With just two weeks left until late registration begins at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, classes are filling fast for the fall semester.

“Required courses such as math, science, and English are the first to fill, so we urge students to register today in order to get the classes they need and to avoid long enrollment wait times,” said Ryan Cain, Coordinator of CGCC Enrollment Services.

Cain says students who are not yet admitted to CGCC can begin the admissions process by applying online at my.maricopa.edu.  New students and their families will also be able to attend an orientation session prior to the start of classes which will provide information about college programs and services, as well as a tour of the campus.

CGCC offers a wide variety of programs including business, teacher education, nursing, sustainability, engineering, biotechnology, law enforcement training, electric utility technology, aviation, and more.  

“The majority of our students are on the university transfer path, so it’s our goal to help those students get the classes they need that will transfer into their university program of study,” Cain said. “Our academic advisors are available to help students create a plan to reach both their educational and career goals.”

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Award-winning author and Chandler-Gilbert Community College creative writing instructor Patrick Michael Finn began writing short stories as a teenager to combat feelings of homesickness after his family moved from Joliet, Illinois to a rural California town on the edge of the desert.

“Not long after the move my aunt gave me a copy of Stuart Dybek’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, a short story collection set in Chicago’s Southside Pilsen neighborhood,” Finn said.  “It instantly took me to the place I missed so much, and I began writing stories about where I’d grown up as a way to deal with the cultural isolation I felt.”

In Finn’s newest book, From the Darkness Right Under Our Feet, published by Black Lawrence Press New York/Dzanc Books, he revisits his hometown in a story collection set in the gritty rustbelt of Joliet. 

Winner of the 2009 Hudson Prize, From the Darkness Right Under Our Feet follows a number of characters through life-changing moments, including two brothers trying to survive their father’s unexpected death by protecting their widowed mother from a drunken sexual vulture at a cousin’s wedding reception; a desperate woman who leaves Kentucky and loses herself in the exploitation of exotic dancing while sinking into alcoholic despair; the last orphan in an aging foster mother’s house tries to escape the abusive homophobia he faces in a rigidly-masculine Catholic high school; and a former quarry trucker, after thirty years in prison for murdering his sister’s rapist, is hired as a bouncer by a Greek immigrant who tries to save his failing restaurant by transforming it into a nightclub of seductive belly dancers.

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An unlikely group of 19 students ranging from single 20 something’s to married baby boomers recently gathered in the Belize City Municipal Airport armed with laptops, textbooks, and sun block.  Despite their differences in age, ethnicity, background, and reasons for participating, they all agreed on one thing - that they were about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime through Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s “A Bridge to Belize” study abroad program.

64-year-old Linda Ross and her husband David enrolled in the program because of their love of traveling and the environment.

“We both care deeply about the world we live in, the eco-environment, both locally and globally,” Ross said.  “We felt this class would stimulate our thinking, and update our understanding of the changes we have actually seen evolve over a few more decades than the younger students. I sincerely expect the whole experience is going to energize us to invest more of ourselves in the eco-environment and help us to be better stewards of the world we live in.”

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