Students in the News

The Right Fit: FSC Grad to work as Boston Ballet costume maker
Job Hunting with Confidence
Degree of Success

FRAMINGHAM -- Even before she walks up to receive her diploma next Sunday, Framingham State College student Emily Bisol will have begun her new career as a costume maker for the Boston Ballet.

The fashion design major worked for the dance company this spring as an intern and recently landed a full-time gig.

The senior from Fitchburg finished her last final exam, but the fact that her college career has ended and a new life will soon begin has yet to hit her.

"It's really overwhelming at this point," Bisol said. "That's the real world right there."

Unlike many who study fashion design, Bisol said she did not dream of working in the nation's fashion capitals.

"I knew I wanted to do something out of the ordinary," she said. "Not going to L.A. or New York to design the next season's clothing line."

During her sophomore year she met a professor who worked with the ballet.

"I said, 'Oh, working there would be such an awesome opportunity,'" Bisol recalled.

Bisol began interning with the ballet in February, and was lucky enough to continue.

"They only take three interns a semester, and my boss said this was the first time in six years that he's been there that they hired an intern," Bisol said. "It was great. It made me so proud of my education here at Framingham State and of the staff."

Bisol's success does not surprise one of her professors, Arlene Handschuch, who teaches fashion design and retailing.

"She would be good at anything," Handschuch said. "She's bright, smart, energetic."

Her eagerness served her well, Handschuch said.

"If you asked her to do something, she'd say, 'I'll do that,' or 'I'll learn that,'" Handschuch said. "She's the kind of person you want to work with."

As a little girl, Bisol saw "The Nutcracker" and she fell in love.

"When I was little I always wanted to be a ballerina," she said. "But I didn't have the grace."

Currently, the ballet is presenting "Swan Lake," but Bisol will be working on costumes for upcoming productions, including "Sleeping Beauty," "The Nutcracker" and "Les Sylphide."

"Usually when a ballet is over, we start working on the new productions right away," Bisol said.

The designers begin from scratch, Bisol said, when creating the costumes.

"The designers come in and say, 'This is what we want,'" Bisol said. "You need the right fabric, dye it, take measurements of the dancers. There is a lot that goes into that you wouldn't expect."

The company has some costumes from past productions, Bisol said, but they must be altered to fit the dancers, and in some cases repaired. One of the projects this year, she said, will be making new outfits for "The Nutcracker" as it moves from the Wang Theatre to the Colonial Theatre.

Making a ballet costume requires working with delicate fabrics, but the challenge excites Bisol. She laughs when she thinks back about how far she has come.

"I used to hand-sew things, I never knew how to sew with a machine," Bisol said. "I didn't have a clue about how to do things like that until I got here. Now I'm at the ballet."

Her final year at FSC has been hectic. Along with classes, she worked three days a week at her internship, worked 10 hours a week in the president's office and four hours a week in the admissions office. On top of that, she served as president of Phi Upsilon Omicron, the honors society for family and consumer sciences, and of Catholic Campus Ministries.

Bisol reinvigorated the Catholic campus group as a freshman, and served as president each year.

"It has grown a lot," she said. "There was no one at Mass when I was a freshman, now we get up to 40 students."

Despite her busy schedule, Bisol made the Dean's List all four years and the more exclusive President's List.

Leaving Framingham and the people she has studied with and under will be tough for Bisol.

"It's very hard for me to say goodbye," Bisol said. "I've been involved in a lot of things. I love the people here."

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Job hunting with confidence

By Charlie Breitrose/Staff Writer
Framingham Tab
Thursday, April 15, 2004

Soon-to-be grads take part in FSC career fair

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Degree of success

By Craig M. Douglas / News Business Writer
Metrowest Daily News
Sunday, May 25, 2003

FRAMINGHAM -- Lecia Shronce's journey to today's graduation ceremony at Framingham State College is remarkable on a number of levels, not the least of which has been her determination to finish school on time and under budget.

After all, the business administration major admits that her study skills weren't the sharpest when she first enrolled for classes two years ago. Throw in the fact that Shronce has worked part time for a local contractor, volunteered for student government and interned at the school's economic research center -- all while footing her own tuition bills -- and one might wonder how the North Carolina native has found the time to complete her studies, let alone earn a 3.96 grade-point average.

According to Shronce, the secret to her success is one for the ages.

"I'm still running circles around the puppies at this school," said the 39-year-old senior, who has already secured post-graduation employment as an operations manager for a local contracting company.

