A-B Tech Graduate Ernest Grant Receives National Outstanding Alumni Award
A-B Tech alumnus Ernest Grant is one of six community college graduates nationwide selected to receive a 2004 Outstanding Alumni Award by the American Association of Community Colleges.
Grant joins such past winners as Olympic speedskater Bonnie Blair, actor Tom Arnold, U.S. Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez, and Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Division of Microsoft Corp. Among the criteria for the award are achievements in the nominee's career field, philanthropic or public service activity that supports the community and/or college, the achievement of recognition on a national level, and inspirational impact or significance.
Grant will receive the award during a gala reception and dinner to honor the recipients April 26 at the AACC Annual Convention in Minneapolis, MN. More than 1,000 people representing community colleges from across the country and several other nations will attend.
A 1977 graduate of A-B Tech's Practical Nursing Education program, Grant has worked at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center in Chapel Hill for the past 21 years. As a nursing education clinician in burn outreach, he teaches emergency burn management to paramedics, EMTs and hospital personnel who transfer patients to the burn center. He also serves as an ambassador for the center, conducting fire and burn safety classes across the state, and serves on several national committees that explore fire and burn issues. Although Grant earned both bachelor's and master's degrees after leaving A-B Tech, he credits the community college for much of his success. "If it wasn't for A-B Tech, I wouldn't be where I am today," he says. "I was part of the first generation of my family to go to college. I came from a very poor family ... (and) in Swannanoa, usually you graduated from high school and went directly to work in the mill. I knew that was not what I wanted to do: I wanted to work in health care."
In January, Grant was shaking hands with President Bush in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for his selection as Nursing Spectrum magazine's 2002 Nurse of the Year when he learned about the deadly explosion of the West Pharmaceuticals Services plant in Kinston and told the President he needed to return to North Carolina to help care for the injured.
"It was telling that, amid the honor paid Grant at the White House, he was anxious to return to the Burn Center because the Kinston disaster also occurred that day," The Chapel Hill Herald said in an editorial afterward. "His uppermost thought, he said, was that he was needed."
Although Grant's list of awards is long, perhaps even more satisfying to him is the moniker he's earned for all his efforts. "He's so well known throughout the state and parts of the Southeast that he's known as 'Mr. Burn Center,'" says Fred Price, nurse manager at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center. "I don't think there's a firefighter in North Carolina who doesn't know him personally."
Grant's dedication extends well beyond his workday. After the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, he flew to New York City, where he volunteered in the burn center at New York Presbyterian Hospital at Cornell University, working 12-hour night shifts for 10 days straight. "I felt able to do something," he told The Chapel Hill News a few weeks after his return. "I see the fragility of life on a day-to-day basis, but something of this magnitude really brings it home."
Grant Teaches Burn Prevention to All Ages
Ernest Grant's list of accomplishments during his 21-year career with the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center is a long one. It includes:
- Piloting and implementing the National Fire Association's Learn Not To Burn curriculum in all public school fourth-grade classes across North Carolina. This program has prevented thousands of burn injuries, including a seven-year-old girl with Down syndrome who, after attending a Learn Not to Burn program in a rural North Carolina community, was able to lead her panicked mother, sisters, and brothers to safety through their smoke-filled house when an electrical fire broke out. Through Grant's efforts, the program has been implemented in 100 percent of all fourth grade classes in the state, making North Carolina the only state in the nation to achieve such success. He is currently implementing a pre-school version of the program across North Carolina.
- Successfully lobbying the state Legislature to revise a law that allowed the sale of fireworks to people of all ages. The law now restricts the sale to those ages 16 and older, and Grant continues to work on tighter restrictions, conducting two safety research projects that examine the impact of the legalization of fireworks on healthcare and fire suppression costs.
- Successfully lobbying the Legislature to pass a bill mandating that hot water heaters be preset to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and labeled with information about preventing scalds.
- Developing a long-term National Burn Awareness Campaign focusing each year on different burn prevention topics such as camping and recreational burns, gasoline injuries, and scald injuries.
Outstanding Alumni Award recipient Ernest Grant in his "Sparky the Firedog" costume, which he uses to educate kindergartners and firs-graders about fire safety.
Willing to go to nearly any length to get his message across, Grant pulls a dalmation costume over his 6-foot, 5.5-inch frame and becomes Sparky the Firedog, the mascot of the burn center, to teach fire safety to children in kindergarten and first grade. He reaches senior citizens through a program he helped design and implement called "Remembering When," a fall and fire prevention initiative that uses games and group work to teach safety.
"Ernest Grant lives, breathes, and thinks prevention every day," says Dennis Sherrod, associate director of the North Carolina Center for Nursing and Grant's nominator for Nursing Spectrum magazine's 2002 Nurse of the Year Award. "In the course of a single year's activities, he was directly involved in educating more than 8,000 citizens about burn prevention."
A Few of the Many Awards for Ernest Grant
- American Association of Community Colleges' 2004 Outstanding Alumni Award
- Nursing Spectrum magazine's 2002 Nurse of the Year
- American Nurses Association's 2002 Honorary Nurse Practice Award
- Governor's Award of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed on a state employee, 1998
- American Burn Association's Prevention Award, 1998
- The Great 100, a list of 100 outstanding nurses in North Carolina, 1997
- North Carolina Nurses Association's Medical-Surgical Nurse of the Year, 1994
