Worcester-Area Colleges Group To Reorganize

Calareso

Bilotta

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By Rick Saia

The nonprofit alliance of Worcester-area colleges and universities will undergo a restructuring that its leaders said will allow it to strengthen the government-funded programs it oversees to aid middle and high school students as well as low-income adults.

In a statement released today, the presidents of the 12 schools that make up the Colleges of Worcester Consortium (COWC) said the new model for the 45-year-old organization would separate those programs into a nonprofit entity. The student programs, which serve youths in Worcester, Springfield, Holyoke and New Bedford, include CSI Worcester, which helps public school students in Worcester by providing a career and college orientation focus; and CollegeAccess, which helps students in Central and Southeastern Massachusetts learn about education and training options and how to access them.

The restructuring will take effect July 1. It will also result in the elimination of about five or six of the organization's 30 jobs, according to Jack Calareso, president of Anna Maria College in Paxton and chair of the COWC board. Those jobs lie within the division of COWC that serve the member schools, which will become "leaner," Calareso said. Some programs in that division "really don't serve the colleges well," he said, although others, such as joint purchasing and cross-registrations of students, will continue.

One of the jobs being cut is that of COWC's CEO, Mark Bilotta, who will be invited to reapply for a role in the reorganized COWC, Calareso said. "He's done a great job," Calareso added, but in its new model, COWC doesn't need that level of service to the member schools.

Calareso said Bilotta and the COWC staff have been aware for a year about the possibility of an organization restructuring.

"As leaders in the community, we recognize our responsibility to manage our own costs while identifying efficient ways to promote access programs and to continue in our roles as economic boosters for the region," Calareso said in the organization's statement.

(CORRECTION: The original version of this report misstated the future prospects of COWC's joint-purchasing and cross-registration programs.)