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12/13/06 Seven men roamed a field on a late-November afternoon at Barton County Community College as they operated an innovative gas-leak detector device, the 46 Hawk, which utilizes laser technology to provide a combustible gas indicator that checks for methane gas leaks. Most of the men in the small group hailed from around the state, but a few came from neighboring states Nebraska and Missouri, as their companies and municipalities took advantage of the regional proximity to train them in Barton’s three-day seminar Gas Leak Detection Training School. The instructor for the course was provided by gas leak detection industry leader Southern Cross Corporation of Norcross, Ga., and training was offered at a reasonable rate of $485 per person. 9/17/06 When Barton County Community College history teacher Linda McCaffery tests her students, she doesn’t ask for dates. She wants them to know what happened, why it happened, and what came next. Federal funding has been renewed for the Central Kansas
Educational Opportunity Center, which helps adults explore careers and
educational opportunities. Earlier this month, Congressman Jerry Moran
announced that CKEOC will receive $255,385 from the U.S. Department of
Education. Twenty-nine post employees began a six-month pilot
course July 26 in an effort to prepare themselves for leadership and supervisory
positions. Motorcycle enthusiasts Dan Myers and Jeff Young were
riding together on a city street one day when a car in front of them slammed
on its breaks. Young instinctively slammed on his breaks, causing his
back tire to slide. Seconds after getting the bike under control, as the
two rode along at about 15 miles an hour, Myers said to him, “Remember,
it’s a squeeze and a press, not a stomp.” Wichita’s Chris Curtis moves through life at
a slow and comfortable pace. He joined the U.S. Navy four years after
graduating from high school in 1985 and then began attending college nearly
two years after leaving the military in 1995. Nine years later, the 40-year-old
is still plodding toward an associate’s degree in general studies.
Barton County Community College Associate Dean of Liberal
Arts and Sciences Lou Kottmann wrote his retirement letter two years ago,
then neatly tucked it away until the ideal time to reveal it. Now is the
ideal time as Kottmann retires after serving nearly 36 years as an instructor
and administrator at Barton. More than 30 years ago, Great Bend couple Warren and
Dorothy Kopke made friends with internationally noted bronze sculptor
Gus Shafer and his wife, Eva. That friendship formed the seed that later
blossomed into a beautiful gallery named in Shafer’s memory on the
campus of Barton County Community College. 5/9/06 When Barton County Community College criminal justice students
Craig Berens and Aaron Conaway graduate Thursday, they won’t stress
over finding a job in their profession. Neither will fellow criminal justice
student Brandon Enabnit when he takes his final class this summer. All
three students have already secured jobs in the criminal justice field.
For more than a month, Berens and Conaway have been working for the Barton
County Sheriff’s Office and Enabnit began his new position with
the Pawnee County Sheriff’s Office a few weeks ago. 5/8/06 A lifetime of teaching was recognized last month when Ken
Shaheen, Great Bend, was inducted into the Kansas Music Educators Association’s
Hall of Fame. 3/7/06 A message to community emergency response members who are
required to be National Incident Management Systems certified this fall:
Oct. 1 is looming! That’s the day
when first-responders to incident management will be required to be NIMS
700 certified. The number of people needing to be certified is extensive,
covering a multitude of professions, including all law enforcement officers,
firefighters, school administrators, government officials, emergency medical
technicians and paramedics, along with many doctors, nurses and other
health care workers. 3 /7/06 By SUSAN THACKER, Great Bend Tribune Barton County Community College History
Instructor Linda McCaffery was surprised when she entered the classroom
Tuesday afternoon. The room was filled with nearly two dozen students,
eagerly waiting to learn about Kansas history. She found out that two
of the students had shown up more than a half hour early, just so they
