Remarks by H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
College Board Southern Regional Council
Hilton Head, South Carolina
Inspirational Breakfast
February 8, 2008
Finding Hope with the Community College Family
Metzi Hopkins
Montgomery Community College
Metzi Hopkins told her story at our Academic Excellence Awards ceremony in 2006, where she was honored as one of our system's very best students. She graduated from Montgomery Community College in Troy, North Carolina, the second-smallest of our 58 institutions. She shared how she felt when she first drove onto the pretty campus, tucked into the Uwharrie mountains right in the middle of the state.
"I was scared to death, absolutely terrified, wondering what on earth has possessed me to do this? This is the girl who played hooky from high school to avoid being in the classroom."
Metzi grew up in an abusive, alcoholic home, the youngest and only girl of four siblings. She was frequently told that she was stupid, and that she would never do anything meaningful with her life. At 15, she tried to escape -- she got married and dropped out of high school. Her husband abused her and she wound up, at 19, alone
with two children.
Happily remarried, Metzi decided to enroll at Montgomery Community College with the simple goal of finishing her high school education. Instructors at Montgomery encouraged her to enroll in the associate in arts transfer program. She graduated from Montgomery with honors and earned a full scholarship to Pfeiffer University. Metzi credits her current success to her supportive husband and, in her words, to the family she found at Montgomery Community College.
She says, "They all know me by my first name, they know where I work, they are always there to give me a smile. I don’t believe this type of attention can be found on most four-year college campuses. Had I made an attempt to attend a four-year university without attending my community college first, I believe I would have failed miserably. Not to mention, that I, more than likely, would never have been accepted into a four-year college. Instead, I chose a path that allowed me to ease into college life without being completely overwhelmed. As a result, I have excelled beyond my wildest expectations."
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Virtual Learning Leads To Actual Success
Debbie Kennedy
Randolph Community College
Debbie Kennedy makes her living working with distance learning at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, NC. . She'll tell you she OWES her living to distance learning, too. She discovered online learning when she was trying to finish her own college transfer degree, which she earned at age thirty-eight at Randolph.
"Completing my degree would have been impossible without the distance learning program," she says. "I place a high personal value on distance learning. It allows students to succeed who otherwise wouldn't be able to."
Ms. Kennedy is the Virtual Campus Content coordinator at Randolph Community College. That makes her vital part of the statewide distance learning effort of the North Carolina Community College System know as the Virtual Learning Community, or VLC. Ten years ago, the VLC was in its first year. Distance learning in our system consisted of broadcast telecourses in partnership with UNC-TV, our state's public TV system; some live interactive video, and a small handful of on-line courses put together by pioneers scattered around our colleges. Last year, the VLC counted more than 200-thousand enrollments, mostly in on-line courses. The VLC offers more than 200 courses in at least two dozen programs, with more coming every day.
Kennedy credits the steady increase to high student demand. She says: "While it is still a pretty new concept, students are on board and clamoring for more."
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Blooming Late But Blooming Well
Christian Conway
Southwestern Community College
Christian Conway was, in his words, "living a sweet dream" in the Rocky Mountains -- in his 20s, single,earning just enough at dead-end jobs to pay rent and buy what he needed to climb, ski and bike. A GED was all he had and all he wanted -- until he fell for a straight-A biology grad from North Carolina and realized that maybe there was something to this education business!
They moved east, married and had a son, and Christian found in his "brown-eyed girl" the inspiration to ignite his own educational and professional dreams -- a challenge as he says, to be "Held to Greatness."
He enrolled in college transfer at Southwestern Community College in the Great Smoky Mountains. He excelled as a student -- graduating at 30 with honors as one of our statewide award winners, headed for transfer to Western Carolina University as an environmental science major. But he points particularly to the community college role in preparing him for responsible CITIZENSHIP. He volunteers in community organizations and tutors in chemistry and math.
He says, "I am an active citizen in my community because the community college centered itself on me as a citizen and not just a student. Southwestern exposed me to, and gave me experiences in, teaching and learning values that support the fundamental characteristics of citizenship.
