On the evening of May 22nd, 2025 our college, Bergen Community College, on the Paramus Campus held a wonderful evening of music, dance, art, fashion and culinary delights through the partnership of the Colleges of Art, Music and Culinary Arts in the School of Business/Hotel Management, which make up the incubator, the Bergen Institute of Creative Arts (BICA). This evening showcased the talents of not just the students but the Professors who taught them as well.
The opening reception welcoming everyone
We started the evening with a wonderful cocktail party which the Culinary students created for everyone to enjoy. The food was wonderful and so beautifully displayed.
The delicious crab cakes and beef and cheese tartlets on the table.
The Caramelized Pork Belly has an Asian flair to it
The Vegetarian Quesadilla
The crab cakes were a big hit
The infused Water, Freshly Brewed Ice Tea and Virgin Sangria were offered as beverages
During the Cocktail Party, I got to talk to some my counterparts and some of the students on their works that night. They had done a wonderful job. The Art Department had their works hung all around the Cocktail Party.
The artwork’s theme dealt with the Migrant Crisis
Pictures of people involved in the Agricultural industry
The Fashion Program also put their designs and fashions on display during the party as well.
The student designers that evening showed their designs first at the Cocktail Party
After the Cocktail Party, we moved into the auditorium for an evening of entertainment. We would be getting to see the talents of the Theater, Dance and Music departments as well. The first to perform were members of the Theater Department, who did a wonderful job with their performances. These students could really belt out a tune.
The musical performance of student singer, Francesca Muffoletto, singing “Always Something More”
Then student singers, Ashlyn Kurtzmann and Christine Dunning performed “Perfect Strangers” from the musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”.
The start of the performance
The student singers performing “Perfect Strangers”
Our Dance Department performed next and student dancers, Manna Tao and Lila Knowles performed the dance, “La Bicicleta”.
The student dancers performing “La Bicicleta”
Then our Music Department performed next and one of our Professor’s in the Music Department, Professor John La Barbara, performed with students Steven Hanst and Haydn Day, original songs that he had written. All the music was a Brazilian theme and harmony was brilliant.
Professor John La Barbera with his trio performing “Aqua De Coco”
Professor La Barbera’s original song “Aqua De Coco”
After his performance with his trio, Professor La Barbera performed music from the movies with musician Gunnar Marks, one of our Music students on campus.
The last performance was all the music students, Gabrielle Buttacavole on vocals and Gunnar Marks, Steven Hanst on guitar, Aden Even-Ezra on bass and Michael Ramirez on keyboards performing original songs by both Gabrielle Buttacavole and Gunnar Marks.
The students performing “Share Air” written by the students
After the Intermission, Professor Mary Bays from the Fashion Department introduced her student designers and then they started the fashion show.
Professor Mary Bays introducing the student designers and they started the fashion show.
The Fashion show
The Fashion Show
The Fashion show
The Fashion show
The Fashion Show
Then the student designers came out with their models and did the runway finish with all their creations. These above creative designs were by student designers Michael Agostino, Camila Stefania Rodriguez Cervantes, Ediliana Pena, Priscilla Reyes, Donna Mendoza and Maritza Gomez. Their designs were quite unique.
The student designer and his creations
The student designer and her creations
The student designer and her creations
The student designer and her creations
After the Fashion Show was over to a very rounding success, Professor Ronda Drakeford, Chairwoman of the Hotel and Restaurant program thanked her students for providing the wonderful food for the program. The Culinary students did a wonderful job with both the cocktail hour and the desserts that followed the end of the program.
Then the performances ended and we all went outside the Ciccone Theater to have the dessert hour, which was not quite an hour as all the students, parents and faculty enjoyed the sweets and they were devoured quickly.
The Raspberry Tartlets served after the show
The Raspberry Chocolate Tartlets after the show
It was an excellent evening of students and faculty showing the immense talent of the students at Bergen Community College on our Paramus Campus and the skills they will bring forward in their future colleges and their careers. Congratulations to all our students involved with the Bergen Institute for the Creative Arts (BICA).