wouldn’t miss any of her presentation. 1/27/06 Linda Davis-Stephens, who teaches anthropology
and criminal justice courses at Colby Community College, is also one of
the many instructors at Colby, Barton, Garden City, Dodge City, Seward
County and Pratt Community Colleges who teach courses for EduKan. 11/22/05 It wasn’t rocket science, but a plan to collect hundreds
of items for the local food back did pose a logic problem for honor students
at Barton County Community College this month. 11/11/05 Bob Loss walked across the stage at Barton County Community
College and arranged some props for the set of the upcoming fall play,
“The Harvesting.” By PAM MARTIN Where would premed, mathematics, sociology, business, chiropractic and three dental hygienist students find to live imperfect harmony? The upstairs of an old apartment building in Hoisington, of course. Eight Barton County Community College students and dance
team members moved into the apartments located in downtown Hoisington
over the summer. 8/30/05 By Pam Martin April Van Scyoc, graduate registered nurse, gently
kidded Pricilla Warrick, R.N., as they paused at Clara Barton Hospital’
nurses station last week. The two have developed a close working relationship,
while involved in the hospital’s mentoring program.Van Scyoc said
the mentoring program was very helpful.I’ve worked at others (hospitals)
where you didn’t get any mentoring and it was horrible, she said. 8/30/05 As information systems support analyst for Superior Essex,
Hoisington’s largest employer, Will Eckles stays busy. Essex, which
employs about 275 workers and operates four shifts in manufacturing wire
and cable, utilizes approximately 50 computers, along with printers scanners
and other accessories. Eckles keeps the electronic equipment running for
Essex, and he’s about to become even busier. The company plans to
place 35 more computers on the shop floor of its manufacturing area for
its employees’ use. 8/28/05 When they were still boys, they marched off to war. Today,
60 years later, many of them walk with a shuffle. Six decades ago, they
were involved in the biggest war the world had ever seen, manning gun
turrets on ships in the South Pacific and trudging through Germany's snow-filled
woods. 8/22/05 For years, American soldiers who survived World War II were reluctant witnesses. Few talked of the battles they fought, the horrors they
saw and the invisible wounds that not even time could heal. Those who
came home from the war, which claimed nearly 292,000 Americans, resumed
their lives and stowed their memories and memorabilia. 7/26/05 Karen Mickley, a Connecticut native with a bachelor's degree
from the American University of Paris, believes one of the best experiences
of her education came in a course offered over the Internet by a consortium
of six small community colleges in Kansas. 7/19/05 When Barton County Community College lost its director of
the nursing education program earlier this year, the college turned to
an old friend to keep the program on its feet. Karla P. Perrotta had been
on the job officially for only 11 days when she attended last Friday's
pinning ceremony for 39 graduates of the Licensed Practical Nursing program. 7/19/05 5/17/05 When Sandy Haas began work as a nursing instructor at Barton
County Community College, the nursing department was a mere toddler. Just
four years old, the program was located in the Science Building and only
offered an associate’s degree in nursing. Since then, Haas has been
involved in many changes within the College's nursing program. She’ll
be involved with one more as she prepares to call it quits at Barton.
Her official retirement date is Jan. 1. Haas will move west to WaKeeney
to be closer to her fiancé. 11/14/04 ELLINWOOD - Shaking her head briefly after Tim Kimmel, a
master falconer, removes her hood, the peregrinee falcon's piercing black
eyes survey her surroundings. An instant after he releases her, she lifts
off from his leather gloved hand, powerful steel-gray wings taking her
several hundred feet in the air in a matter of minutes. 10/21/04 Great Bend native Jack Kilby would have felt right at home
at Barton County Community College Wednesday, Oct. 20, as local high school
students spent a morning devoted to science. 10/7/04 The motto for Kiwanis Clubs International is "we build."
