Alumni … Out & About

Brinny’s Back

In 2020, as a culinary arts student at HCC, Brianna Couture ’21 founded Brinny’s Hand Pies, an online pickup and delivery service in Agawam. After graduating, she committed to it full time, until a medical emergency sidelined her for several months. We’re happy to report that Brinny has fully recovered and recently started working as a full-time lab tech at the HCC MGM Culinary Arts Institute. “I love being at HCC with like-minded people, and working at a culinary school just fills my heart,” she said. “It’s rewarding to see people progress in a field that I feel is extremely rewarding.” For those craving one of Brinny’s delicious hand pies, such as a sweet banana walnut Dulce de Leche or savory mushroom and leek, don’t worry. She’s still running the business part time based on requests. “After having a traumatic medical episode, I realized I wanted something more 9 to 5,” she said, “and this is the perfect opportunity for me. It allows me to actually run my business from a place of joy and not, you know, panic.” Check it out at brinnyshandpies.com. Her spinach artichoke hand pies are a fan favorite. “Lots of cheese,” she said. “Everybody seems to like that.”

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Soldiering On

With the June 2023 grand reopening of the Warrior’s Art Room in a new space in Easthampton’s Keystone Building, Steve Jones ’15 finally realized one of his dreams: to create a public gallery where veterans can display their artwork. “This is an amazing space,” said Jones, a former Marine sergeant, Iraq War veteran, and director and co-founder (with his wife Brenda Jones ’18) of the nonprofit Warrior’s Art Room, a studio for veterans and their families. “Our last space was 380 square feet. This is 1,750, which enabled us to create the gallery.” Jones named the gallery after Staff Sergeant James G. Wheeler, who served with Jones in Iraq before taking his own life. “From the very beginning, I was going to name it after him,” said Jones, “because, when we stop talking about them and mentioning their names” — soldiers who die by suicide — “that’s when they become forgotten.” Jones majored in psychology at HCC, but he found a salve for his own post-traumatic stress through art classes. He opened the first Warrior’s Art Room in 2016 in the basement of a Westfield church. Jones also recently started a new job in Easthampton as the city’s veterans service agent. Important work, he notes, but he prefers the art room. “This is what it’s all about,” he said. “This is where I actually feel like I make more of a difference.” 

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Name That Tune

You’d be forgiven for never having heard of Zac Dune at HCC. That’s actually the pen name of Tom Dulac ’23, who last spring won the Jack Stone Award for New Music, which is presented annually by Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas, to one community college student in the United States. Dulac won for a saxophone quartet called “In the Rain.” “It’s been described as sounding kind of Renaissance-y,” he said. “Part of it was inspired by jazz, but I reverted back to Baroque-era Bach chorales, so I suppose there’s some merit to that notion.” Dulac has played saxophone for many years and also dabbles with other instruments, including guitar, bass, piano, harmonica, recorder, and bagpipe chanter. (“It’s like a recorder, but more nasal.”) At HCC, though, despite taking a few music theory classes, he majored in math. “I love the weird mathematical nature of music,” said Dulac, who is studying math at Westfield State University. “I guess I’ve always been more interested in the theoretical side of music, rather than actually performing.” Dulac submitted his piece under his pseudonym, so award officials initially had a hard time verifying his existence. Ultimately successful, they flew him down to San Antonio for the awards ceremony and a concert, where he got to hear “In the Rain” performed by the Bel Cuore Quartet. That recording is now on SoundCloud. Search: “In the Rain,” by Zac Dune.

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As a high school student, Dave Mell ’03 had always been something of an entrepreneur, to the point that he wondered if college would be a waste of time. But after applying to HCC and being awarded a scholarship, he didn’t want to waste the opportunity. His two years commuting to Homestead Avenue proved invaluable, however, and the skills he acquired continue to guide his entrepreneurial journey as the owner of Viva Tubes in Easthampton, a retail business that specializes in the vacuum tubes used in guitar amplifiers and audio equipment. “The business classes were very good,” said Mell, 33. “I really liked my teachers, and I still look back on it now and really say that there’s a ton of value.” As a student, Mell ran an antiques operation as a side hustle. A pivotal class dedicated to creating a business from scratch propelled him to flesh out that idea. After coming across a rare selection of vintage vacuum tubes at a tag sale, he decided to focus on the niche market for vacuum tube configurations. The idea won him an award from the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation Entrepreneurship Initiative and set him on the path to launching Viva Tubes in 2007. “I already had this half-functioning business,” he said, “and HCC was just a great stepping stone to turning that into something real.”

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Flying High

While only 32 years old, Will Hastie ’13 has already accomplished two life goals. A suggestion from his HCC French professor led him to apply for the Middlebury Summer Language program so he would have the right credits to transfer to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The intensive seven-week program immersed Hastie in the French language, encouraging him to leave English behind and embrace everything in French, from conversations to music.

Hastie’s journey took him to UMass and then to the University of Toulouse in France. Through the Teaching Assistant Program in France, he taught English for a year in northern France before moving back to the states and finding a job as a French teacher at Woodberry Forest School in central Virginia. But his ambitions didn’t stop there. While fulfilling his dream of teaching, he never forgot his childhood fascination with flying, so Hastie moved back to France and enrolled in flight school in Paris. He now splits his time between flying in the Paris region and working as a substitute teacher at the American School of Paris. To Hastie, the choice of attending HCC was life-changing. Initially unsure about college, he saw HCC as his second chance. “HCC was the foundation for my life,” he said. “Going there was the most important decision I ever made.”   

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Twice Honored

Never one to sit on the sidelines, Shawn Robinson ’05 went all in on student government at HCC. On the way to an associate degree in sociology and political science, he served as both student trustee and a student representative on the state’s Board of Higher Education. Later, at UMass Amherst, he became president of a statewide student lobbying group working on behalf of public education. It should surprise no one that at ServiceNet Inc., a Northampton-based nonprofit, Robinson rose through the ranks to become the founding director of Prospect Meadow Farm in Hatfield, Mass., a CSA that employs people with developmental disabilities and chronic mental illness. At the farm, workers tend five acres of vegetable fields and also raise chickens, alpacas, llamas, goats, rabbits, and pigs. In honor of his exceptional leadership, Robinson was named the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s 2023 Person of the Year and received the Black Excellence on the Hill Award from the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus. Robinson traces his successes right back to HCC, where he commuted to campus by bus, sometimes joined on the ride by one of his professors, Mark Clinton. “It epitomized the community college experience — to know your college president, to know all your professors,” he said. “My experience at HCC was one of the best experiences of my life.”