The Greater Portsmouth Area
Educational Community 

Live and learn! For residents of the Seacoast, those two things go hand in hand. From a cluster of college-level institutions offering degrees, certificates, and a variety of tempting adult-learning opportunities to a well-regarded public school system that challenges students "to become thinking, responsible, contributing citizens," as the Portsmouth school district's mission states, the Seacoast makes education an integral part of life.

It all begins, of course, with the city's elementary, middle, and high schools. According to recent reports from the National Center for Education Statistics, New Hampshire 4th graders rank number one in the nation in both reading and math, while 8th graders rank second in the nation for reading and fourth for math. Within New Hampshire, Portsmouth students consistently rank at or near the top on such state tests as the NHEIAP for 10th graders. But those statistics tell only part of the story.

Thanks to a $38 million bond issue approved in 2002, the high school has undergone a renovation that has added new state-of-the-art science and technical education wings, as well as expanding the central library and revamping the auditorium. The next large-scale project under development in the district is the building of a new middle school.

Beyond physical improvements, the local educational scene offers some unusual and exciting opportunities to students. Portsmouth is the site of the first Exchange City in New England. This nonprofit program trains teachers to present an eight-week economics and entrepreneurship curriculum to 5th and 6th graders. The highlight of the course is a visit to Exchange City itself, where students use what they've learned to run the "city" for a day. Attendance leaped from around 1,000 in 2004, its pilot year, to about 8,000 in 2005, and is expanding to include junior high and high school students-and Portsmouth students will never have to pay the usual fee, in recognition of the city's donation of the old Wentworth School to house Exchange City. "This is a treasure in the Seacoast. Portsmouth is becoming an innovative center of education," says executive director Philip Ross. The next innovation from this organization: EarthWorks, a program similar to Exchange City, in which students take on the roles of scientists. "We hope to have it open in 2006, either at the same facility or elsewhere in Portsmouth," says Ross.

Science and technology play a significant role in local education, reflecting the symbiosis between the schools and the Seacoast's business community. Local businesses and colleges have sponsored the area's first robotics team at Saint Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover. The STA team, a member of inventor Dean Kamen's FIRST organization designed to promote the sciences by matching professional mentors with high school students, won a special Judge's Award at regional competition in its rookie year. And the Business Education Collaborative (BEC), organized by the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, is involved in efforts to link the city's high school with biotech, information technology, and software development business partners that can help provide teacher training, contribute cutting-edge equipment for the school's new labs, and fine-tune the curriculum. Another BEC program pairing business-owner mentors with 6th grade students has been so successful that it has mushroomed in size in the few years of its existence. The BEC is also helping to create internships for high school students with such organizations as the shipyard association at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, local newspapers, and the ArtSpeak cultural committee.

Innovation, excellence, and strong community commitment are evident at the post-secondary level as well. Just a few miles from Portsmouth in Durham is the University of New Hampshire's main campus, where about 12,000 students are pursuing some 100 programs of study ranging from the humanities and applied arts to cutting-edge science and technology. UNH-ranked tenth in the nation among most entrepreneurial colleges by The Princeton Review and Forbes.com in 2004-is a comprehensive research university known for, among other things, its school of engineering and the nationally recognized Whittemore School of Business. Thanks to such programs as the Entrepreneurial Internship Program, which places seniors at innovative small companies and start-ups as part of their coursework, and the Corporate Roundtable, which pairs graduate
students with businesses for specific projects and offers critiques to businesses preparing to seek venture capital funding, the Whittemore made U.S. News & World Report's list of top 100 graduate business schools in 2005, ranked 83rd in the nation. In its latest fine-tuning of course offerings, the Whittemore has traded in the traditional two-year MBA program for an intensive one-year program designed to get well-trained students into the business world as quickly as possible. Other new and noteworthy programs at UNH include the Center for Stormwater Technology Evaluation and Verification, an important environmental initiative founded in 2004, and the Carsey Institute established in 2002, which recently won a substantial three-year grant to support its work concerning the demographic and economic changes sweeping over rural communities. Big news in summer 2005 was the awarding of a $38 million research grant to UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space to develop instruments for NASA's new Magnetospheric MultiScale mission.

UNH is just one of an extensive network of colleges and institutions serving the Seacoast. Without leaving the Portsmouth area, would-be students can choose anything from full-time study for a bachelor's degree, to part-time study for an associate degree or certificate, to all flavors of personal-enrichment continuing-ed classes in fields as diverse as physical therapy, software development, oceanography, literature, and accounting. Granite State College, Southern New Hampshire University, Franklin Pierce, Hesser, McIntosh, New Hampshire Community Technical College, Antioch/New England Graduate School, Daniel Webster, and New Hampshire College are among the colleges that provide worthwhile and career-boosting options. These institutions are continually looking for ways to serve Seacoast residents and local businesses.

The Seacoast Center of Southern New Hampshire University, for instance, recently relocated to a new wireless building in the Pease Tradeport. SNHU's highly flexible programs offer learners a choice among traditional face-to-face courses, those that are taught completely online, or a hybrid (half online and half in-person), perfect for its clientele of busy working adults. Among SNHU's new programs: a psychology degree, and a degree in professional studies and the liberal arts that may be tailored as either a B.A. or a B.S., designed "for people who know how to make the box and think outside it," says center director Jane Torrey. At Franklin Pierce (a strong supporter of the STA robotics team), the big news is the creation of a two-year master's in education beginning in fall 2005, an expansion of the existing teacher's certificate program. And major changes are in process at Granite State College, beginning with its name (it used to be the College for Lifelong Learning). "The new name matches well with our mission of expanding access to higher education," says Judy Zubrow, regional director for the Seacoast. Among the exciting developments: an online baccalaureate program that lets students complete an entire degree online, and continued funding to develop the Osher Lifelong Learning Center for adults over age 50 (currently in Manchester and Concord). GSC will also manage a call center for the University System of New Hampshire, providing information on programs at the university system's various locations statewide.

So, live and learn. On the Seacoast,
it couldn't be easier.