News

Thursday, 16 March 2006

Joe and Scott Franco are certainly peristant. After nearly a year of negotiations they were able to announce that Governors State University will be the latest tenant to locate in the Clock Tower Centre.

Some students will have an easier commute when the University opens its Kankakee campus in the Clock Tower Centre on Schuyler Avenue & Merchant Street.

With classrooms on one floor of the former Arcade Building, GSU will initially offer continuing professional education courses for healthcare workers at Provena St. Mary's Hospital and Riverside Medical Center. Plans are in the works to offer courses on a similar basis for education and law enforcement professionals.

Governors State University and Kankakee Community College are partnering to offer classes beginning this summer. GSU Dean John Stoll explained that the community leaders will also be an important component in what future courses to offer. Plans are for full-credit courses to be offered eventually, allowing students to pursue advanced dgrees or complete a bachelor's degree upon graduation from KCC.

The two education institutions have been working on the partnership for several years, said KCC President Jerry Weber. The Downtown location, to the credit of Joe and Scott Franco (Heritage Development & Construction, Inc.), will cut the half hour travel to GSU's main campus in University Park to minutes, thereby encouraging more local student to enroll.

Said Weber, "Time and multiple commitments are the greatest impediments people have to higher education. Having a place you can drop into after work can break down those impediments."

Kankakee Mayor Don Green commended the enterprise saying, "GSU will be a prime addition to redevelopment of downtown Kankkaee as a business, professional and banking center."

"This is big," said Kankakee Development Corporation Executive Director Tim Schmidt. "This adds an educational component to the professional, financial and health care focus Dowtown Kankakee already enjoys. KCC brought its Adult Education Center downtown in the Majestic Centre last fall, now GSU."

(Kankakee Development Corporation, What's Up Downtown, March/April 2006)