It is easy to engage in volunteer work when the expectation is such. My volunteering has helped me think more largely about my place in the world and what I am called to do -- I was held to greatness!"
Christian didn't quote Thomas Jefferson in the remarks he offered at the Academic Excellence Awards this year -- but I will --
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480
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Home-Grown Teachers for the Next Generation
Teresa Watson
Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute
Teresa Watson is close to finishing her credentials to teach middle school math in Caldwell County, where the Appalachians meet the Piedmont in North Carolina's historic furniture belt. Communities there are struggling with the shutdown of industries that have for generations provided good jobs for people with little education.
We need more teachers there -- and pretty much everywhere else in North Carolina, where fast growing schools demand thousands more new teachers every year than our universities can provide.
Teresa is just the kind of teacher our public schools need -- a mature adult happily married to a landscaper, mother to two teenagers, firmly settled in a small town she loves and determined to teach tough subjects to youngsters who need strong guidance. Teresa will be able to do that in large part because she is one of the first class of GSK Teaching Scholars in North Carolina, funded to encourage "home-grown" teacher partnerships in North Carolina.
With her scholarship, Teresa will complete her college transfer degree at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute then transfer into a university teacher education program offered right on Caldwell's campus. She won't have to move away from her family or drive mountain roads in treacherous weather to accomplish her dream.
When I came to the North Carolina Community College System in 1997, a few of these "home-grown" partnerships were in place -- two-plus-two programs that included education as well as some other fields. The great program between Coastal Carolina Community College and UNC-Wilmington led the way with our public universities, and a terrific partnership between Surry Community College and Lees-McCrae College is one example of collaboration with a private four-year college.
The success that started in those places has now demonstrated that this IS an answer -- maybe THE answer -- to the teacher shortage in our state. UNC-Wilmington has extended its program across the southeaster counties and now graduates more teachers that way than through its traditional program. The Appalachian Learning Alliance based at Appalachian State University includes 10 community colleges in our mountain counties. Wachovia has poured money into the huge Partnership East centered on East Carolina University.
Yes, we want to educate and employ the best teachers for our young people. And we want to KEEP them where they are needed MOST. That's where ADULTS who have already made the decision about where to LIVE and rear their families -- but want to change their minds about their CAREERS -- come in. And what better way to educate THEM than in institutions focused on the needs of adults -- and experienced with flexibility?
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Education for Health Careers Equals BENEFITS for
Student, Family and State
Dianne Johnson
Central Carolina Community College
When Dianne Johnson, a single mother with four children, lost her manufacturing job, she descended into a period of despair. But Johnson found a way to turn her life around at her local community college.
"Changes were made in my life I had no control over," says Johnson. "I went from providing for my family, to no way to make a living."
Johnson went to Central Carolina Community College in Sanford where a counselor helped her determine a course of action that would literally turn her life around. She entered the Medical Assisting program at the community college and worked part time while she continued to care for her family. Johnson says she had to learn how to study and manage her time, but she had lots of support from the college.
"They pushed me, they helped me, they encouraged me." She made straight "A’s" every semester and will graduated two years ago, already employed at a local family practice office.
"My community college changed my life drastically. I now have a passion for life, I have a job, and I have insurance!" says Johnson. She feels the dollars invested in the North Carolina Community College System have paid dividends for her and she is now able to take care of her family and pay taxes.
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Opening Doors to the World
Marti Curtis
Beaufort County Community College
Marti Curtis grew up in Northern Ireland where bombings, shootings and the sound of police sirens were parts of her daily life. She did well in school, but her family was poor, so she left school at 16 to go to work. After she married her first husband, a police officer, death threats became a regular part of Marti’s routine.
When she and her husband divorced, Marti moved to North Carolina, remarried and looked for a way to move from her previous retailing career into registered nursing. She says of her decision to enroll in community college after 22 years away from school :
"My husband suggested Beaufort County Community College as they had the best pass rate for the NCLEX exams. At first, I was upset, because in Ireland, community colleges are associated with exceptional learning facilities for those with learning difficulties and as a place where retirees can learn pottery and wood working."
