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BCCC Launches 48th Annual Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition
The 2024 search is on for the 48th annual Bucks County Poet Laureate, according to Bucks County Community College professor and director of the program, Ethel Rackin, Ph.D.
The Bucks Laureate Program is one of the oldest in the country. It also holds a High School Poet Contest every spring. The Bucks County Poet Laureate Program is seeking the 2024 Laureate. The postmark deadline for submission to the competition is Friday, September 13, 2024.
The winner of the competition will receive a $500 honorarium, a plaque from the Bucks County Commissioners, and a reading at Bucks County Community College in the fall with the previous year’s laureate, Tara Tamburello.
The 2024 final judge will be Kasey Jueds. Keeper, Jueds’ first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in 2013. Her second book, The Thicket, was published by Pitt in 2021. Jueds has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation; she has also been a visiting poet at the University of Pennsylvania, LaSalle College, and the University of Northern Colorado. She currently resides in New York State.
Preliminary judge will be Thomas Devaney. Devaney is a poet, facilitator, and educator based in Philadelphia. He is a Pew Fellow in the Arts with a focus on city building and community engagement. He wrote and co-directed the film Bicentennial City with Green House Media (2020). Devaney is the author of Getting to Philadelphia (Hanging Loose Press, 2019) and You Are the Battery (Black Square Editions, 2019).
Entrants to the competition must be Bucks County residents and 18 years or older. Poetry of any kind is welcome. The entry requires 10 poems, any style, form, or length. All work must be original, published or unpublished, typewritten or word-processed, one poem per page, in black ink. Poems and entry form must be submitted online.
For more information, contact Dr. Ethel Rackin at ethel.rackin@bucks.edu.
Bucks Announces Virtual Information Session for UArts Students
A virtual information session will be hosted by Bucks County Community College for first-and second-year University of the Arts (UArts) students to present various educational pathways on Tuesday, June 25 at 6 p.m. Students and parents can learn about the high-quality art disciplines available at Bucks, which has a long and deep arts heritage. Representatives from Admissions, Transfer Services and Financial Aid will be ready to answer your questions, including how to bring your financial aid with you!
Bucks County is a well-established and vibrant center for the arts both regionally and nationally, and Bucks County Community College is a premier provider of collegiate arts education. The College is proud to be one of the few community colleges in the country accredited by both the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM).
Whether you are a newly admitted UArts student or a currently enrolled UArts student, Bucks County Community College is ready to help you navigate this difficult time. If you enroll in one of our associate degree programs, you’ll be able to transfer to a baccalaureate program after you’ve had time to further develop your plans.
Bucks County Community College offers the following arts degrees and certificate programs:
Art and Art History, A.A.
Cinema Video Production, A.F.A.
Communication Studies, A.A.
Dance, A.A.
Fine Arts, A.F.A.
Graphic Design, A.F.A.
Multimedia & Digital Arts, A.F.A.
Music, A.M.*
Photography, A.F.A.
Theater Arts, A.A.
Creative Arts and Entrepreneurship, Certificate
Furniture and Cabinetmaking, Certificate
*Bucks County Community College School of Music is an All-Steinway School.
Register to Attend
To register to attend the Virtual Information Session, complete the online registration form.
For more information, visit the College’s UArts website. Or complete the Request Information form.
Application Deadline for the Summer Bridge Program at Bucks Is June 14
Bucks County Community College is once again offering its popular Summer Bridge Program, designed to ease and support the transition to college by providing students with the academic skills and social resources needed to succeed in a college environment.
The program runs from June 24 to August 9 and includes courses in English composition, reading, mathematics, and college success. Students can mix and match courses ranging from 1 to 6 credits. All in-person courses will held at the Newtown Campus.
This summer’s program will allow students to get a head-start on their academic coursework in a 7-week program that will involve:
An in-depth orientation to college life and resources
Academic advising
Training in skills necessary for college success (e.g., time management & study skills)
Enrollment in courses specific to students’ needs.
The dates of this summer’s program are June 24–August 9. An orientation with Summer Bridge staff and faculty will be held on Monday, June 24, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Summer Session III courses run from July 1–August 9. The application deadline is June 14.
There is no additional cost for the Summer Bridge Program. However, students are responsible for the tuition, fees, and textbook costs for the courses in which they enroll.
Scholarships are available for high school graduates and current college students. Current high school students may be eligible for free or reduced tuition.
For more information, visit our Summer Bridge Program website.
Class of 2024 Set to Graduate at Bucks County Community College
Bucks County Community College will confer more than 980 degrees and certificates to its Class of 2024, including 537 May graduates. Of those, 494 earned associate degrees and 43 earned certificates.
The College will hold two commencement ceremonies on Thursday, May 16 in the College’s gymnasium on the Newtown Campus (275 Swamp Road, Newtown, Pa. 18940). The 2 p.m. ceremony is for graduates from the following three academic departments: Business, Innovation, and Legal Studies; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics; Social and Behavioral Science. The 6 p.m. ceremony will include graduates from four academic departments: Arts and Communication; Health Sciences; Kinesiology and Sports Studies; Language and Literature. Both commencement ceremonies will be streamed live for those unable to attend in person.
Other celebrations this week include the Bucks County Public Safety Training and Certification Fire Academy Graduation and the Nursing Pinning Ceremony.
The Basic and Advanced Fire Academies’ graduation will be held on Tuesday, May 14 at 7 p.m. in the Newtown Campus gymnasium. Firefighter training is integral to the public safety of the region as the majority of fire departments in Pennsylvania are comprised of volunteers. The training allows the students to gain the knowledge and skills needed to serve in fire departments state-wide.