In my live classes, I open my consulting company, “Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.”, for business and the whole class bands together and we have one big project. In the era of post-COVID and online learning, I was lucky that I was able to teach one of the live classes on the Bergen Community College, Paramus Campus. It was such a pleasure welcoming students back to campus with live lectures and conversing with them.
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. corporate logo of the six trees
In the past, I have created these projects under the Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. banner, the main consulting company, the Orion Malls banner, a Mall design company and the Buscomonzefi.com banner, my Tech Division. Each business does its best to be creative, forward thinking and have a thought producing presentations. I also challenge the students to top on another in their presentations and build on what they have seen others do in the past.
Professor Justin Watrel, CEO & Co-Founder of Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.
Recently our college was talking about recruitment to the school and the outreach to the high schools. I had seen the recent “Open House’ flyers and emails on campus and sent to my email and I thought the event could have a bit more pizzaz to it. You were trying to recruit students to come to the college and I thought there could be more to it. Working from our Homecoming, Welcome Week and Ambassadors programs that we had done in the past, I thought of “Go Bulldogs Go!-Open House Spring 2024”, a reinvented Open House with dinners, events, concerts and fun activities for the high school students, their parents and current students to enjoy.
“Go Bulldogs Go-Open House 2024 at Bergen Community College Project:
From here I picked my Executive Team and the various Divisional Teams to complete the project. We had the Talent Team, which pays for everything and get the Benefits package together along with the creating the Holiday Party at the end of the project. The Entertainment Team, who would provide all the musicians and musical performances to all the events that we had planned, the Food Service Team, which created all the menus, meals and ideas for serving food and snacks at all the functions. The most important Team was the Marketing Team, who had to promote the whole program to the high schools, Administration, Students and Parents, to all the events and to the Alumni. It was a big job and we only had seven weeks to put the whole thing together.
Being a CEO does have its headaches though. When you have a class of thirty people working on a project, there is a lot going on and there are those who try to ‘piggyback’ off other students and some just disappear. I had both of those. There were a lot of students I had to work with going forward on this project and a lot of leading I had to do. Having three projects going simultaneously was a lot of work for myself and my Executive Teams but I knew all of them could do it.
This was a project that I really wanted to come to life. I think we can do more for our student recruiting and wanted the programs to really shine to show the best of the college and all its attributes. The first day of the project, I broke the class up into Teams and discussed the project.
The Open House that we were creating was a three day event where we engaged both high school students and their parents, the current student body of Bergen Community College and Alumni.
I challenged the students to put a Pep Rally together for the sports teams on campus, a active concert and games, a nice International dinner and a breakfast brunch with music and an active tour of campus while promoting the campus for students to attend. The tours were created to show the best attributes of campus such as the music labs, the AI labs, the Ciccone Theater, the Bergen Room, Gallery Bergen and all our sporting facilities. There is so much at our campus that people do not see on these tours. I also do not like the idea that we burden students with financial aid issues not instead of when they accept coming so I put less emphasis on that. I want them to know all the great cultural things they can enjoy when they do decide to come to Bergen Community College.
As part of the class, I had an in class field trip around campus. I could not believe that most of these students didn’t know that all these things existed on campus. I should have learned from previous classes. This is how this all got inspired. When I asked all the students what their experience was like on campus, most of them just said that they came to class and went home. They never ventured around the campus. A few ate in the cafeteria and one or two had been to the Ciccone Theater and a few more had heard of Gallery Bergen.
The in class trip included Gallery Bergen, with its new contemporary art exhibition, the Bergen Room (in its old location) and the Ciccone Theater, where Professor Baumgartner was doing dress rehearsals but always has time to talk about the Theater Department. That really helps. Then we went outside to the new outdoor courtyard to show the students the logistics of where the concerts and some of the cultural events would take place. Then it back to the classroom to start getting the groups to work on the project. The majority of the students finally got what I was talking about and got to work. Then we started our weekly board meetings.
