to leave The Front Page’s dedicated readers with the most important lesson that FRCC taught me: nothing is insurmountable and dreams really can come true.
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease which attacks the protective myelin that covers nerve fibers. When these fibers deteriorate your brain and body have a hard time communicating with each other. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50. Women have over a double likelihood of being diagnosed. Furthermore, Colorado has a higher than average rate of MS, making this disease more prevalent than ever within our society.
Thankfully, the Colorado-Wyoming Chapter from National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society’s annual fundraising ride occurs June 25 through June 26. This event takes place at our Front Range Community College-Westminster Campus. The registration fee is 79 dollars, and part of the money helps support 380 National MS Society research projects worldwide, eleven of which are located here in Colorado.
Participants also receive, a custom T-shirt, catered meals, rest stops, route support, and entertainment.
The cause of MS is unknown and funds generated through the bike race may fund scientists researching the cause. Although there is no cure, treatments can help manage the disease and its symptoms. With over 2.3 million affected worldwide, the annual MS Bike race is a great way to help support your fellow mankind.
During the 2014-15 school year, the Academic Success Center tested the waters at Front Range Community College’s Westminster campus as a separate writing center and math lab. Students could make appointments or drop into these rooms for help on assignments from FRCC professors. When students responded positively to this development, Pandi Bromley, Academic Success Center Coordinator, developed the project further, combining the two centers, moving to the library and adding to the Center’s offerings.
“We partnered with the College Hill Library which is an exciting opportunity, because we’re realizing that the Academic Success Center represents all things academic oriented,” Bromley said. The Academic Success Center is now comprised of a math center, a writing center, tutoring services, study rooms, group study opportunities and group tutoring services, all located in the back corner of the library.
The Academic Success Center’s study rooms are one of the most popular features. Not only can students reserve study rooms for group work, but they can also have a professor in a study room give group lessons and tutoring. This is especially handy for small groups of students who need help preparing for an exam or clarifying information that was lost in class.
Jeff Wahl, the head librarian at College Hill, and Cynthia Keller, a research librarian, also offer their services to assist students with research assignments, which include finding and citing sources. “What’s convenient is that the writing center is in the library, so after students gather their sources, they can go to the writing center. It’s a one stop shop,” Bromley said.
The Center’s move to the library did not come without its issues. Even though it has established itself now, many students still do not know about the Center’s expansion or new location. However, according to Bromley, “I hear from students that they love being in the library because of the openness, and that it’s a great place to get their studying done because there are no interruptions.”
Bromley intends to continue developing the Center to entice more students into its services. Between new furniture and new programs, in a few semesters, the Academic Success Center will be the place on the Westminster Campus for student success.
“Students started realizing that [the Academic Success Center] really is a great place to work and get studying done,” Bromley said. “This is the new norm; it is an enculturation process. Students will get used to the Academic Success Center being the new hub of student support.”
It’s no secret that an overload of studies and busy schedules cause students to neglect the gym during the semester. To help students achieve their fitness goals this summer, the High Plains Fitness Center is offering a variety of camps designed to “raise [students’] confidence and discover new abilities,” said fitness center coordinator, Amber Kavehkar.
The fitness camps are not limited to students alone. Parents can register their kids for camps to run off their youthful energy, and so that parent-students can find time to focus on school or work.
Kavehkar designed the summer camps with the community in mind, as they are not limited to only Front Range Community College students. Kids can play, and adults can grow. Youth groups (ages 8 through 12) focus on fun activities such as crafts and yoga. Whereas adults (ages 17 and up) can play team sports like basketball or study weight lifting techniques.
The camps occur three times this summer: June 6 through 23, June 27 through 30 or July 11 through 28. Prices for the public start at just 140 dollars. Plus, all High Plains Fitness Center members receive a discount when registering for the summer camps. While the cost is a big issue for most students, the fees are used to help cover the costs of the gym equipment coming to the fitness center in the future.
Those interested in a fun-filled summer at FRCC can stop by the fitness center and ask for a camp registration form.
On April 25, Professor Jonathan Montgomery opened the second annual English faculty reading with, “We’ll show you we weren’t hired for nothing!” The reading was an opportunity for the English faculty at Front Range Community College to share their own pieces of writing with the community.
Pictured left to right: Tino Gomez, Randy Russell, Jonathan Montgomery, Kate Spencer, Michelle Medeiros, Mark DuCharme
The room reserved for the event at College Hill Library overlooked sweeping views of the Front Range on the western horizon. Inside the room were rows of chairs for the audience, a table full of odd hats and stuffed birds, a podium and a guitar and amplifier, all signs that the reading was more than a typical lecture.
