Student Story
Erika Garcia-Reyes Erika Garcia-Reyes is resourceful. As a first-generation college student with many questions, she has to be. What’s more, as a Cav Leader assisting new and prospective JCCC students, she shares her experiences to help others with similar questions. “I share with other students the answers I found for all those small questions I once had,” Garcia-Reyes said. “I tell them what’s been easy for me and what is a little difficult. I let them know it is different for everyone, but there’s always someone at JCCC who can help. All you have to do is ask.” When Garcia-Reyes was thinking about
going to college, decisions related to this unfamiliar adventure not only affected her but her family as well. In the end, deciding factors that brought her to JCCC included affordability, flexible class schedules and the ability to stay close to her cultural community. What Garcia-Reyes has accomplished in one year of college makes her family happy. Plus, being able to work on campus between classes is very helpful, she noted. It allows her to spend evening time with her three-year-old daughter. “My family feels very proud, not only that I attend JCCC but that I work here,” she said. “They see me always in school, always trying to do good and to have all these resources available to me. JCCC keeps me growing as a person and as a student.”
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The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at JCCC won a 2010 Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture from the Kansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Kyu Sung Woo Architects Inc. and Gould Evans Associates were the architects; JE Dunn Construction was the contractor. In fall 2010, the JCCC bookstore completed an addition of 5,000 square feet to its warehouse. The addition provided much needed warehouse space on the southwest corner of the Student Center that doubled the number of buyback and reservation pickup windows and created a flexible public-use space with seating and WiFi accessibility. The eight buyback windows and seating area are also available for Student Services use, such as enrollment and financial aid overflow, or for other special college programming needs. The convertible public
space also adds another study space for students in the Student Center. Cost of the bookstore warehouse was approximately $2 million, funded by the Postsecondary Education Institution loan fund from the state of Kansas. Recent innovations for the bookstore include a textbook rental trial and expanding e-book program, recycling and sustainability efforts, and collaboration with the Billington Library to provide textbooks on reserve. JCCC was selected as the 2010 Corporate Citizen of the Year by the Olathe Chamber of Commerce because of its economic impact on the county and on Olathe, especially in recognition of the college’s construction of the Olathe Health Education Center.
Work continued on the new Olathe Health Education Center (OHEC) under construction on the campus of Olathe Medical Center. In 2008, the medical center donated to JCCC 5.8 acres of land on which to build an allied health education center. Construction began in early 2010, and the center opened for classes in fall 2011. Courses and programs to be offered at OHEC include practical nursing, certified nurse assistant, rehabilitation aide, dietary manager, medical office, billing and coding, transcription, phlebotomy and ECG technician. The health occupations classes moving to OHEC were formerly housed in classrooms at King’s Cove, Merriam. That facility will remain open to house general education courses that were offered at Bishop Miege North in Roeland Park; the college closed the Bishop Miege North site in summer 2011.
JCCC’s Foundation met the “Wysong Challenge” by raising $3,291,032 to support the construction of a new hospitality and culinary academy on the college campus. The “Wysong Challenge” was a set of initiatives intended to distinguish JCCC’s hospitality program at national and global levels. Former Kansas Senator David Wysong and his wife, Kathy, announced in May 2008 a $750,000 challenge gift to help raise funds in support of JCCC’s hospitality program, which eventually included the construction of a new facility. In 2010, the college’s board of trustees challenged the Foundation to raise $3 million over 18 months to support the construction of such a facility. If the Foundation was able to raise the money, then the trustees pledged to give favorable consideration toward its construction. The monies would come from the