Joining the children were HACC President Edna V. Baehre, Ed.D., Ronald C. Brown, P.E., chair of HACC's board of trustees and HACC alumnus, David H. McLane, Ph.D., director on the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Foundation and the HACC Foundation boards, U.S. Congressman Timothy Holden, Pennsylvania State Representative and HACC alumnus Ronald I. Buxton, Governor George M. Leader, capital campaign co-chair, Donald Schell, capital campaign co-chair and HACC trustee, Barbara Bradshaw, executive director of Harrisburg Mayor's Commission on Literacy, Alterman Jackson, HACC's vice president of student affairs and enrollment management and HACC early childhood education student, Virginia Flowers.
Thanks to the visionary gift of $500,000 contributed by Mrs. Grace Milliman Pollock and the Pollock Foundation to HACC, the College was able to construct the 12,000-square-foot childcare and early education center.
Major funding for the center also came from a Child Care Challenge grant from the federal Department of Housing and Human Services, under the administration of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.
The childcare and early childhood education center, which will welcome children for the first time tomorrow, offers students, faculty and staff many more benefits than the child play center HACC has operated since 1977. Licensed by the Department of Public Welfare as a childcare and early childhood education center, the new facility serves children from six weeks to six years old during the hours of 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Up to 63 children can be cared for at any one time. The "drop-in" structure is ideal for students, who may not need full-time care for their children.
"I am absolutely thrilled with the expansion, as it means a lot to parents who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to attend school," said Winnie Richards, director of HACC's child play services. "For many students most childcare options are either too costly or do not provide quality programming."
At three times the size of its predecessor, the new childcare facility has the capacity to care for 82 children per hour, although initially it is staffed for 62 children per hour. President Baehre expects that many of those will be children of healthcare students, who now account for more than a quarter of the college's enrollment.
"Many of the students entering healthcare fields are parents - many entering second careers," Baehre said. "Those students have to complete both on-campus classwork and off-campus clinical experiences, and they need a safe place where their children can thrive."
With an environment specifically designed for childcare, the center includes age-specific classrooms for infants, young toddlers, older toddlers and preschool children, as well as lower sinks and toilets which better accommodate the small people it serves.
A reading center for pre-school children focuses on literacy and reading and includes a specialized library, as well as learning aids such as puppets, storytelling boards, games and computers with developmentally appropriate software for self-paced learning.
In addition to a children's art studio and art gallery, the center features a variety of outdoor playgrounds that include sand and water play, a children's garden, and age-appropriate equipment. The center uses the latest design models in early childhood development to provide children with a homelike environment in which they can learn and begin to prepare for school.
"We're also merging our Early Childhood Education program with the childcare center to provide a model lab for the college," said Richards, adding that more than half of the additional full-time staff members hired for the new facility are HACC graduates. "The students now have the opportunity to observe the children, as well as apply what they have learned in their studies within our classrooms in preparation for entering the workforce."