After seven weeks, the Teams were preparing for our Presentation on December 6th, 2023. I have to say that I was going through a lot in my personal life. Sinterklaas weekend had been the weekend before and all I had done is run around the Hudson River Valley with the Snowflake and Sinterklaas festivities in both Kingston and Rhinebeck, NY. There was a lot of running around the two towns plus running to Ringwood Manor before I left to take pictures of the mansion’s decorations for Christmas. I was not too sure how much time I would have after Christmas (I found that I had none) and was on a picture taking tour.
Then I had my own class presentations in Digital Marketing and Customer Relations class with much stress to get them right (I got ‘A’s on them both) and then had two days of my own students presentations to be followed by another presentation I had to make in Bloomingdales President Marvin Traub with his book “Like No other Store in the World” for my Hotel Sales & Marketing Class (another ‘A’) and then lead to another weekend of picture taking upstate of historical homes and towns. I never sat still and got very little sleep.
In the morning, I had presented my “I’m Glad I’m in Glen Rock, NJ” project with my Marketing class and that went off perfectly so I had high expectations of this class. My President and Senior Vice-President of Operations did not let me down. We had a few hiccups with the presentation but overall it was excellent and I was very impressed by the work and effort the students.
The project results were wonderful and it really showcased the campus with wonderful events to engage the students and their parents over a three day period. I know if the campus really put this whole event on, we would recruit a lot more students with no problems.
What was nice that evening was talking with the parents after the presentation. They were not only impressed by their sons and daughters presentation but impressed by the whole class. That all keep wondering how I get them all to dress up and especially shave. I always reply the same thing, I grade them. I really think though it is the pride that the students have in doing a good job and wanting the look the part of being an executive representing the company. This project prepares them for a future that is unknown to them but now a lot less scary.
This contains all the commercials, artwork, the PowerPoint and headquarters plans.
The Holiday Party Project:
In lieu of the traditional quiz, I have the students get back in their groups and create ideas for a Corporate Christmas Party for the New Brunswick headquarters. It always amazes me what the Teams can do in an hour. The funny part by this point is that they are so used to working with one another it becomes second nature to them. This quiz is a nice way to end the semester and maybe create some new friendships amongst the students.
The students of my Business 101 class keep dazzling me.
The Creation of the Case Study Project “I’ve got a Golden Ticket to Bergen Community College-Homecoming 2022”:
I have been teaching “Introduction to Business 101” at Bergen Community College for several years now and in the era of COVID, it has been especially difficult. With businesses shutting down never to reopen getting students to understand that business must go on and pivot is a difficult thing to do. You have to learn to adapt and survive or else everything fails.
In my live classes, I open my consulting company, “Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.”, for business and the whole class bands together and we have one big project. In the era of COVID and online learning, I was lucky that I was able to teach one of the live classes on the Bergen Community College, Paramus Campus. It was such a pleasure welcoming students back to campus with live lectures and conversing with them.
What I discovered later on is that we were the only class on campus that night and it was pretty gloomy walking the halls all by myself late on a Friday evening. The upside of all of this is that we had the whole campus to stretch out in and later in the class I changed rooms to a more formal lecture room for the presentation. I thought this was more COVID safe for the students.
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. corporate logo of the six trees
In the past, I have created these projects under the Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. banner, the main consulting company, the Orion Malls banner, a Mall design company and the Buscomonzefi.com banner, my Tech Division. Each business does its best to be creative, forward thinking and have a thought producing presentations.
Professor Justin Watrel, CEO & Consultant Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.
My welcome to Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. from the CEO of the company:
While my other class worked on their case study project, “Market Street Candy & Confections”, a 100-year-old candy store concept, “I’ve got a Golden Ticket to Bergen Community College-Homecoming 2022”, a project promoting Bergen Community College to the Alumni got off to the ground running.
In a class that has to stay socially distanced and met only once a week it got difficult.
Our Logo from the novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by author Ronald Dahl.
“I’ve got a Golden Ticket to Bergen Community College”
Every semester it is the same thing with the students. Some take the project seriously and some think it is a chore and go back to looking at their cellphones the whole semester. As usual, those are the students whose work shows it and gets the lower grades.
