The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) awards over 50,000 credentials each year. Last academic term, the system distributed roughly 65,695 curriculum credentials. And the year before, over 71,000. This year marked the largest graduating class for several community colleges including Blue Ridge Community College, Cleveland Community College, and Robeson Community College to name a few.

Graduation season is, perhaps, one of the most exciting times on a college campus. It’s a shared moment and the culmination of hard work and dedication draped in regalia.

And behind each of those credentials awarded is a story.

The NCCCS enrolls more than 500,000 individuals every year in pathways that lead to everything from a high school diploma to short-term workforce credentials to university transfer degrees. And they serve some of the most diverse student populations.

You can read more of those student stories here. You can also find more graduation stories from around the state below.

In 2019, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order to establish a task force, consisting of parental guardians, educators, state and local government officials, and representatives of both UNC and community colleges networks. The task force, DRIVE, stands for Develop a Representative and Inclusive Vision for Education.

The DRIVE Task Force tour continues, having completed its second of four stops in Robeson County earlier this month. Across the state, the governor’s office, in conjunction with the Hunt Institute, is gathering stakeholders and exploring practices to recruit and retain educators of color.

The two-part tour stop consisted of an educator networking event at Robeson Community College, followed by a convening at UNC Pembroke to hear task force subcommittee reports and presentations about organizations and initiatives that are impacting the teacher of color pipeline.

Read Derick’s coverage here.

In the last decade, the town 30 minutes west of Asheville has persevered through a cyber attack, multiple flooding events, landslides, and a global pandemic. The world is literally shaking beneath them, as a 2.4 magnitude earthquake was recorded northwest of Canton on May 23.

And on Wednesday, May 24, another hit came.

Families came together at Sorrells Street Park and employees gathered on bridges overlooking the workplace that is part of the fabric of their town, listening as the mill whistle blew one last time.

The closing of the Canton mill, having employed over a century of community residents, is devastating, and no one would say otherwise. Through the floods, they were #HaywoodStrong, and with the announcement of the closing, they became Mill Town Strong.

Read more from Caroline and Cheyenne here.

And here is more on the Power of Papertown, an EdNC podcast by Cheyenne and Caroline.

We spent time in Canton in April, talking with leaders in town and educators in Haywood County Schools. We wanted to know how the mill impacts the town and what the closure will mean.

What we heard repeatedly is that the town is centered around the mill.

We learned that Canton is a community that rallies together.

While no one knows what to expect now that the mill is closing, folks are sure of one thing: Canton will remain #HaywoodStrong.

Listen to first podcast on Spotify here.

Now, on short notice and with few specifics, Haywood County’s nonprofit, government, and educational community, along with state agencies, have to band together to clean up a mess Pactiv could have averted months ago, while workers are forced to make major decisions that could have a substantial impact on both their health and their household budgets.

“Once again, without warning, we are dealing with another crisis,” said Zeb Smathers, Canton’s mayor. “In the same breath, Canton, Haywood County, and our partners across the state are going to do all that we can in next few months to make sure workers and their families receive the medical necessities they’re entitled to.”

Workers at Pactiv Evergreen’s century-old paper mill in Canton were informed on March 6 that in roughly three months, most of them would no longer have the jobs their families had come to depend on not only for good wages and retirement benefits, but also for health care coverage.

While another Pactiv facility in Waynesville will stay open for the foreseeable future — contrary to inaccurate reports in the Mountaineer — company officials said it will see substantial job cuts, which will leave many workers there in the same situation as those in Canton.

For most Pactiv employees in Haywood County, their final day at work will be June 9, but current insurance coverage by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois will continue as normal through June 30.

On July 1, employees will be switched over to an employer-sponsored COBRA plan.

You can read more from Cory Vaillancourt here. 

Here’s a few more graduation stories from around the state.

A story about Blue Ridge Community College Career and College Promise student Berit Raines, which you can read here.

Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College celebrates its approximately 400 2022-23 graduates.

Robeson Community College held a commencement ceremony for its Project SEARCH graduates. Project SEARCH is part of a grant secured by RCC in partnership with N.C. Vocational Rehabilitation Services and UNC Southeastern to serve students with intellectual or physical disabilities. 

Fayetteville Technical Community College students graduated last month – and many are headed to four-year universities. Read more here.

Piedmont Community College’s Class of 2023 was encouraged to nurture their dreams and give back to the community during keynote address by North Carolina State Rep. Ray Jeffers, a Person County native. 

Brothers graduated from South Piedmont Community College and now serve with Union County law enforcement agencies.

Rockingham Community College conferred 217 credentials upon 207 students during the Spring 2023 commencement on May 12.

Over 700 graduates were recognized during Mitchell Community College’s commencement. 

And in non-graduation news:

Robeson Community College is expanding to Maxton. See the press release here. 

An esports athlete at Guilford Technical Community College accepted a scholarship to four-year university. 

Dr. Janet Spriggs, president of Forsyth Technical Community College, was chosen for the YWCA Women of Vision Education Trailblazer award. 

South Piedmont Community College provides advanced training to state’s law enforcement personnel, according to a release from the school.

Dr. Falecia D. Wiliams, president of Prince George Community College in Maryland, was announced as the 2023 Dallas Herring Lecture speaker. The Dallas Herring Lecture will take place Nov. 14. 

Finally, here’s an update from the Belk Center’s Dr. Monique Colclough about the Teaching & Learning Hubs:

“Our Teaching & Learning work is so integral to our commitment to convening leaders, creating tools, and catalyzing change and has shown to have a strong impact in our inaugural year. This week we are convening our Teaching & Learning Hub Co-Directors, stakeholders and collaboration partners (ATD, the NCCC System Office and the Student Success Center) as we reflect on our work to date, engage in data analysis with our evaluation partners DVP-Praxis, and establish plans for the next academic year. The Hubs provide creative faculty and staff educators with spaces to take risks, innovate, and put their students at the center of their classroom work.” 

Community college enrollment, buoyed by younger students and fresh interest in job-related programs, rose this spring for the first time in more than a decade, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

You can read more about the numbers, the national landscape, and a deeper dive from Axios here. In case you missed it, here’s EdNC’s piece on community college enrollment in North Carolina from April.