To help meet that demand, the College of Professional and Continuing Studies (CPCS) is expanding its Allied Health Certificate programs on Long Island and in Manhattan, pairing scholarships and hands-on training with direct connections to employers.

Scholarships for Emerging Dental Assistants

With a $25,000 community grant from the New York Community Trust, CPCS will provide scholarships and comprehensive support to 11 students ages 18 to 29 pursuing the Dental Assistant professional certificate at the Hempstead Adult Education site. 7 percent between 2025 and 2035, also well above the 3.5 percent projected for all occupations, with about 53,000 openings a year nationwide.

The initiative is designed to help students build the skills, credentials and career connections needed to enter Long Island’s growing healthcare workforce.

Scholarship recipients, along with students in related allied health programs, will have access to certification exam preparation, academic advising and individualized student support. Participants will also take part in five professional development workshops covering career planning, résumé development, professional communication, and AI and digital workplace skills, which are increasingly expected in modern healthcare settings.

As students near completion of their programs, CPCS will help them move from the classroom into the workforce. Externships will provide hands-on experience, while interview preparation, employer connections and job-matching services are intended to bridge the gap between learning and a first job.

“Thanks to the generous support of the New York Community Trust, we’re able to open doors for young people who are ready to build a career in healthcare,” said Sandra Castro, PhD, senior associate dean in the College of Professional and Continuing Studies. “The demand for professionals in these fields keeps growing throughout our communities. For many of our participants, this is the first step toward an undergraduate degree and a future with even more opportunity.”

New Manhattan Center Broadens the Offerings

CPCS is also expanding its allied health portfolio at its new Manhattan Center, where it is launching hybrid programs in Clinical Medical Assisting and EKG Technician and Phlebotomy Technician training. Designed with working adults and other nontraditional students in mind, the programs pair flexible online asynchronous coursework with hands-on laboratory experiences and office hours at the center’s state-of-the-art facility.

Together, the initiatives reflect CPCS’s effort to create flexible routes into healthcare careers while pairing students with the education, support and real-world experience they need to succeed.

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The Overlooked Consequences of a Transit Strike

who had to choose between waiting on long bus lines, taking sick days or working from home that week. The strike was inconvenient for office workers, but potentially disastrous for many of New York’s most essential services, such as hospitals, schools and public agencies.

“Telling people to work from home is sound guidance for a large part of the workforce,” said Nicholas Cagliuso, PhD, adjunct professor of emergency management. “But it doesn’t help the nurse, the home health aide, the retail clerk or the shift worker whose job requires being on site. The LIRR strike is a good reminder that ‘all-hazards’ really means ‘all-consequences.’”

Emergency Management Training Transcends Disciplines

Students studying emergency management at Adelphi are trained to follow an all-hazards approach, which translates, in the simplest terms, to “be ready for anything.” The program’s curriculum brings together the strengths of several schools at the University—including the College of Nursing and Public Health, College of Arts and Sciences and Robert B. Willumstad School of Business—to provide students with an interdisciplinary framework that can be applied to any emergency in any industry.

Terry Cooper, DHSc, clinical assistant professor and director of emergency management, calls emergency management “an art and a science.” “To be able to serve people to the best of our ability, we need to wear so many hats,” he said. “Our students are developing skills in everything from project management to human resources, communications, technical writing and science.”

Dr. Cagliuso echoes the sentiment. The backgrounds that serve students well in this profession, he says, are legion: public health, transportation, urban planning, public administration, business, labor relations and more. “Whatever your co-discipline or your interest is, wherever you’re coming from, there’s a space for you in this program,” Dr. Cooper added.

Preparing for the Big Picture Makes the Biggest Impact

No matter their background, emergency managers must be able to see the big picture. Professionals working on the LIRR strike would have been able to envision, for example, how displaced rail commuters would crowd roads and subway stations. And, most importantly, they’d have seen the strike coming. “This strike had a visible runway: years of negotiations, federal emergency boards, a near-miss in 2025 and a concrete timeline for mediation under federal labor law,” Dr. Cagliuso said. “A good emergency manager tracks a deadline the way they’d track a hurricane’s path.”

Unlike a hurricane, however, the LIRR strike left behind minimal damage in the end. All things considered, Dr. Cooper believes, this was “a plan that went right.” Commuters were notified in advance, the incident was resolved within three days and, in the meantime, nothing fell apart.

Teaching Students to Think on Their Feet

Though a deal was reached late on Monday night, full service was not restored for nearly 24 hours. Dr. Cagliuso sees a critical lesson there: “Live by the rule of no surprises.” As he notes, the LIRR couldn’t just “flip a switch” to get trains running in time for Tuesday morning’s commute. “My advice to newer professionals is to challenge your assumptions, not just your procedures. Exercise the oddball but plausible scenarios.”

Dr. Cooper plans his own curriculum around the inevitable oddball scenario, too. Though his classes are held online and asynchronously, he makes room for real-time discussions with students, often centering around current events—like a recent cyberattack targeting supermarket refrigerators in France—that are continuously evolving.

“These future professionals are going to have to make decisions on the fly that require critical thinking. Sometimes there isn’t a right answer, there’s just a best option,” he said. “Learning this early will make students much more competitive in their fields.”

The post What the 2026 LIRR Strike Taught Us ����ֱ�� Disaster Preparedness—And How Adelphi’s Emergency Management Faculty Are Preparing Future Professionals to Respond appeared first on Adelphi University.