When I put my executive team together this semester, I found a nice combination of students who really worked well together. How I choose my executives is the same way any CEO would, I get a copy of their resume which serves as my first paper for the class. I work with the students to be sure that their resume is ready for future job interviews and internships or transfers to another four-year school. This is where I can see where the students experience lies and what skills they can perform.
The second paper I have the students write is “What would I do Better?”, a two-page paper on a situation on a job or extra-curricular activity that went terribly wrong and how they might have fixed it. The paper always shows me how the student would handle adversity under pressure. It also shows me the student’s character. This is how I pick my executives plus I use my gut instinct on how they act in class. Almost 95% of the time, I am correct.
The students I chose for my Executive Team were all Bi or Tri-Lingual, all were pretty ambitious and I thought had a sense of creativity. One of my Executives went AWOL after the second class and one of his Team Members took over the VP roll. I could not have asked for a more prepared student of the role of Vice-President. This is when students can surprise you with their flexibility and creativity under pressure.
So, every week we had Board Meetings to check progress and see how each Team was performing and getting their work done. I always have my procrastinators but for the most part everything was handled on time and towards the last two weeks I saw the students ban together to get the work done. Still, I had a few students either go AWOL or just drop the class and that was it so there was some rearranging to do along the way. This is what happens in a real corporation, so it was just like real life.
The night of the presentation, it was nice to see the students all dressed up. All the women looked so professional in suits, skirts, slacks and dresses while most of the men were in either suit and tie or jacket and tie. I few I will have to teach how to iron a shirt or tie a tie correctly.
I could not have been prouder of my student executives on their presentation. They put together a wonderful presentation in promoting Bergen Community College to Alumni and students, promoting our Athletic program with student athletic and parent events with Alumni attendance and meals that would bring Alumni together in the “Bulldog” tradition. All throughout the presentation we kept the “Willy Wonka” theme in all of our events.
What really impressed me was the touching dedication to the late Gene Wilder, the star of the original 1971 film from the Executives to both him and his widow, Susan Wilder. I think that showed the heart of the project of how much this film means to people.
Congratulations everyone on this excellent project and Happy New Year!
*Please watch and read the different parts of the project to see its progress.
The Project:
“I’ve got a Golden Ticket to Bergen Community College-Homecoming 2022”
I had the strangest semester this quarter at Bergen Community College where I work. The semester started off normal and was the typical night class. I would get in about an hour and a half early and prepare for class. Then it was lecture, class participation and then quizzes and exams. I had just given my midterm exam and then we left for Spring Break. I knew the outside issues that were surrounding us but the problems of the COVID-19 seemed so far away.
Even so in the back of my mind I knew this was going to be a problem experiencing what I did at the New York Restaurant Show and at the Chinese New Year Parade in Chinatown in the same time frame. Even Groundhog’s Day and the Big Ten Championship seemed subdued. I guess I just waited for someone to finally pull the plug and did they EVER IN A BIG WAY!
Two weeks before we left for Break, I reopened the Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. concept for my Introduction to Business class and gave out the Team Project and went over the guidelines of the project. I have to say that the students seemed pretty excited about the prospect of running a company. My President and Senior Vice-President were raring to go and the next two classes, the last one being the night of the Midterm, we were able to meet and it gave the students time to meet up and get to know one another. I knew it would be a successful project.
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. logo
I had thought about this semester’s Team Project for the class while we were presenting the Paterson Project last semester and thought about what many students had told me about their experiences at the College. Most seemed alienated from the other students. Others who had attended bigger four year colleges in the past felt their was no cohesiveness to the school, no connection because it was a commuter school. Others told me that they did not know anyone at the school until they did their group project. The one thing was true was there was no school spirit.
This gave me the idea this semester to do something to focus on the students and their experience at the college. While my Marketing class created a project for tourism in Historical Bergen County, I had my Introduction to Business class create a Student Ambassador Program that would welcome students to the college starting with the student getting accepted in high school and then take them on the whole experience of welcoming them once they got to Bergen Community College.
I decided to expand the “Welcome Week” project I did two years ago (see ‘Day One Hundred and Twenty Seven’ in MywalkinManhattan.com) that welcomed students and alumni back to the college and create an ambassador program as another part of welcoming students to campus. The Welcome Week project gave the students an opportunity to be involved with the campus when they graduated but I wanted to see something when they first got the letter of acceptance. So I created a Team Project that would combine the whole experience.
