Clare Lamontagne Named Dean of Health Sciences at HCC

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College recently welcomed Clare Lamontagne as its new dean of Health Sciences. Lamontagne, a registered nurse who holds a Ph.D. in nursing, brings 40 years of experience to HCC as a nursing educator, administrator, clinician, and consultant.

For the past seven years, she has been a member of the full-time nursing faculty at UMass Amherst, having also served there as director of the undergraduate nursing program. She began her career in 1978 as a charge nurse at Ludlow Hospital after earning her associate degree in nursing from Springfield Technical Community College, where she worked as a member of the nursing faculty from 1988 to 2011.

“I really value community-college education,” Lamontagne said. “It’s where I started, and I felt like it was time to go full-circle and come back to a community-college setting.”

Lamontagne started at HCC July 9 and maintains a second-floor office in the Center for Health Education on Jarvis Avenue, home to HCC’s Nursing and Radiologic Technology programs as well as its medical-simulation center.

“HCC is a great place,” she said. “There’s people here that I wanted to work with, and I think that my skills can also be a benefit to the college.”

As dean of HCC’s division of Health Sciences, Lamontagne oversees the college’s programs in Nursing (associate degree and licensed practical nursing certificate); Radiologic Technology; Foundations of Health (including the Community Health Worker program); Health, Fitness, and Nutrition; Veterinary and Animal Science; and Medical Assistant. 

Lamontagne holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from American International College, a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in nursing from UMass Amherst. She has also worked as a nurse at Baystate Medical Center and as a volunteer at the Pioneer Valley Free Health Clinic in East Longmeadow, and has taught in the nursing programs at UConn, Elms College, and Baystate Health.