The Club Board recently decided to provide designated support at Palm Beach State College (PBSC) for three vocational programs:
 
•                     Heating and AC (HVAC)
•                     Marine Serving Technology
•                     Auto Mechanic
 
This designated grant is part of the Club’s overall grant supporting new and continuing students. In our Club meeting on May 27, we presented PBSC President Ava Parker and Rochelle Nolan who is Director of Major Gifts and Gift Planning with a check for $67,000 of which a good part will be to fund two qualified and deserving students in each of the three vocational programs with a scholarship plus funds to assist with the cost of the program.
 
This scholarship grant represents an ongoing commitment to fund traditional 4-year scholars but also is a new and historic program to help students enrolled in the Career Certificate Program who are enrolled in short-term programs of less than two years that will allow them to move into employment immediately.  What sets this scholarship apart is that there is hardly any funding for CCP’s right now, so we are leading the way.   
 
In addition, the Club is supporting the role of PBSC workforce development efforts to meet the needs of employers in high demand industries that support Palm Beach County by educating those future employees. We specifically chose to fund programs that pay higher than average wages and where there is a shortage of qualified employees to meet the employers demand and industries like Marine Services contribute to our local economy.  
 
We were pleased to help make this grant to help with three vocational programs. Thanks to Pia for all the work she did working with PBSC to make this happen.
 
President Ava Parker
 
Palm Beach State College President Ava L. Parker leads Palm Beach County’s largest higher education institution with more than 50,000 students with a strategic approach that emphasizes innovation, student success, business and community collaboration. Parker is the first female president in the history of the institution, which opened in 1933 as Florida’s first public community college. Under Parker’s leadership, the college opened a fifth campus, improved student success rates, and increased enrollment. PBSC was also awarded the top status of GOLD in the Florida College System’s 2017 rankings. 
 
Parker is a native of Santa Rosa County in northwest Florida and earned her BA and JD degrees from the University of Florida.
 
Rochelle Nolan
 
Rochelle Nolan is a native of Connecticut where she lived until moving to Florida in 2011. She earned her bachelor’s degree at UCONN.
 
The bulk of her career was spent with United Way, first in Hartford and then in Palm Beach County. Rochelle is currently Director of Major Gifts and Gift Planning at the Palm Beach State College Foundation, where she focuses on individual giving, legacy giving and works with organizations such as the Rotary Club of Boca Raton.