The Welcome Week Project-“Follow the Yellow Brick Road back to Bergen Community College-Welcome Week 2019”:
My questions was ‘How do we engage students when they are accepted to the college and then when they get here?’ ‘How are we sure that they do not get lost in the crowd?’ Since it is a commuter campus, how do we keep them engaged once they start classes? This was the challenge for the students to tackle with this Team project. We used the last two classes of the semester to meet and get everyone acquainted and have the Teams start the project. It started very smoothly.
Here was the inspiration for the Ambassador Program:
Here was the welcome to the college from the “Welcome Week” Team!
While on Spring Break, I got a memo from the college while attending the Restaurant Show that the college was going to extend the Spring Break a week to see what the State of New Jersey was going to do to handle the COVID-19 situation.
So I just continued on with the first week of break, attending the Restaurant Show, going to Blondie’s on the West Side to the Alumni Night for the Big Ten Championships, attending a 90’s Tech retrospect at the Anthology Archives and going to the Members night at the Met Breuer. All of this while I felt that everyone I was with at these events with were looking over their shoulders wondering what would happen next (See Day One Hundred and Sixty-“On Leave from “MywalkinManhattan.com” in MywalkinManhattan.com).
I was planning on visiting my mother on Thursday of first week of break so after the Restaurant Show closed I got my car serviced, my haircut, my dry cleaning and banking done and finished my housework in anticipation of my upcoming trip. Still everything loomed in the distance. The next morning all hell broke loose and the borders were shut in the United States and the stock market went wild! The market was dropping like crazy.
So in between talking to my mother, my broker and other family members everything was cancelled and I stayed home and by March 13th, the whole country started the lock down. I could not go into the City and continue my walk of the Theater District or work in the Soup Kitchen as everything in the City immediately shut down. I just wondered how this would play out with the College. Even before the break many of my students had been asking questions about this that I could not answer.
While we were on break a lot of my students kept in touch with one another and we were working on the project during the second week of the break. I was only allowed to email students if they emailed me (they were still on their break) but I would CC everyone on my emails to keep the lines of communication open. It was only at the end of the second week that we knew we would not be going back to school and all the classes would go virtual. It was then I was emailing my students and going over what we needed to do to proceed with the project. This is when the project got interesting.
Some of the students had kept in touch over the break and had gotten the framework done for their sections and had some ideas of what they wanted to do. So we were better prepared than the other class I had who had one afternoon to get their game plan together. When we realized we would not be going back to class and everything would have to be virtual, it made the class even more interesting and a big challenge. Most of the students had a good handle on the work and many parts of the project had been started.
The project was broken down into sections. Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. (an acronym for Bergen Community College-Paramus Campus) is a hierarchy in company form. I set up my Executives and broke them down into different divisions. My President and Senior Vice-President ran the show. They would report to me and let me know how the project was progressing. They were in charge of putting the Power Point presentation together and finding our headquarters.
The slogan that the Team came up with for the project.
My Talent Division was in charge of setting up salaries, the benefits package and the office space design for a three month period that we would be working on the proposal for the client. Once the President and Senior Vice-President of Operations found the location for the offices, it would be the Talent Team’s responsibility to design and furnish the office. They would also set up a series of ‘perks’ for the office, things like snacks for the office, team building projects and employee relation items like Daycare and transportation reimbursement.
My Marketing Team was responsible for setting up the Corporate Website (based on the one that had been set up for the Paterson Project) and expand it to include all Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. projects from the past, shoot commercials welcoming students to campus and what it is like to attend Bergen Community College and set up the logos along with the Spirit Division and then find ways to ‘market the college’ to the incoming students. They were also in charge of designing the new “Ambassador” uniforms for the Student Ambassadors to wear when attending events.
My Spirit/Special Events Team was responsible for all the ‘spirit’ related projects. They were responsible for setting up our Spirit Welcome’s to incoming high school students and once they got to campus, organizing a series of events to get the students involved in the campus. They were also assigned to set up the special events to welcome parents and students to campus.