Over the course of an hour or so, six faculty members read more than 20 different poems and stories. Along with Montgomery, the host and M.C., Michelle Medeiros, Tino Gomez, Kate Spencer, Randy Russell and Mark DuCharme read literature to the audience members.
Many of the stories were personal, rooted in events in the readers’ respective pasts. Some of them were hilarious, while others held more series and contemplative tones. Some were performed, like spoken-word events, while others were shared as if in a coffee house.
Randy Russell
Gomez’s Your Tongue, My Son examines his life growing up in a household where his mom spoke only Spanish and he spoke mostly English. In contrast, Russell’s hilarious recount of his experience with a vasectomy in Capt’n Eunuchs Doomed Privates left the audience laughing to the point of tears.
Some of the pieces were polished, published writings, and others were brand new, having been written in the days or weeks before the event. Many of DuCharme’s readings came from books that he has published. Spencer’s reading was a non-fiction, short story which, for her, was a new style of writing, as she moves away from poetry.
Montgomery kept the mood light with his banter between readings and his encouragement that the performers use the goofy hats and the stuffed, singing birds as props. Montgomery a natural performer, paid his homage to Prince, who had passed away recently, as he wore purple and comically used the late musician’s biography as his own during his introduction. He also used the guitar and amplifier as he closed out the show with his work All the Great Rock-stars are Gonna Start Dyin’.
Jonathan Montgomery
Montgomery introduced each of the presenters with a brief biography and a few fun facts and also led the audience in a mid-performance energizer activity. During his dramatic readings, the table served as his make-shift stage.
On this cloudy, rainy night, a few flashes of lightening added effects to the performances, and the cool, rainy weather gave the warm room a cozy feeling. Events like these allow students and faculty a chance to interact outside of the classroom, and are especially fun when teachers act goofy or share serious parts of their pasts. The faculty reading afforded students the opportunity to see their instructors as more than instructors, but to actually get to know them on more personal levels.
Are you a busy student looking for a flexible and fun job at Front Range Community College? If you’re looking for a great on-campus job, working for The Front Page newspaper is a wonderful opportunity to meet people on campus and earn money.
As a busy student, I have a complicated schedule and I needed a flexible job that worked with my class load while also strengthening my résumé. Being a staff writer for The Front Page allowed for all of these things.
A great aspect of being a writer for The Front Page is the ability to inform students about current events both on campus and abroad. Writing topics are either assigned by your editor, or you can choose a topic to write about. I’ve written on everything from sporting events and concerts to professor profiles and a week in the life of a busy student. The possibilities for topics are endless!
Working as a staff writer also allowed me to work remotely. The Front Page has a meeting once a week on campus to assign articles, but other than that, I have the ability to work wherever I am. With such a busy and changing schedule, being able to write from a variety of locations was a huge benefit.
All in all, writing for The Front Page is a truly special and fun job. The benefits are wide ranging: writing on almost any topic, getting paid by the word and working from wherever, whenever.
Looking for more information? Students interested in working as staff writers should email Julie.beggs@frontrange.edu or apply directly here.
Front Range Community College-Westminster creates a student driven, campus-wide journal titled Howl every two years. This year the third edition was released at the Howl Release Party on April 21, in the College Hill Library. The event had music by FRCC’s Gypsy Jazz Trio, a free copy of Howl, and refreshments that were served. Attendees could meet the writers and artists, while also listening to the authors read their works.
Howl’s name embraces our school’s mascot, the gray wolf. Its name also gives respect towards Allen Ginsberg, a Colorado local and author of Howl, a poem which calls young writers to embrace a fervid writing style.
Alpaca by Jie Shen – Front cover of Howl
The first volume was published by Randy Russell, a professor in the Westminster Campus English and Communication department. For consecutive volumes, Tino Gomez, chair of the Westminster Campus English and Communication department worked together with Russell as staff editors.
As the book embraces student involvement, Olivia Orr, a student designer, worked together with design supervisor Mike Ruberto, art submissions editor Lydia Brokaw, as well as Gomez and Russell to design the journal.
Howl is a pinnacle of student work, and is filled from beginning to end with artfully chosen creations. Each part of the journal embraces student involvement and the growth of creative art. Howl is a physical manifestation of what an organized group of students and staff artists can construct. The staff act as a catalyst, as the students are the ones truly in control of this masterful entity.
The student and staff work ethic can be described as “the culmination of energy directed at one common goal, to support and be a part of the magazine,” said Gomez.
