Quinsigamond Community College Receives $300,000 Grant from Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation

From Quinsigamond Community College:

Quinsigamond Community College (QCC) is pleased to announce an unprecedented gift of $300,000 from the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., trustee for the purchase and installation of High Fidelity Simulation (HFS) technology at the College’s new 73,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art, Healthcare and Workforce Development Center in downtown Worcester. QCC received its first four multi-racial mannequins made possible by this grant in early May.

QCC President Gail E. Carberry expressed the College’s deep gratitude for the Foundation’s generous contribution to QCC’s Regional Investment in Service and Education (RISE) Campaign, which will enable QCC to modernize its healthcare programs by infusing racially representative HFS technology across the healthcare curriculum.

“With HFS in place,” Carberry said, “…the college will be able to respond quickly and creatively to labor demand and ultimately will help ensure high quality healthcare by training the future workforce.”

Core simulation labs in the new center facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. Students from different programs interact while using the same lab space at the same time, practicing required procedures and techniques on mannequins and making critical decisions in safe, real-time environments without compromising patient/client care.

With QCC’s simulation-based facility purposefully located in close proximity to diverse, underserved neighborhoods, hospitals and clinics, the college will be able to expand career ladders in healthcare for multi-lingual, multi-cultural, low-income students in particular. This strategy has made QCC a partner-of-choice for healthcare and educational institutions that need employees or serve students from multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-racial backgrounds. According to QCC’s dean of healthcare Jane June, DNP, the first simulation mannequins (both babies and adults) arrived in April and “…reflect the college’s multi-racial student population and service area.”

In partnership with the QCC Foundation, QCC has raised or leveraged nearly $11 million for various facilities through its $5 million RISE Campaign. Entering its first year of operations in 2014, QCC soon found itself a year ahead of its growth plan, with numerous partnership requests from local and regional industry. The college responded with increased commitment of $700,000 to its operating budget for expanded staffing to meet demand.

QCC is now positioned to complete the final phase of delivery of simulation technology for the full complement of healthcare programs offered by the college.