10 | theLAKER campus happenings Welcome, Hemlock Hall Three classrooms on the first floor of the main campus have been converted to accommodate seminars and informal gatherings in the style of the former Honors House. The rooms are collectively known as Hemlock Hall, a nod to the practice of naming wings of the main campus after Finger Lakes. From 2007 until the pandemic, Honors House, a brick building at the corner of Routes 5 and 20 and Lakeshore Drive, had served as the primary location for classes taught in a seminar format, including classes offered in Honors Studies, Creative Writing, and Humanities. The space also hosted events, offices of faculty committed to seminar pedagogy, and a writing center satellite. The FLCC Foundation, which owned the building, sold the property in June 2023 due to high cost projections for maintenance and accessibility. The site is now a Byrne Dairy. In a vision document for the new Hemlock Hall, Curt Nehring Bliss, professor of humanities, noted that the design and operation of Honors House was based on the understanding that all learning is relational. For example, seminars position learners, including instructors, around the same table, leveling power dynamics, promoting agency and accountability, and extending an invitation of mutual respect. Upholstered furniture creates an informal setting for casual interaction. Hemlock Hall rooms are meant to adhere to these same principles. $1M for distance learning, healthcare initiative The College has been awarded a federal grant to equip schools in Ontario, Wayne, Seneca and Yates counties with videoconferencing equipment that can be used for college classes, telemedicine, and mental health and substance abuse prevention and counseling. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the $968,805 award as part of its Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program. This project builds on the College’s expertise in online learning, and more recent work to extend FLCC’s reach in rural areas in cooperation with libraries, workforce offices, and other sites. The following school districts will be part of the distance learning network FLCC is building: Bloomfield, Dundee, Honeoye, Lyons, North Rose-Wolcott, Penn Yan, Red Creek, Seneca Falls, Sodus and Williamson. The network also includes Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES Technical and Career Centers in the towns of Seneca, Ontario County, and Williamson, Wayne County. The network will allow schools to offer more FLCC concurrent enrollment courses, meaning those that satisfy both high school and college requirements. Smaller districts often do not have enough teachers to offer the available range of concurrent enrollment classes. The new technology will allow students in one or more small districts to remotely join a class in real time at another school, thereby expanding students’ opportunities without the need for transportation out of their home districts. The College plans to begin installation of the equipment in mid-2024. Programming could begin as early as fall 2024. Schools will have the ability to let community members use the technology for telehealth visits or to take other types of FLCC courses. Family Counseling Services of the Finger Lakes in Geneva and the Finger Lakes Area Counseling and Recovery Agency (FLACRA) in Clifton Springs will deliver mental health and substance abuse prevention and counseling services to schools as part of the project.
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