HCC student worker Kris Miller pushes Nana’s Grab & Go Cart loaded with fresh pineapples from the Thrive Center.
Nana’s Legacy
Around her Holyoke home, JoAnne Wrobel ’02 was known affectionately as “Nana,” a friendly, guiding presence to neighborhood youth and her own grandchildren. At HCC, where she worked for many years before her death in 2022, she was equally beloved. As a clerk stationed at the main desk of the Kittredge Center, she recognized that many students came to campus hungry. In response, she established the college’s first grab-and-go food cart to offer free nutritious snacks to those in need.
Over the years, the cart grew into a full-fledged food pantry that eventually became part of the HCC Thrive Center, which in fiscal year 2026 fielded 1,162 requests and distributed nearly 27,000 pounds of food and household goods.
JoAnne Wrobel ’02
This summer, Thrive unveiled Nana’s Grab & Go Cart, a tribute to Wrobel’s legacy funded in part by a donation from the Class of 2025. While previous iterations of Thrive grab-and-go carts remained stationary in the center itself, Nana’s Grab & Go Cart is meant to go on the road, representing Thrive at special campus events, or whenever the food pantry has an overabundance of a perishable item, such as fresh produce.
“The idea is to get the food out to students as much as possible. We try to spread the goods,” said business major Kris Miller, a work-study student at Thrive, who was pushing around the cart one August Monday. “Last time, we had a ridiculous amount of bananas. This time, it’s pineapples.”
Ben Ostiguy, Thrive Center special programs coordinator, called Nana’s Grab & Go Cart “the public face of the program” that will be more visible around campus with the beginning of the fall semester.
“It warms my heart,” said HCC Registrar Allison Wrobel ’00, Nana’s daughter. “Her spirit will be around HCC to help students in need if they’re hungry.”
HCC communications major Mychal Connolly Jr. (Courtesy of Business West)
A First for Forty
HCC alumni are always well represented on Business West magazine’s annual “40 Under Forty” awards list, and this year was no exception: Alicia Brown ’14 (human services) and Brandon Towle ’18 (business administration) were honored as members of the class of 2026. But, for what could possibly be the first time in the 20 years the regional magazine has offered its annual compendium, an HCC student was also named to the list: communications major Mychal Connolly Jr.Connolly, 19, is the chief executive officer of the Realistic CEO publishing platform and podcast and a frequent K-12 speaker. “The whole goal behind Realistic CEO is to help students with career readiness, workforce readiness, and financial literacy,” he told Business West. “My goal is to help students prepare for careers — and we do it in a way that we want every single student to feel like they’re worthy enough to be an executive.” Connolly is the son of HCC alum and entrepreneur Mychal Connolly ’04, himself a “40 Under Forty” awardee from 2009. Meanwhile, Brown, 39, an English teacher at Springfield’s John J. Duggan Academy, is founder of “The Royals,” an after-school mentorship and leadership program for young women she started in a church basement. And Towle, 29, is manager of Rolling Meadows Country Club in Ellington, Connecticut, and founder of Camp Words Unspoken, New England’s first sleepaway camp for stuttering youth. (Towle was the focus of “Freedom to Speak,” a feature story in the Spring 2025 issue of The Connection.)
A scene from the HCC Theater Department’s award-winning production of “The Last Living Gun”
‘Gun’ Makes Noise
The HCC Theater Department’s fall 2025 production of “The Last Living Gun” received three awards at the 2026 American College Theater Festival in Albany, New York. The play by Ryan Stevens follows a mercenary across a post-apocalyptic landscape on an epic quest to find the last gun in existence. The show was guest-directed by Cordelia Winters Dwyer, a graduate student from the University of Massachusetts theater program. Collectively, the cast and crew earned an ACTF award for Ensemble Work. HCC students Ivy Wrenne Demetriou, of Holyoke, and Toby Stearns, of Southampton, received individual awards for their work as stage manager and musical director, respectively. Stearns also performed in the production as an actor and musician. HCC belongs to ACTF Region I, which includes colleges and universities in northern New York and all six New England states. The HCC Theater Department has won more than 20 ACTF awards over the past 15 years in multiple categories, including individual acting, ensemble acting, dedication to a script, stage management, musical direction, best original music, playwriting, and collaboration.
Auto dealer Gary Rome, center, a donor and member of the HCC Foundation Board of Directors, joins HCC President George Timmons and others for the college’s annual 24-hour giving day.
Worth Showing Up For
The HCC Foundation raised more than $131,000 for scholarships and student-support programs during its March 4 “Together HCC” one-day giving campaign, surpassing a six-year, $1 million goal. The sixth annual “Together HCC: Drive to Change Lives” campaign received donations worth $131,278 from 455 alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends of the college during the 24-hour fundraising drive. All of the money goes to six areas that support HCC students: academic excellence and innovation; scholarships; the Thrive Center and Food Pantry; the President’s Student Emergency Fund; the President’s Fund for Opportunity; and the HCC Foundation’s general, unrestricted fund. The HCC Foundation, the college’s charitable, nonprofit foundation, launched “Together HCC: A Campaign for Caring” in March 2020 to build community support and raise money for students experiencing financial distress during the pandemic. In 2021, with auto dealer Gary Rome signed on, HCC added the “Drive to Change Lives” theme. “When we invest in HCC students, we’re investing in the doctors, teachers, and business owners who are going to build this region’s future,” said Rome, owner of Gary Rome Hyundai in Holyoke and a member of the HCC Foundation Board of Directors. “That’s worth showing up for, year after year.”
Ciaran Murphy, assistant director of the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center, works with a child in the center’s gross motor room.
Night Watch
HCC received a $245,000 grant from the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation to add additional staff and evening hours to its Itsy Bitsy Child Watch program. The grant funded the hiring of two more staff workers (one full time and one part time). This will allow the center to increase capacity during its busiest daytime hours and add care hours in the evenings for students who take classes at night. “We’re excited to be able to say yes to the parenting students who are taking those late afternoon and evening classes and need childcare,” said Kimm Quinlan, HCC director of childhood initiatives. “It’s been a couple of years since we were able to meet both the daytime and evening requests because our daytime enrollment became so full.” Itsy Bitsy Child Watch opened as a pilot program in fall 2022 and was so successful it quickly reached capacity in its original location. In September 2025, the center moved to a larger space on the second floor of the Frost building, with support from a previous $600,000 grant from the Davis Foundation. Itsy Bitsy Child Watch is now open Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Fridays until 5 p.m.
