Williams College President Thanks Berkshires Healthcare Heroes

By Maud S. MandelGuest Column
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In 2020, COVID-19 turned our lives upside down. Medical and public health experts rushed to treat the sick and contain the spread. At Williams, we closed our campus and helped students leave for their safety — a sad milestone in our 227-year history. 
 
Today, the college is once again bustling with students, faculty and staff, learning, living and working on campus. Throughout the Berkshires, communities are starting to emerge and look to the future again.
 
Thursday, March 17, was the second anniversary of Williams' closure. Today, the college's senior staff and I want to thank the outstanding medical and public health professionals of Berkshire County and the region for caring for area residents so well throughout the pandemic.
 
Presidents and CEOs Dave Phelps and Darlene Rodowicz at Berkshire Health Systems and Tom Dee at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center provided strong leadership as they and their teams of devoted doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers organized and ran testing programs, traced close contacts and provided dedicated care in extraordinary circumstances. At the same time, they also offered expert counsel to Williams and other area employers and organizations.
 
Our gratitude extends, too, to all the heroic first responders, health-care professionals and public health specialists who have worked so hard these last two years.
  
The people of the Berkshires have been through a lot. We mourn the many whom we have lost, and work to support others still on the long path to recovery. But with spring finally on the way, we at Williams want to take this moment to publicly thank the good people — partners, colleagues, friends and neighbors — who have helped bring hope back to our beloved Berkshires. 
 
Maud S. Mandel is the president of Williams College. 




Tags: COVID-19,   Williams College,   


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Williamstown Fire Personnel Committee to Interview Six Applicants for Chief Position

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Twenty-four applicants from as far away as California applied to be the town's next fire chief, the Prudential Committee learned on Wednesday.
 
By the end of next month, one of those applicants could be named the replacement for retiring Chief Craig Pedercini.
 
At Wednesday's meeting of the committee, which oversees the fire district, member Joe Beverly, who also serves on the district's Personnel Committee, reported that the latter body had reviewed two dozen applicants who sought to lead the call-volunteer department.
 
On Thursday, Beverly said, the Personnel Committee will interview six applicants from that pool.
 
The hiring screening committee hopes to be able to present two or three finalists to the Prudential Committee to interview at its Feb. 26 meeting, Beverly said.
 
"We were all very satisfied with the number [of applicants]," he said. "We all had a chance to review them ourselves and pick out the top six or seven. We met last week and narrowed down the list. We're doing six interviews tomorrow, and then we'll whittle down to a second round [of interviews]."
 
The final interviews by the Prudential Committee, the hiring authority for the department's chief, likely will be conducted without one of the elected members of the body.
 
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