With its donation of $1,500 to the upcoming Jack Kilby Science Day, the
local club lived up to this credo. 9/9/04 Where
would you be without Paul Conrad? Chances are you wouldn't be working
at Barton County Community College. Neither would anyone else, for that
matter. Conrad wears the label of "father of Barton" because it's said
that he originally introduced the idea of establishing a college in Barton
County. 9/9/04 One U.S. military story happened last
month involving heroism among fellow soldiers and hardly a word was mentioned
about it. The obscure story didn't unfold inside some war-torn city in
Iraq or any Middle Eastern battlefield, for that matter. It happened at
604 E. Commercial Street in Lyons - home of Barton County Community College
employees Jerry and Kitty Treaster. 8/20/04 Barton County Community College’s Silver Cougar Club
has found its niche. Formed just three years ago, the club offers new
ways for area senior adults to make use of the College’s resources
and at the same time it provides opportunities for them to socialize and
travel within the state. The first night in her dorm room, Brenda Ortiz slept with
the lights on. She wasn't afraid of the dark, but the lights kept her
from feeling alone. 8/6/04 Barton County Community College employees raised $404
for the local Salvation Army summer campaign to provide school supplies
to needy children in the county. 7/11/04 For the past decade, high school-aged FFA leaders from across
Kansas have come to Barton County Community College to hold their annual
summer leadership conferences. They keep coming back, they say, because
of the hospitality. 6/30/04 It’s 11 o’clock and Kate Berg has just killed
her muse. Berg, who will be a junior at Great Bend High School this fall,
is on stage at Barton County Community College, performing a short play
written by herself and classmate Phyllicia Herren. Berg’s character
is an artist with writer’s block, who has just met her muse, played
by Herren, for the first time. 6/9/04 There’s a program sweeping the area that shows
promising long-term potential of whipping the regional workforce into
shape. It has nothing to do with the faddish low-carbohydrate-consumption-craze
known as the Atkins Diet. Rather, it’s the Business Management and
Leadership Program that began at Barton County Community College more
than two years ago. 6/1/04 Math and Science Tutor Barbara Jordan is serious about retiring
from Barton County Community College after nearly 15 years of service.
The 76-year-old Ellinwood resident retired from the College twice before
but something always led her back. Now, she’s moving to Overland
Park to live with her grandson and his wife, so barring an improbable,
long commute or a job as an online instructor, she’s really finished
at Barton. 4/27/04 When Dana Orr graduated from Great Bend High School in 1957,
she had her hopes set high on becoming the next Brenda Star, reporter.
As a monthly high school columnist for the Great Bend Tribune, she had
looked forward to her debut as an official writer for the local paper.
Her hopes fell short when she was assigned to the proofreading department
instead - disheartened when the Tribune let her go a short time later. 3/12/04 With classroom and clinical rigors that Barton County Community
College nursing students face, it’s hard to imagine any of them
finding time to join a club. It’s voluntary, but annually requires
a four-hour commitment of community service from each member. So it’s
surprising that 85 percent of this year’s 61 students enrolled in
Barton’s nursing program are members. 3/2/04 English Instructor Mary Barrows is known as a tough teacher
on Barton’s campus. She knows it and her students know it. Some
students try to avoid her classes because they’ve heard she’s
tough. But others who come out of her classes will call her years later
to say thanks for setting the standards high because the knowledge they
gained in her class has made a big difference in their ability to accomplish
their goals. 2/27/04 Borrowing from the symbolic metaphor of Langston Hughes'
poem "Mother to Son," life for Susan McLaren "ain't been
no crystal stair." A manual laborer all of her adult life, the Hoisington
resident quit work to care for her dying mother three years ago. When
her mother died of cancer about a year later, McLaren, lacking employable
skills in a tight workforce, couldn't find a job. At that point, to paraphrase
the Hughes poem, her life "had tacks in it, splinters, boards all
torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor." 2/19/04 Just as pioneers blazed trails in search of new lives on
fertile Kansas plains, Barton County Community College and Kansas State
University agriculture programs are breaking new ground by teaming up
to entice high school students to stake their claim on rewarding futures
in agriculture. Like the pioneers who were encouraged to go west two centuries
ago, high school students are invited to explore new agriculture career
opportunities, only their trail leads to the 50th Annual 3i Show, set
in Great Bend this April. 1/30/04 As higher education costs rise, financially strapped college
students face stress overload in figuring out how to pay for their academic
endeavors. Two Barton County Community College students have found a way
to alleviate some of the stress by opening the door to opportunity through
USA Funds scholarship assistance. 1/22/04 It sounds like fiction, but it's fact: One e-mail message
last summer magically added leisure reading to the Barton County Community
College Library collection. Barton Director of Learning Resources Mary
Hester sent an electronic plea to College employees last August asking
them to donate their fiction books to the Library. Almost instantly, hardback
and paperback books appeared and the Library is still receiving donations.
