Public

Members of Onondaga Community College's Extraordinary Men of Distinction (EMOD) want students in the Syracuse City School District to see themselves as college students one day. That's why EMOD recently welcomed students in the Building Men program at Meachem Elementary School to campus for a few hours of fun and conversation.

Building Men is led by Cameron Littlejohn, a 1st grade teacher at Meachem who is also a 2015 alumnus of OCC. EMOD student members who led this effort were George Grigorian, Emanuel Flowers, and Muhammed Abedrabbah.

The week of October 21-25 is National Transfer Student Week. Onondaga Community College will host a Transfer Fair Wednesday, October 23 in the Gordon Student Center Great Room from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Students will have the opportunity to have in-person conversations with representatives of colleges and universities where they are interested in continuing their education. Between now and then, we are sharing stories with you daily of students who earned their associate degrees at OCC and transferred to four-year institutions.

The week of October 21-25 is National Transfer Student Week. Onondaga Community College will host a Transfer Fair Wednesday, October 23 in the Gordon Student Center Great Room from 11:30am to 1:30pm. Students will have the opportunity to have in-person conversations with representatives of colleges and universities where they are interested in continuing their education. Between now and then, we are sharing stories with you daily of students who earned their associate degrees at OCC and transferred to four-year institutions.

Yesvier Aviles Mendez found his eventual career path as a member of his high school track & field team in Puerto Rico. "I was really good with my hands. My teammates were always asking me to help them stretch out and massage them before meets."

When the President of the United States came to Onondaga Community College two years ago to celebrate Micron Technology's decision to build a massive chip-making facility about a half-hour drive from campus, it set in motion a whirlwind of related activity.

A conversation with a friend introduced Skylor Kelley to the possibility of enrolling in the P-TECH program. "My neighbor was in it and told me about it. I decided to apply, interviewed, and figured why not do it as an alternate way of high school. It's turned out pretty nice."

P-TECH stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High School. It's a program that provides high school students the opportunity to work toward their diploma and associate degree simultaneously, and ultimately a pathway to an in-demand job.

Joe Seeber had been looking forward to this field trip since the beginning of the semester. Seeber is an Electrical Technology major at Onondaga Community College who will complete his degree this semester. On September 30, Seeber and his classmates in Professor Betsy Nicholas' Power System (ELT 285) class went on a field trip to the National Grid Power Distribution Control Center in the Town of Clay. "My brother works in NYSEG's (New York State Electric and Gas) Control Room and I was excited to see what something like that would be like."

Dick Woodworth's lifelong hobby began in 1967 when he was driving from Central New York to Louisiana where he would attend a four-year college. He stopped in Tennessee for gas and wound up buying a "Kennedy for President" poster for $2. "I was shocked it was for sale because Kennedy wasn't popular in the south. I bought the poster to hand in my dorm room."