Overall, the development of the book relies on the amount of creative writing classes available at Westminster. If more creative writing courses are available, more students will submit their works and hopefully the book can be created annually instead of the two year development process currently in place.
The ability for students to develop and enjoy a physical creation of this quality is spectacular to view as a fellow student. “It’s a labor of love for all of those involved,” said Gomez, “often times this is the first time a student has been published.”
Gomez would like to thank the administration for offering fiscal support throughout the entire process of creating this professional journal. Without these critical funds, students would be unable to grow together through this artful piece.
Each year, Front Range Community College awards successful students by hosting the Student Awards Ceremony. Located in the Rocky Mountain room on Thursday, April 7, at 3:30 p.m., the Student Awards Ceremony commemorated students for performing above and beyond expectations.
National Leadership Awards logo.
The event is a great time for anyone to celebrate successful students. Dan Balski, the Coordinator of Clubs and Leadership stated, “The campus community is welcome to attend. Invites go out to all award winners, specifically, as well as all FRCC employees.”
Balski mentioned one specific type of award given to students, called the Academic Achievement Award. “The Academic Achievement Awards are given to one student per department, and are selected through each individual department,” said Balski. Other awards include the Vice President’s Service Award, Outstanding Student Employee Award, and the Diversity Advocate Award. These awards are all chosen out of a group of nominees. According to Balski, “All of these winners receive an engraved, acrylic award.”
Students who are interested in being awarded at the next Student Awards Ceremony have to maintain a strong work ethic to get noticed. “It is evident that these students hold themselves to a high standard and perform outstandingly, whether in the classroom, outside the classroom, or both. Such behaviors do not go unnoticed by the faculty and staff here on campus,” said Balski.
To commemorate Earth Day last Friday, the Environmental Science Club at Front Range Community College spent the week educating students about the importance of respecting the planet.
According to their website, the club’s goal is “to promote a clean and sustainable standard in and outside of Front Range Community College. Our purpose is to make the college and community as eco-friendly as possible. We will accomplish this through a variety of projects/events about recycling, water/energy conservation, etc. Together we will develop ideas and projects as a group to help bring sustainability to FRCC and the city of Westminster.”
According to Austin, Vice President of the Environmental Science Club, the club began thanks to a passionate student. “Brandon Blea was in environmental science, a class offered at [Front Range Community College], and he had an idea to try and get more people involved in living a more sustainable lifestyle and just generally make people more aware of how to live a lifestyle that impacts the earth less, and why that is important. Out of that idea, the Environmental Science Club was born,” he explained.
The club strives to implant students with a certain respect for the Earth. “We only have one planet, and if you don’t want to care about it that is up to you, but I think that you should be more concerned about the future of the planet and future generations, about posterity,” Austin said.
The state of the health of our planet is a big issue of concern and debate at the national and international levels. Many people are starting to gain an understanding of how our lifestyles can have drastic impacts on the environment and overall health of the planet. Many people believe that, as a society, we need to make some drastic changes to how we live and how we treat the Earth, if we are to survive, and thrive, as a species. Others feel that there is no way that the changes they make will affect any real change to such a large and daunting challenge, but this is far from the truth. FRCC’s Earth Week, and the Environmental Science Club, attempted to dispel this myth.
Instilling change in our behaviors on campus can have a ripple effect through the greater Front Range community. “We want to spread the message to the greater community but we need to first start with the school. We would like to get as many people as possible from the campus involved because obviously the people are members of the community themselves; they live around this area, they go to school around this area, they probably work around the area. If we get people to start making the changes in their niche it will spread to other people in the community through them,” Austin said.
To better the Earth, people do not need to reform their entire lives. In fact, they can take a few simple steps to initiate change. “It’s easy when you leave a room to turn the light off or when you walk up to a trash can or recycle bin, you make a decision to recycle something if you can,” Austin said. “It’s also easy to plug everything into a power strip, and if you’re not using anything, to turn of the power strip.” If every person did a small favor to the planet, a much bigger change could occur.
The Environmental Science Club also hosts events to help spread their sustainability message. The events took center stage last week to celebrate the Earth Week festivities. On Monday April 18, they handed out reusable goodie bags with suggestions for students to reduce environmental impacts.
The Environmental Science Club and the Science Club took turns working the information booth that was set-up most of last week in front of the Student Organization Center (SOC). The Science Club had an informational event on Wednesday, and the Environmental Science Club held events Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
Thursday’s theme was reuse, so the Environmental Science Club handed out coffee mugs. “People will go to the café here and they’ll use one of those cups and then throw it away. So if we give away mugs (we hope) people will be more inclined to use those,” Austin said. Different days of Earth Week highlighted different tenants that are the pillars of the green movement; reduce, reuse, recycle.
