Hartwick College Is On The Ball, It Proves Again

4-16-10

There’s something to be said for positive thinking.
Mayor Dick Miller, former Hartwick College president, has said he never doubted he could turn around that local gem on Oyaron Hill when he arrived here a decade ago.
And, in the face of dropping enrollments and a shrinking endowment, he did.
If succession is one of the most important tasks executives and institutions need to address, then indications are that, in the person of Margaret Drugovich, Miller’s successor, Hartwick College continues in good hands.

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The latest evidence surfaced in the past few days, as Hartwick announced its Department of Nursing has launched an 18-month accelerated program whereby students can obtain a bachelor’s in nursing in short order.
(Interested?  An open house to detail the program for interested persons will be 6-8 p.m. next Tuesday, April 20, in rooms 401 and 403 of the Johnstone Science Center.)
Find a need and fill it.  That’s a formula for business success, but Hartwick College has embraced it as its own.
Given a regional and national shortage of nurses, the jobs are there, the demand for jobs is there, and Hartwick is simply expediting the connection.
“You can’t outsource a nursing job,” is how Jeanne-Marie Havener, Hartwick’s Nursing Department chair, put it.
Exactly right.

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In the case of Hartwick, lightning keeps striking in the same place.  It can’t be a coincidence.
With students ever-more financially strapped in our current (and soon-ending, we can only hope) Great Recession, and tuition as through the roof as its been in recent decades, Hartwick acted.
Last year, it announced a program to allow students to obtain a prestigious Hartwick degree in just three years, saving approximately $40,000.
The program isn’t for everyone, the college cautioned.  But if a career-focused student wants to get on to, say, law school, he or she can benefit from leapfrogging a year.
Again, a need perceived, a service provided, a win and a win.
Same goes with Hartwick’s collaboration with Bassett Healthcare.  The hospital underwrites tuition; the students pledge to work for Bassett when they graduate.  Bingo.
Let’s continue to keep an eye on Hartwick College.  The lessons it’s been acting on are ones that the rest of us would be wise to heed.
Well done!