HCC Honors Those Who Serve

Each year, Holyoke Community College honors those who go above and beyond in service with awards at commencement. And each year, Janice is invited to write about some of those Distinguished Service Award recipients.

This year, Janice was pleased to be able to interview and tell the stories of: Ira Rubenzhal, president of Springfield Technical Community College, Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe, and Gayle (Rud) Smith, a 1974 HCC alum who serves as president and partner of Middlebridge Marketing, Inc.

Here are snapshots of their tales of dedication. 

Ira Rubenzhal
As Ira Rubenzhal steps down from his role as president of Springfield Technical Community College this year, HCC will also feel the loss of a mentor and friend.

Ira and HCC President Bill Messner are native New Yorkers who came to the Pioneer Valley a dozen years ago. They each carved a separate niche for themselves as leaders in higher education and then developed a trusting and cooperative relationship with one another that has advanced the lives and careers of thousands of students and strengthened the community colleges.

Ira helped establish the Training and Workforce Options—or TWO—program, through which STCC and HCC together train employees for businesses in the region in a broad range of specialty areas, from information technology to culinary arts. The program won last year’s $50,000 inaugural Deval Patrick Award for Community Colleges for outstanding collaboration by the Boston Foundation. “The benefits are people who get training and decent-paying jobs, and companies that get quality workers,” Ira says.

Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe
Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe puts the “correction” in “correctional facilities.” He has spent 40 years working to increase inmates’ dignity and potential for success by offering them access to learning and programs that enrich the mind.

Ninety-three percent of inmates come into the system with no marketable skills, and more than a third of them suffer from mental illness or substance abuse. Many inmates also have only a seventh grade education, and they do not trust authority—the very people working to help them turn their lives around. Michael believes it’s important to build trust by offering inmates programs of substance and meaning, and in partnering with HCC, Michael has helped to better thousands of individuals and with them, the community at large.

Michael has worked closely and tirelessly with HCC’s Business and Community Services division to bring innovative educational programs to inmates. “The community college has helped impact many lives,” he says. “It truly motivates and inspires and gives a great vision of what we’re all about. That’s our job, to inspire.”

Gayle (Rud) Smith
Gayle (Rud) Smith is a 1974 alum who has made HCC proud as she has risen up through the ranks in the retail industry, managing a You & You Levi’s and serving as Revlon’s national sales manager. Now, president and partner of Middlebridge Marketing, Inc. in Lincoln, Rhode Island—a consumer products broker with CVS its biggest client—Gayle remains dedicated to HCC and its students.

HCC inspired Gayle toward retail. In 1973, HCC partnered with the city of Holyoke and gave Gayle and other students the chance to develop and operate a temporary store in our city’s downtown. Called The First 100 Years Store, it was an HCC-led project that honored Holyoke’s Centennial; Gayle manned it as an intern for a summer, selling everything from Centennial memorabilia to cheese.

Early on in her career, Gayle returned to campus at holiday time with cosmetics and other beauty products as gifts for mothers who were HCC students because “mothers never get anything.” Now, Gayle interacts with students once a semester, and what she hands them is learning. She takes business students through a CVS store, explaining packaging and design options and the importance of brand. She helps to prepare students for the realities of retail.

“I got so much out of HCC, and I really feel that without those professors that took an interest in me, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” says Gayle. “I owe it all to the school.”