Using reusable grocery bags, a travel coffee cup and a water bottle, instead of plastic or paper bags, cups or bottles take very little effort once the habit is established, but make a large difference in waste generated over the course of a year or years.
According to statistics from various online sources, Americans alone consume over 100 billion cups of coffee each year and, according to Starbucks, only 1.9 percent of all of their transactions include the use of travel mugs. While the cups are generally made from recycled material, once they are made water-proof for liquid storage, they are rendered un-recyclable due to the plastic coating applied. In addition, each one of those cups, even if made from recycled materials, releases 0.24 pounds of CO2 emissions to produce it. So, if you were to buy only a single cup of coffee each day, over the course of a year you would be adding 23 pounds of waste to landfills and over 85 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. These statistics only account for the cups, not the lids, sleeves or packaging.
Our addiction to plastic is no better. Americans used over 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. Historically, only around 23 percent of these bottles get recycled, meaning more than 38 billion plastic water bottles end up in landfills every year. It also requires more than 17 million barrels of oil to create those bottles annually, as well as more water to produce them than they actually store. Further, bottled water is exponentially more expensive than tap water and is generally no safer or cleaner than tap water, a big reason people claim for consuming bottled water.
If humans worked to reduce, reuse and recycle, they could dramatically decrease the amount of waste that inhabits the Earth. Use a non-disposable water bottle and coffee cup, take reusable bags to the grocery store and bike or take a bus to get to the store or school. Reduce your use of disposable materials, reuse materials like grocery bags and coffee mugs, and, if you can’t reduce or reuse the material, make sure it is recyclable.
By making these little changes to your life, you will be making a difference in the world. Even more importantly, as you go through your daily life, you will inspire other people to make these same small changes.
Imagine if everyone had even just a cloth bag with a water bottle and coffee cup in their car: very easy to put together and keep close by, and with daily use of all three, millions of pounds of waste would remain out of our landfills and atmosphere.
This is how you can turn everyday into Earth Day. Living a sustainable lifestyle, or one that reduces your impact on the environment, isn’t hard and doesn’t require massive lifestyle changes. Few people can, or want to, live off the grid or consume zero fossil fuels. Everyone can, however, make an effort to reduce the amount of waste they produce.
The Environmental Science Club is a great way to learn more about sustainability and what you can do to make a difference. The club holds meetings every other Friday, from 10 to 11 a.m. in the conference room of the Student Outreach Center. The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, April 29. Anyone is welcome to attend, and if you sign up, they will send email reminders for meetings as well as information about the environment.
As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” For FRCC students, this could mean to make everyday Earth Day.
When she joined Student Government Association two semesters ago, Front Range Community College student Nicole Le Febre, hoped that the organization would play to her social side. “I wanted to have conversations with other students and find out what they wanted,” she said. As an SGA representative, Le Febre took those wants and used them to make a difference at the institution.
Last semester, for example, Le Febre worked with SGA to improve the Wi-Fi speeds at FRCC. “As a student representative, I pushed for faster Wi-Fi, because it was something that the students really wanted and needed,” she said. And, after reporting this student concern for FRCC President Andrew Dorsey, the school updated the Internet speed.
“I just like to talk to people: see how their classes are going, see what I can do to make their FRCC experience better,” Le Febre said. Although Le Febre made a difference as a student representative, she understands that more power equals more influence. Thus, Le Febre’s name is on the ballot for SGA Vice President, for whom students vote on April 27 and 28.
As Vice President, Le Febre hopes to bridge the gap between students and FRCC leadership. “I want to be a liaison,” she said, “to make student concerns known, and do something about them.”
“By observing the [SGA] President and Vice President this past year, I have an idea of what I want to do as a vice president. I want to continue advocating for the students, but in a bigger way.” Le Febre still intends to converse with the students, but in a position of power, she can bring those conversations directly to President Dorsey.
Le Febre’s main goal as Vice President is to increase cohesion among FRCC organizations. “I want to get FRCC together. There’s so much separation.” She wants SGA to take an active role in events on campus, because in order to truly represent the students, SGA must participate with them.
“I want to find [SGA’s] purpose. Why are we here? What are we going to do to inspire students to better themselves?”
As SGA elections approach, students must decide who can best represent them. “I can represent the students, because I am a student,” Le Febre said.
A year and a half ago, when I applied to Front Range Community College, I had not idea that I would walk away from the institution with an Associate of Arts degree, a job as the editor of The Front Page and a lifetime of memories.
