Briggs Tells Graduates They're Well Prepared
CLOSE TO HOME - Kennon Briggs of the North Carolina Community College System tells the audience at A-B Tech's summer commencement ceremony how a community college helped his own mother achieve success.
When Kennon Briggs looked for a community college success story to share with students at A-B Tech's summer commencement ceremony Aug. 6, he didn't have to go any farther than his own family.
Briggs, Vice President for Business and Finance for the North Carolina Community College System, told the audience in Thomas Wolfe Auditorium that his mother left a farm in Harnett County at 17 years old, without a high school diploma, to marry a man five years her senior. Her first son was born when she was 18, and a second came along 12 years later.
The younger child was only 2, the older, 14, when she became a single parent as the result of divorce. Working full time to support her family, she earned a GED from Vance-Granville Community College and took enough courses over the next 10 years to get an associate's degree. Eventually, she earned a baccalaureate degree and became a regional director for the North Carolina Lung Association.
"She could not have attained success, supported her children, and contributed to the wellness of the people of North Carolina without the Community College System, and the thousands of things that helped her along the way," Briggs said.
Pointing to a quote by John Dewey - "Education is the systematic, purposeful reconstruction of experiences," Briggs told the graduates that many of them already have a lifetime of experiences. "You have also been prepared by A-B Tech for even greater experiences in life yet to be lived," he said.
About 220 students were candidates for degrees and diplomas at the college's second commencement ceremony of the year. The event also included the presentation of the Staff Member of the Year Award to Invitational Education Coordinator/Instructor Deborah Lonon.
Fire Protection Student Graduates - 29 Years After He Began
A FAMILY AFFAIR - Father and daughter graduates Tom Eggers and Linda Myers celebrate during A-B Tech's summer commencement ceremony.
Four jobs, six children, two colleges, and nearly 29 years after he started work on his associate's degree, Tom Eggers graduated.
Eggers enrolled at Camden County Community College in Blackwood, NJ, more than a quarter of a century ago, but never finished despite being only a few credits shy. But on Aug. 6, the 56-year-old deputy fire marshal for the Asheville Fire Department not only crossed the stage of Thomas Wolfe Auditorium to receive a degree in Fire Protection Technology, he returned to his seat in time to see one of his daughters, Linda Myers, cross the same stage moments later to get a degree in accounting.
Eggers' interest in fire protection goes back more than 40 years, when he belonged to a Boy Scout troop that served as the junior fire brigade for Fellowship Fire Company No. 2 in the Mt. Laurel Township Fire Department in Mt. Laurel, NJ. Thirteen years later, he was selling and designing fire trucks and serving as deputy chief of that same fire company when his wife handed him a magazine article about the Fire Protection Technology program at Camden County Community College.
"My first class started Sept. 9, 1975, three months after we were married," he recalls. "It was the ideal curriculum for me because it was the career path I wanted to follow."
Eggers planned to complete the two-year program at Camden then transfer to the University of Maryland for a bachelor's degree, but got sidetracked when he had only a few classes left. "You get married, you start a family, jobs develop, and money gets to be an issue," he said.
A job in heavy-duty truck equipment sales moved the young family to Charlotte in 1981, and a similar job brought them to Fletcher in 1987, but Eggers never lost his desire to work in fire protection. "The first thing I did when we moved into Fletcher was join the Fletcher Volunteer Fire Department," he said. "The moving company had barely left the driveway until I was back in a fire department."
A job as a fire inspector for Henderson County followed, and, in 1996, he joined the Asheville Fire Department. Yet even though he was finally working in the field he loved, Eggers still longed to complete his degree.
"It was the urge to finish something that I had started," he explained. "I'm a typical man - I'll get something started and I'll walk away from it. But eventually, I'll get back to it and finish it. I had basically written this off that I would never be able to finish because there are only a few locations within North Carolina to complete this kind of degree.
Then he met Clint Smoke, chair of A-B Tech's Fire Protection Technology program, and discovered one of those places was close to home. He enrolled at A-B Tech in the fall of 2000, taking a class or two at a time "as the job and money and life situations allowed."
And on Aug. 6, Eggers finally realized his 29-year dream - a dream made all the sweeter by the fact that he was able to share it with his daughter, Linda, who completed requirements for her degree last fall but walked across the stage during the same ceremony as her dad.
And even though he finally finished his degree, Eggers says he's not through with A-B Tech. In fact, he expects to be on campus regularly in his role as deputy fire marshal. "My responsibility is to inspect (the college) on a timely basis," he said with a laugh.
Local Economic Forcast Brightens
A-B Tech President K. Ray Bailey and UNCA Chancellor Jim Mullen sign an agreement on a $600,000 computational sciences initiative that officials predict will lead to more accurate weather forecasts, more jobs, and higher wages for Western North Carolina. Officially known as "Scientific Innovations in Numerical Modeling, Digital Visualization, and High-Speed Connectivity in WNC," the initiative will allow A-B Tech and UNCA to expand their computational sciences curricula and develop applications related to environmental sciences that could bring new industries and start-up companies to the region. The partnership takes advantage of A-B Tech's new digital medial program and creates transfer opportunities for students who complete a two-year degree in computer technologies here and want to transfer to earn a four-year degree through UNCA's computer science program.