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SC4 Career Fair to welcome 100 employers to campus April 11

St. Clair County Community College’s annual Career Fair, the largest event of its kind in the county, takes place Thursday, April 11, from 1 to 4 p.m. in the SC4 Fieldhouse. The college is hosting the event in partnership with Macomb/St. Clair Michigan Works, St. Clair County EDA, Blue Water Area Chamber of Commerce and the City of Port Huron/McMorran.

Open to students, alumni and community members, the Career Fair will feature 100 local, national and international employers across a number of industries looking for qualified candidates to immediately fill open positions.

Attendees will have the chance to meet directly with employers, learn about career opportunities in a variety of fields, and network with professionals to gain valuable insight into the current job market.

“The Career Fair is a great opportunity for job seekers in our community and employers in our region and across the country,” said Bonnie DiNardo, director of community education and relations at SC4. “This event has continued to grow year after year. We have so many talented, well-qualified candidates in our community, and I think employers realize that.”

Admission to the Career Fair is free and open to the public. No advanced registration is required. Attendees are encouraged to dress in proper business attire, communicate professionally and efficiently, and bring a properly prepared résumé. There will be a prize drawing for all professionally dressed job seekers with résumés.

For more information, visit sc4.edu/careerfair or contact Bonnie DiNardo at 810-989-5739 or bdinardo@sc4.edu.

SC4 adds respiratory therapy program to growing list of health sciences offerings

St. Clair County Community College is offering a new Associate in Applied Arts and Sciences degree program in respiratory therapy, with courses beginning in the fall 2019 semester. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, careers in respiratory therapy are projected to grow 23 percent through 2026, much faster than the average for other occupations.

SC4’s 24-month program combines classroom and practicum experiences in hospitals, outpatient testing facilities and physician offices to give graduates the knowledge and skills they need to enter the field as licensed respiratory therapists.

“Respiratory therapists are in demand across the country, so we’re very excited to begin offering this program to our community,” said Christine Robinson, director of respiratory therapy at SC4. “Earning an associate degree is an essential step to become a respiratory therapist. Our hands-on curriculum in a personalized learning environment will give SC4 graduates and those students transferring on to attain a four-year degree a real advantage.”

St. Clair County Community College is currently in the process of seeking the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care (CoARC) provisional accreditation for the respiratory therapy program. However, St. Clair County Community College can provide no assurance that accreditation will be granted by CoARC.

SC4’s respiratory therapy program is now accepting applications for the fall 2019 semester, which begins Monday, Aug. 19. Students interested in the program must submit required application materials by Sunday, June 30. Detailed information, including how to apply, is available online.

SC4 alumni make an impact on and off SVSU baseball diamond

The season is underway for two St. Clair County Community College alumni as assistant coaches for Saginaw Valley State University’s baseball team.

Dr. Jay Scott and Jason Ball are spending a lot of time on the road keeping up with the team’s 50-game schedule that has already taken them to Atlanta, St. Louis and Nashville, while still returning home for work and family.

Both Scott and Ball credit SC4 as the place where their careers took shape. Scott, 39, who grew up in Burlington, Ontario, is currently an associate professor of biology at SVSU, director of the SVSU Electron Microscopy Facility and assistant baseball coach.

Scott began his collegiate baseball career at SC4 before transferring to SVSU in 2001. He attended SC4 for three semesters and played on the baseball team in the 1999-2000 seasons as a centerfielder and leadoff hitter.

He decided to attend SC4 primarily because of a baseball scholarship, but Scott said the college’s learning environment was particularly appealing.

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Dr. Jay Scott

“SC4 provided a great environment to start my academics,” Scott said. “The transition from high school to college can be overwhelming, but the small campus and class sizes were not a large departure from what I experienced in high school. This created a comfortable, familiar environment where I could focus on the challenges of college academics without struggling to adjust to life outside of the classroom.

“The small class sizes provided an opportunity to for me to grow as a student and as an individual,” he continued. “It allowed me to receive a lot of guidance and mentorship from both academic counselors and professors, and also provided a classroom experience that was engaging and unintimidating.”

During Scott’s tenure at SVSU, he earned first team All-GLIAC honors both seasons and was named the 2001 top offensive player for the Cardinals. He currently holds SVSU baseball single season records in batting average (.463) and on-base percentage (.549)

After graduation, Scott earned a Ph.D. at Queen’s University in Ontario and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of New Mexico and University of Iowa’s Department of Internal Medicine.

“When I think about the influences that have led me to my current career, SC4 started it all,” said Scott, who now lives in Auburn, Michigan. “Ultimately, I chose a career that I love at a smaller institution where undergraduate students are the focus and where professors develop and mentor students on a more personal level.