Hester estimated that the Library now boasts a collection of nearly 500
books of leisure reading. 11/14/03 Barton County Community College biology students have banded
together to make a humanitarian difference within the community. More
than a dozen of them have served or will serve lunch at Extreme Hope Christian
Fellowship, Great Bend. The first group of Barton biology students helped
today (Friday) and the second group will help serve next Friday (Nov.
21). 11/11/03 Emergency Services Education Coordinator Chy Miller came
back from an EMS Expo in September with new ideas as well as the energy
and motivation to put them to use in making Barton’s EMS Education
Program the best in Kansas. 10/06/03 Final word isn’t expected until next spring, but early
indicators show that Barton County Community College’s Medical Laboratory
Technician program fared exceptionally well during a site visit by a national
re-accrediting agency last month. National Accrediting Agency for Clinical
Laboratory Sciences (NAACLS) performed its site visit Sept. 10 and 11,
and the two representatives listed eight areas of strengths in Barton’s
MLT program. There were no concerns listed in the site visit report. 8/15/03 What a difference a few days can make. Less than a week
ago local Salvation Army manager Stacy Knorr was disappointed in how her
organization's summer campaign was going to provide school supplies to
needy children in the county. She expressed her disappointment in a Great
Bend Tribune news article on Wednesday, admitting that the Salvation Army
had to turn students away every day who were in need of school supplies.
After reading the article, however, community residents responded in a
big way and today Knorr is smiling at the results of this year's drive,
which is still ongoing. 8/5/03 Barton County Community College's student newspaper, the
Interrobang, won the top national award presented by the Associated Collegiate
Press at its national conference in Washington, D.C. Prairie Keepsakes/Russell Flower and Gifts sits among a
group of stores on Eighth Street in Russell, a few blocks east of U.S.
Highway 281, projecting the picturesque storefront image one might expect
from the small, tranquil town of 4,500 people. But take a look inside
the store and it's anything but quiet in the flower and gift shop that
offers seven rooms with more than 5,000 square feet of show space, nearly
all of it lined with merchandise. Its owner, Connie Blanke, runs a booming
business as she briskly tends to the many areas of her store, now in its
12th year of operation. 7/3/03 Great Bend resident Noi Martin had reason to be extra patriotic
this Fourth of July. It’s the first one she spent as a United States
citizen. Martin, a native of Thailand who has lived in America for two
decades, passed the citizenship test in Wichita last September. On Nov.
8, she returned to Wichita to participate proudly in the citizenship ceremony. 7/3/03 Barton County Community College’s nursing students
do more by 9 a.m. than most students do in a single day, to borrow a once-popular
public relations pitch by the U.S. Army. On any given school day, students
do dressing changes, empty catheters, put in Nasogastric tubes, give intramuscular
injections or do dozens of other clinical assignment procedures. After
completing morning clinical, they attend classes, learn new concepts,
master more nursing skills and prepare for exams. Students typically go
home exhausted after a long day, only to return early the next morning
ready to take on the routine again. 5-6/03 Communiqué During his first month at Barton County Community College,
history instructor Gary Kenyon's podium was a lower-level seat in the
gymnasium where he lectured to students sitting a few seats above. His
office was a carrel in the Library where he packed up his belongings every
afternoon only to bring them back the next morning. Kenyon
wasn't the only one working in the precarious environment. 4/03 Communiqué A few weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom, the current war
serves as a reminder of the first war, Desert Storm, which occurred more
than 12 years ago. The Persian Gulf war, as it was also named, comprising
coalition forces representing the United Nations, was a response to Iraqi
troops invading Kuwait in August 1990. The coalition force air war began
against Iraq on Jan. 17, 1991. Then the United States-led coalition began
its ground war against Iraq on Feb. 24. Four days later, a cease fire
was declared and on March 3 Iraqi military leaders accepted strong coalition
terms for ending the war. |
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