The Nursing Pinning Ceremony will be held on Wednesday, May 15 at 6 p.m. in Newtown Campus gymnasium. All 56 graduates have earned their Associate of Science in Nursing and are eligible to sit for the NCLEX-RN licensure exam. The Bucks program’s pass rate for the 2022-23 year was 96.97%. The Associate Degree Nursing program is approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Nursing.
Philadelphia Building Trades Partners with Bucks for ‘Girls Ignite’ Trades Expo
Workforce Development Effort Aims to Raise Awareness Among Young Women for Careers in Construction The Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, led by Business Manager Ryan N. Boyer once again partnered with Bucks County Community College today for “Girls Ignite”, a one-day career exploration expo in which female Building Trades’ members introduced young women to the many benefits of careers in the unionized construction industry.
Approximately 60 young female middle school students from the Bristol Township School District gathered in the community college’s new, state-of-the-art Center for Advanced Technologies facility on the Epstein Campus at Lower Bucks to be introduced to the basics in a wide variety of unionized construction industry jobs, including:
Sheet Metal
Insulators
Finishing Trades (Painters, Glaziers)
Electricians
Carpenters
Boilermakers
Elevator Constructor
In addition, the students gained valuable insights into firefighting as a career option. Bucks County Community College operates the third largest fire school in the country which provides both basic and advanced public safety training. Bristol Township Fire Department participated in today’s event as well.
“We have forged a great partnership with Bucks County Community College, beginning with the establishment of the 10-week Building & Construction Trades Pre-Apprenticeship program, the first of its kind in Pennsylvania,” said Building Trades Business Manager Boyer. “Today’s ’Girls Ignite’ trades career expo is intended to interest young women in the construction industry and to empower them to pursue careers that have long been the province of their male counterparts.”
“Bucks County Community College is proud to once again join forces with the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council to present today’s ‘Girls Ignite’ event,” said Tom Jennings, Chair of the Bucks County Community College Board of Trustees. “Bucks is committed to providing our students with pathways to meaningful and relevant career opportunities, and this collaboration furthers that commitment.”
Female recruitment efforts such as Pre-Apprenticeship programs, “Girls Ignite,” “Rosie’s Girls” and others are clearly working. As of 2022 (the most recent national analysis), there were approximately 1.3 million women working in the U.S. construction industry, which accounted for 10.9 percent of the entire national construction workforce. That equates to a significant 53 percent increase in women working in construction over the past decade.
The Roosevelt Project: Photographs by Fran Orlando at BCCC
Bucks County Community College is pleased to announce the opening of The Roosevelt Project: Photographs by Fran Orlando at Hicks Art Center Gallery at the College’s Newtown Campus on Wednesday, May 22.
The exhibition features more than 40 portraits from Orlando’s project photographing the residents of the small New Jersey town in the late 1970s. Roosevelt, New Jersey, began in the 1930s as Jersey Homesteads, a planned community to help Jewish garment workers escape poverty and the city. Although the social experiment failed when the factory closed a few years later, the town soon became a rural mecca for artists such as Ben Shahn, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Gregorio Prestopino, and Jacob Landau.
Orlando intended to create a portrait of the town by photographing the people who lived there, several of whom were original residents. She photographed for two years, in black and white with 35mm and medium format cameras. During that time, she received recognition and support for the project from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, exhibited at the New Jersey State Museum, and had a solo exhibition of the work in progress at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie. The project was put on hold when she left New Jersey to attend graduate school in Philadelphia.
During the intervening years, Orlando established a photography business in Philadelphia, worked in various museums as an educator and exhibition planner, and served as Director of Exhibitions and Artmobile at Bucks County Community College for 35 years. She currently works as assistant editor at The Photo Review, a critical photography journal of international scope and readership.
Orlando notes, “Much has changed in the 45+ years since I started this project. Neither the town nor photography are the same. The elders that I photographed are gone; the children are grown. My original gelatin silver prints are considered ‘vintage.’ Moreover, the project has taken on a historical significance that I never considered when I began.
“After all these years, I didn’t feel like I could return to the darkroom and begin literally where I had left off. My life has been spent teaching and learning and I couldn’t deny the changes in myself either. I needed to leave my original gelatin silver prints in the past to bring my work to the present, so I scanned the original negatives and printed the work digitally with my current sensibilities.”
All are welcome to the opening reception on Wednesday, May 22 from 4–7 p.m. at the Hicks Art Center Gallery, Bucks County Community College, 275 Swamp Road, Newtown, PA 18940. The exhibition will remain on view through July 3. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturdays from noon – 4 p.m.
The Roosevelt Project: Photographs by Fran Orlando is presented in conjunction with (re)FOCUS, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts/1974, a citywide festival recognizing women artists. With over 150 exhibitions, panels, lectures, workshops, and demonstrations, it was one of the first large-scale surveys of the work of contemporary American women artists, signaling the inception of the American Feminist Art Movement. (re)FOCUS 2024 is also a Philadelphia citywide festival showing how women-identified and BIPOC artists have moved from the periphery to the center of the art world. Like its 1974 predecessor, (re)FOCUS is a collaboration among Philadelphia's large, small, and diverse visual arts institutions.
This exhibition is funded in part by the Bucks County Community College Committee on Cultural Affairs and the Bucks County Community College Foundation.
Photography: Jonathan Shahn with bust of Peri Prestopino, 1980/2023, archival pigment print Marilyn and Peter, 1978/2023, archival pigment print.