“My experience as a member of the SC4 baseball team was equally impactful,” he noted. “The experiences I had and the bonds that I developed with my teammates are some of my most cherished memories; however, the greatest impact came from my coaches, Rick Smith, Pete Lacey and Jan Prozorowicz. These coaches taught me the value of hard work, discipline, accountability, and skills that shaped both my abilities on the baseball field and my character.”

Ball, 41, is also an assistant baseball coach at SVSU who works with pitchers and oversees the recruiting process.

A 1995 Sandusky High School graduate, Ball was a left-handed pitcher for two seasons at SC4, where he served as sports editor for the Erie Square Gazette student newspaper.

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Jason Ball

“For being from a small town, I was really lost,” Ball said. “There was no way I was going to walk into a four-year school and survive. If I would have gone away, I don’t know that I would have stayed.

“(SC4) was a great transition for me,” he continued. “It was kind of a middle ground.”

Ball transferred to Central Michigan University and became a volunteer assistant from 1999-2001, when he worked closely with current SVSU head coach Steve Jaksa.

Ball said SC4 is where he made an important connection while doing work-study for his health and science instructor Dick Groch, an SC4 baseball coach from 1965-82 recognized as the scout who signed Derek Jeter to the New York Yankees. Groch also coached U.S. and Canadian teams in the Pan American Games and was a scout and special assistant to the general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers.

After receiving his bachelor’s in journalism from CMU, Ball used that connection to become an associate scout with the Brewers for three years. He has also coached at Essexville Garber and Nouvel Catholic Central and was involved with the Saginaw Bay Riverdawgs travel team.

Ball, who lives in Bay City with wife Jill and children Nathan and Morgan, agreed that SC4 is where it all began.

“It’s where everything started,” Ball said. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for SC4, I don’t know what I’d be doing, but I wouldn’t be where I am now.

“Those two years at SC4 were some of the best experiences ever,” he added. “I met so many people there, and all the connections I made, I still keep in touch with them.”

SC4 Experience Center enhances interactive learning opportunities, welcomes traveling fossils exhibit

PORT HURON – St. Clair County Community College’s 16,000-square-foot Experience Center continues to evolve, recently enhancing interactive learning opportunities in its Innovation Center and welcoming “Fossils of the Michigan Basin,” a traveling exhibit by paleontologist, author and storyteller Joseph “PaleoJoe” Kchodl.

The Innovation Center — located within the Experience Center — is now home to a growing number of STEAM-based interactive displays, 3-D pens and technology, a circuit center, a coding station and a virtual reality simulation that make learning fun for students of all ages.

Two images of the Experience Center, one of the Innovation Center and the other of a green screen.

“Guests to the Innovation Center now have the ability to shift energy flow through batteries and light bulbs, create video games and programs through coding and JavaScript, design three-dimensional objects with a 3-D pen and much more,” says Becky Gentner, SC4 executive director of budget and project management, who mentioned the Innovation Center is available via scheduled appointments and field trips. “We are thrilled to expand our offerings and welcome more exciting exhibits for our community.”

“Fossils of the Michigan Basin” is a Michigan-based traveling exhibit featuring fossils of creatures that lived in the Devonian Period of Michigan, long before the age of dinosaurs. It includes Brachiopods, Gastropods, Cephalopods, Prehistoric armor-plated fish and corals, and even a piece of limestone from the thumb region that was touched by a glacier in the last ice age. The exhibit is located in the Experience Center’s Dr. Bassam H. Nasr Natural Science Museum, which is home to the largest collection of fossil artifacts in the Michigan thumb region.

“Michigan at one time was the bottom of an ancient salt water sea,” says PaleoJoe. “Visitors to this exhibit can go back in time when Michigan abounded with creatures of the sea — a time when certain fish species grew to more than 30 feet long, and a time when coral reefs broke the surface of the water creating lagoons filled with life. It is a wonderful way to introduce the public to fossils that can be found right here in our state.”

Three images of the Experience Center, 3D station, exhibit, and Virtual Reality station.

Opened in the fall of 2018, the Experience Center is a hands-on STEAM center that features unique and evolving exhibits, an augmented reality sandbox, a live sturgeon exhibit and more. Recently, SC4 and the Community Foundation of St. Clair County announced a Tarbosauras skeleton cast gift from the SC4 Foundation and two Community Foundation donor advised funds. The Tarbosauras skeleton cast will join a collection that includes a woolly rhinoceros skeleton replica, and T-Rex and Mastodon skull replicas.

The Experience Center is open to the public and is a growing regional field trip destination thanks to a collaborative partnership with the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum and its Unity in Learning initiative. For more information on scheduling a visit, please send an email to experiencecenter@sc4.edu.