On the High School Level, the Spirit/Special Events Division was to create a “Spirit High School Welcome” that entailed the Student Ambassadors visiting each high school in the are where students had been accepted to Bergen Community College along with some students athletes and hold a “Meet & Greet” over a pizza lunch with the incoming students to welcome them to campus.
Here is the commercial that welcome’s new students to campus!
On the College Level, the Spirit/Special Events Division was to create a series of events for when the incoming students arrived as well as events that current students could attend called it the “College “Bulldog” Spirit Welcome” and this included:
*A formal Campus Tour that each student was to take when they arrived on campus. This way each student knew where things were located on campus and become acquainted with what services were available to them.
*A Parent’s of Athletes Reception and Pep Rally which was to be an evening exclusively catering to student athletes coming to Bergen Community College and their parents which included a light dinner and pep rally that included the cheerleaders, the dance team and other student athletes that was to be held the night of our rival Men’s Basketball game with Passaic Community College.
*A Parent/Student Barbecue which was to be held the weekend of the first home Men’s Soccer game that invited all incoming students and their parents plus the members of the Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams and their parents. The barbecue was to have an extensive menu of all sorts of fall favorites.
*A First Night at the College that was to be held the First Friday after the College resumed that included a night in the gym getting to know the clubs and organizations on campus. This also included snacks provided for the evening and then the evening ended with a concert for all the students.
The Spirit/Special Events Team was also responsible for designing a new School Mascot, Spirit Shirts for the the Men and Women’s Basketball Teams and create a School Fight Song. I know it would be a lot of work but it is fun to see the creativity of the students when put under pressure.
Here is the commercial that promotes the college when students come to campus!
It was even more pressure when we did not return to campus and the whole project had to be done by email and then Zoom meetings. I would not see my students again for the rest of the semester and because of school policy I could not speak to them over the phone. Until I learned what Zoom was and was allowed to have video conferences with them toward the end of the semester, I have never written so many emails before in my life. I swear I was on the computer everyday all day especially on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I never left my home office the whole day.
It got even more confusing when a few of my students disappeared at the beginning of the semester, a few students got sick and then it was the disagreements and misunderstandings you have when emailing people. I had never worked so hard pulling a project off before. Communication was limited until the use of Zoom videoconferencing came into play. Even then that was toward the end of the project so everything was being done through long lengthy emails.
Then for about two weeks I heard nothing from the team as members of the Executive Team had not been in contact with me. We were at the height of the COVID-19 crisis and I was worried about my students. Some just stopped answering emails and I would find out later that some of them or their family members were sick. It was a trying time in the trenches.
Then I sent out an email about two and a half weeks before the presentation and everyone started to contact me. What floored me was how far the students had come along with the project with little assistance from me. Some of them took me ideas and just ran with them.
Some of them came up with their own version of my ideas which I liked. They created home and away shirts for the basketball games, set up spirit sections, came up with new ideas for food venues like having Boston Market take out meals for the ‘Parent’s of Athletes Reception’ and the Team’s creative ideas on a new school fight song. The Team even developed a new school mascot, “The Bulldog”.
The new Bulldog Mascot Costume
We ended up having both a WebEx meeting and a Zoom Meeting before the presentation on Friday, April 24th at 8:00pm. It was so nice to see everyone again. I had not seen my students since the Midterm exam and it was good to see that everyone was doing okay. Their lives like my own were turned upside down but we all had to make the best of it.
On the night of presentation was interesting. It was not the most pleasant weather and I was afraid that the computer would go down. We lucked out that everything went by smoothly and the presentation went by fine. What was nice was our Head of Athletics and our Head of Public Relations for the college were able to join us for the presentation.
Here is the new Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc Website:
Here you can see the full Power Point Presentation and the Commercials.
I could not have been prouder of a group of students who under all the pressure of not being in class, people suffering from the illness. family situations at home, job issues and personal stress made the project work.
The students at Bergen Community College’s Business/Hotel Management School proved to me that they can compete with the best. I was happy to give a lot of “A’s” this semester!
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