Business, Finance, & Marketing
What is New Visions?
New Visions is an honors program for motivated seniors who have a relative certainty about what their major in college will be. It is through Questar III, which covers Rensselaer, Columbia, and Greene Counties.
A big part of the program is learning from experts through guest speaker visits, site visits to business, and hands-on learning experiences and projects.
New Visions provides relevant, practical, real-life experiences and learning opportunities in specific fields.
Who Would be Interested?
Students who CARE, who put in EFFORT, and want to GET AHEAD.
Students who would like a DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE than high school.
Students ready to PREPARE FOR COLLEGE, and PREPARE FOR THEIR FUTURE.
Students who have a HIGH DEGREE OF INTEREST in the program course of study, who most likely plan to major in that area and hope to one day have a career in that field.
The Business, Finance, & Marketing class includes 18 college credits through C-GCC.
What is the Business, Finance, & Marketing Program?
There are 16 career clusters. Three of these are: Business Management & Administration, Finance, & Marketing. This New Visions program is set up to instruct students and give them experiences in these 3 fields.
The college courses are below. Each class is 3 credits.
We have industry leaders visit our class such as business executives, entrepreneurs, CPAs, financial planners, sales professionals, and other business professionals!
We visit some local businesses and see how their business runs - how each department works together to accomplish company goals and objectives.
Where and When does New Visions - Business, Finance, & Marketing Meet?
We meet Monday - Friday 8:30 - 11:30 AM at Columbia-Greene Community College's campus in Hudson. Our classroom is in a great location in room 124 of the Main Building.
We have 3 windows that overlook the campus quad. The classroom has modern desks and unattached chairs along with two high-top tables and stools with backs!
What is my professional experience?
I am an experienced business professional and educator. Here's my story:
I graduated Siena College with a Bachelor's in Business Administration (BBA) with accounting as my major. I worked at Loftus, Ross + Co., CPAs (now MMB + Co.) for 3 years, gaining a vast knowledge of accounting and taxes.
I then was hired as a senior accountant at Organichem (which became Albany Molecular Research, which is now Curia Global). Here, I oversaw all cost accounting functions, working closely with plant management. At this time, I also began my own tax practice preparing individual returns.
After Organichem, I worked at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals as a cost accountant. One of my primary responsibilities was the design and installation of the costing and accounting functionalities of OPM: Oracle Process Manufacturing.
I was recruited and hired as an Assistant Controller at Lydall Thermal Acoustical, Inc. At Lydall, I was promoted to Controller, where I was one of the top executives at the plant (the others were the General Manager, Director of Operations and the Director of Sales & Marketing). I managed the accounting, human resources, and IT departments.
What is my instructional experience?
Though I was very successful and my career was progressing rapidly, I felt a tug, a compelling, a pull in another direction. I felt like I needed to pursue my purpose and follow a life-long desire to be a teacher. I knew I would make much less and there was not a lot of business teaching openings at the time, but I had to take the risk and see what the world had in store for me.
I received my Masters in Secondary Education from The College of Saint Rose and became certified in:
Business and Marketing K-12
Mathematics 7-12
Mathematics 5-6 Extension
Work-based Learning
I worked at Chatham High School teaching a variety of business classes, building a highly successful business program. At Chatham, I was a teacher leader, a teaching mentor, a technology leader, a union treasurer, and more.
After 10 years at Chatham, the Questar III New Visions Business, Finance, & Marketing program was looking for someone with basically MY business background and MY teaching experience and MY ability to build a new program. Though I never saw myself leaving Chatham, I couldn't pass up this calling for what seemed like a job description written specifically for me.