Marti's husband persuaded her, however, and she went through the complicated process of verifying her education from Ireland and taking placement tests. After a few brush-up courses, Marti enrolled in associate degree nursing, one of our most challenging programs and graduated in May of 2007 as one of our system's top students. She was a student ambassador at her college and active in student government.
Marti inspired us all at the Academic Excellence Awards ceremony this past April when she said:
"I realize that there are a lot of long hours and very hard work ahead. But the personal rewards I see on my horizon, the security I'll be able to provide my family far outweighs the hardships I see ahead. And God willing, I'll be able to give back something to a community that has already given me so much. I want to leave you with one last comment, be grateful for all you have in this country, the freedom, the sunshine, the people and most of all the opportunities. You gave me the chance to start over, to reinvent myself and to accomplish a lifelong dream. “
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She'll Never Starve!
Nichole Sellers
Tri-County Community College
Nichole Sellers goes to Murphy High School in Cherokee County, way up in the Smokes in the far western tip of North Carolina -- in fact, that's the "Murphy" of our "Murphy to Manteo" phrase defining just about as far as you can go in our state.
Nichole also takes classes at Tri-County Community College in Murphy, taking advantage of our several programs that permit high school students to get a head start on college and jobs. She is a good student who is thinking about maybe being a doctor.
But she landed in the news recently because she's the first girl -- or woman, for that matter, in North Carolina to do something quite remarkable. Thanks to her WELDING classes at Tri-County, at age sixteen Nichole passed all the field pipe welding tests administered by the NC Department of Transportation and been certified for ALL welding positions at DOT. She's too young to get a job there yet, but DOT can't wait to see her application.
Gary A. Bristow, who administers the tests for the NC Department of Transportation, said, “I’m showing her work to people out on the job and asking them why they can’t do that kind of work. She has great attention to detail and she isn’t even old enough to get a job. I wouldn’t have been able to test her if it wasn’t for the program at Tri-County.”
Bristow has high praise for all of Tri-County's welding students. “These kids here are some of the best welders I see in North Carolina,” he says. “They learn good habits. It’s always a pleasure when I test students from Tri-County.”
Why am I telling this story to the College Board? Because it's important for you to understand that all kinds of students do all kinds of THINGS and thus have all kinds of OPPORTUNITIES -- thanks to a truly COMPREHENSIVE community college system.
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Learning to Learn in a Fast-Changing World
Roger Dale Portis
Surry Community College
Roger Portis is like a lot of baby-boomers in rural North Carolina. Thirty years ago, he got out of high school in Mount Airy -- Andy Griffith's hometown known to you as Mayberry!-- and went right to work in one of the manufacturing plants that made our state the most heavily industrialized state in the South for generations. In fact, he started full-time before he even finished high school, so he figured he was set for life.
Roger says, "I was not concerned with continuing my education. I was only thinking about getting a job and earning some money. At that time, jobs were plentiful. I have worked with people that walked out on their jobs and many times were employed by another company the next day, sometimes at a higher salary!"
Unfortunately for Roger, he worked in hosiery and textiles -- and those industries have been crushed by NAFTA and other dramatic changes in the global economy which have moved plants and jobs to the cheap labor of Mexico, China, India and elsewhere. In 1997, his employer closed. He found another job, and four years later, that plant shut down, too. He found yet another job in hosiery -- but two years later, was laid off again -- despite an excellent work record and strong skills as a lead mechanic.
This time, however, Roger was ready -- he had already started classes at Surry Community College and used his retraining benefits to complete his associates degree in information technology. While he values his new job skills, he says his most important lesson was "learning how to learn."
He says: "There are a lot fewer jobs now than when I first started work. If people are to gain and retain employment today, they must have the tools to do so. I think that is where our community college system has become much more important today, than it was in the past. In years past, employers were not as concerned with education – they just needed someone to work. Now employers can pick whomever they want, so prospective employees must be better qualified than ever. The community college system offers a relatively inexpensive way to obtain a two-year degree and possible get a start on a four-year degree. With grants and other forms of assistance, a local resident can obtain at least a two-year degree and become much more employable with little out of pocket expense."
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