To appreciate Shronce's accomplishments, one needs to turn back the clock to 1985, when the then-18-year-old farm girl decided to forgo a four-year college after high school and, instead, opted for a two-year associate's program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute in North Carolina.

By her own admission, Shronce's naivete relative to the "real" world was palpable, and her eagerness to explore her newfound independence led to a variety of bumps and bruises along the way -- not the least of which was marriage just one year into college.

With the new last name of Caplette, Shronce said that she and her husband, whom she met at Caldwell, agreed to first put him through engineering school. After graduation, the newlyweds planned to do what was needed in order to send Shronce to a four-year bachelor's program.

Unfortunately, things did not turn out as planned. And while her husband's career had taken off, forcing the couple to relocate on multiple occasions, Shronce continued to work in a variety of low-paying administrative jobs while patiently waiting for her own shot at a degree.

Thirteen years after she said "I do," Shronce said it had become obvious that her now ex-husband was unwilling to hold up his end of the bargain.

"It was always 'his career, his career,' and it kept getting better and better and better," she said. "And every time we moved, I'd have to start back at the bottom and work my way back up again. Because I didn't have the degree, I'd always have to start at a lesser position."

In 1999, the two divorced, selling their house and splitting their personal belongings down the middle.

At the time, Shronce was an administrative assistant for a school district in western Massachusetts (she and her ex-husband moved to Amherst in 1991). She has since bought a condo in Framingham.

Looking back after the divorce, she said it was never a question as to what her next move would be. Despite nearly 15 years since her last days of studying, Shronce had made up her mind to go back to school.

After narrowing her choice to Framingham State -- "the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, atmosphere didn't really appeal to me and FSC offered the best bang for the buck" -- Shronce said it was then a matter of slowly and wisely easing back into the saddle, so to speak.

"I wanted to make sure my study skills were back and I wanted to make sure that I could succeed at this," said Shronce, who enrolled at FSC as a part-time student in January 2001.

And succeed she has. Based on Shronce's own estimates, 30-plus hours of studying each week for the past two years has materialized into a world of opportunity that never existed for her in the past.

Given her work experience, which varies from basic bookkeeping to the more challenging realms of budgeting and cost accounting, Shronce said the school's business curriculum and on-campus resources have blended perfectly with the lessons she has learned in the workplace. Exposure through Framingham State's career center has afforded her multiple job offerings in an otherwise down economy, while Shronce's excellence in the classroom has earned her a variety of scholarships, financial rewards and esteem from faculty and her fellow students.

"I'm hip. I listen to their music and stuff," said Shronce, in reference to her youthful classmates, some of whom are half her age. "I don't think they ever felt threatened by me because I'm a team player. I like to pull everybody together, organize study groups.

"I guess I've really been a mentor, more like an older sister for some of them. The classes all made so much sense to me, but for some of the kids, it was, 'Oh, we'll never use this.' And I'd say, 'You need to know this because, yes, you will use accounting and, yes, you will use finance. Wait 'til you hit real life, people.'"

As late as Wednesday, Shronce was still juggling multiple job offers, all of which were offering high-level management positions with compensation that was "60 to 100 percent higher" than her former administrative positions, she said. Given her current ties to the area, Shronce, after much deliberation, has opted to begin working next month for J.F. White Co. Inc., a general contractor based in Framingham.

"She's been very savvy about it all," said Carol Spector, Framingham State's career services director. "She's smart enough and she has the maturity to consider all of her options and size everything up.

"Lecia's ability to put herself through school is a credit to her, and it's an inspiration for others who are thinking about going back. She's a great achiever."

Having made the trip from their farm in Granite Falls, N.C., Shronce's parents say they are proud, but not surprised by their daughter's accomplishments.

"This is going to be one of the happiest days of my life. We've all been looking forward to this for a long time now," said Jeanne Shronce, Lecia's mother. "That she's done it all on her own makes it that much better."

With a bachelor's degree under wraps, Shronce said she already has her sights set on graduate school, although she is unsure of exactly where and when she might enroll. Those decisions, she said, are for another day.

"I keep telling people, 'I don't know what I want to do when I grow up,'" she said. "I've done the data entry and pages and pages of accounting. I've worked in management positions, just not with the money or the title. I knew I could do more than I had in the past. I just needed that piece of paper.

"It was tough. Probably the biggest thing was that I was able to quit my job, save up enough money and get financial aid so that I could do it. Not having kids -- and being a little more free that way -- I was able to say I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it all. I'm going to do it right now.

"It's been, like, personal. I wanted to show myself that I could do the work. I wanted to show the world that I could do the work."

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