Niagara Falls & Wheatfield Courier / Friday, December 19, 2014
-NIAGARA FALLS & WHEATFIELD-
1
Budwey’s
535 Division St. Twin City Highway
Freshly Baked
51-60 Ct. • Frozen
8 Inch Fruit Pies
Fully Cooked Shrimp
7
$ 99
4
$ 49
Pecan Pies - $6.99
1 Lb. Bag
PRICES GOOD FROM 12/21/14-12/27/14
DECEMBER 19, 2014
Perfect For Holiday Dinner
EA.
CIRCULATION 7,995
Errick Road Elementary helps area refugees enjoy holiday season Niagara Wheatfield’s Errick Road Elementary teachers Beatrice Arnone, Mary Ann Brier, Lori Godell, Nicole Pasceri and Lori Pruyn teach a unit on the holidays every year and ask the students if they want to help out people less fortunate in the area. The students and their families happily agree to help out refugees who are new Western New York residents, many who had to flee their country with little more than the clothes on their backs. “My son is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and works with the refugees,” says Mrs. Pruyn. “After he brought it to our attention that many of them were not prepared for our harsh winters and had little or no posses-
sions of their own we started working with Jewish Family Services. They provided us with names, ages and genders so we could put together care packages for them.” “This has been a great year,” says Mrs. Pruyn. “We have just gotten piles and piles of clothes and toys. The students have really taken ownership of this project and could not wait to come in every day with their donations.” The donations have been so plentiful the classes have already started to put aside items for their families for next year. To add a holiday feel to their offerings, students spent a day decorating the gift boxes with drawings, cut outs and glitter. “We
are so impressed how the students and their parents embraced this project,” says Mrs. Pruyn. “Many of these refugees come from Somalia, Burma, Nepal and various Islamic countries and have literally nothing. We want to thank the Niagara Wheatfield Teachers Association for their generous donation of $300 and one of my former students whose Girl Scout group donated the proceeds from their walkathon. We especially want to thank the moms that came in and helped the students to wrap. It was very kind of all them and will definitely make the holiday season a more pleasant and happier time for the families.”
Anthony Strangio, Noah Morelli, Emilie Smith and Olivia Brabarossa-Robinson. Photo submitted.
ECC makes it six straight at national competition For the past five years, students of Erie Community College’s celebrated industrial technology program have enjoyed fall seasons full of awards on the national stage of Mastercam’s Wildest Parts design competition. This year, they continued what has now become an annual tradition of industrial design domination. In a field open to students from over 74,800
schools around the country, ECC’s Michael Manzella notched second place and Paul Gojmerac added third place honors as the college’s participants once again mastered the decades-old contest’s postsecondary division. This is the sixth year in a row that an ECC student has been awarded either first, second or third place in the event, which challenges students enrolled
in Mastercam courses to create a unique, original design using Mastercam software. Williamsville native Manzella earned his honor for “Reel,” a large and complicated titanium fly reel which featured expert milling, tight tolerances and an impressive attention to detail. Kenmore resident Gojmerac’s waterjet-created “Sextant” not only combined
artistic and utilitarian qualities sought after by contest judges, but also exhibited an impressive level of ambition from the ECC student. According to Mastercam judges, “(Gojmerac) gained a much better understanding of the process of taking a concept through all of the steps necessary to become a finished product. The end result was a great learning experi-
ence and an attractive and functional part.” This victory is simply the latest victory for an ECC Industrial Technology Program that is leading the way in Western New York advanced manufacturing by providing trained graduates to answer the region’s dire need for skilled laborers, manufacturers and technicians. Its enrollment has surged over the past nine
years and, thanks in part to the college’s $926,922 received through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program (TAACCCT) in 2012, is now utilizing state-ofthe-art training labs and advanced equipment for students eager to enter the area’s expanding industry.