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Cossatot Community College |
First SAU/CCCUA Fire Grad Hired As Chief
15 April 2005
DE QUEEN – James Tornabene, who has served three years as the Fire and Safety Training Instructor at Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas, has been hired by the City of Ruston, Louisiana as Chief of its Fire Department. Tornabene is the first student to graduate from the Arkansas Fire Academy program at Southern Arkansas University Tech at Camden. He earned the vast majority of his Associate’s degree hours through CCCUA, and had 8-1/2 years of experience as a firefighter with the department at Texas City, Texas before coming to De Queen. He is also a licensed Paramedic. His wife, Heather, who is a Phi Theta Kappa student in the College’s Licensed Practical Nurse program, is a certified Emergency Medical Technician.
Tornabene assumes his duties as Chief at Ruston April 25th. His replacement at CCCUA has not yet been named.
Tornabene said, “I have really enjoyed my tenure as an instructor at CCCUA, and the Fire Safety Training Trailer we got through a grant I wrote with the help of some very able College staffers has already saved more than a dozen lives.” Tornabene was referring to Taylor Hopson of Prescott and Chelsea Stewart of Ashdown, elementary school students who saved their families from house fires earlier this year. Both were trained in the Fire Safety trailer last year. The trailer will make month-long stops at fire departments in each of the nine counties in the service area during the 2005-2006 school year.
He said, “I am sad to leave behind the many friends I’ve made in the De Queen community and at the fire houses in our [nine-county] service area, but being chief in a town the size of Ruston will enable me to make some changes for the good in an area of Louisiana that is still predominantly rural.”
Cossatot Community College offers both technical certification and Associate’s degrees in a wide range of fields on its campus at De Queen, at extension sites at Nashville and Ashdown, and at cccua.edu. CCCUA collaborates with other colleges and universities to offer bachelor's and master's degrees on its three campuses. It has an enrollment of more than 1,100 students, and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
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