Haywood Early College was just named an Apple Distinguished School. In addition, the school’s proficiency rate for last year came in at 98.7% during a school year impacted by COVID. My colleague Mebane Rash has embedded with the school over the last year and provided us with a feature looking at how they hit these marks.

Mebane spent a significant amount of time with Principal Lori Fox, and this passage particularly stood out to me regarding her approach:

When she thinks about last year, Fox said, “We can’t lower expectations, so it required a special combination of loving people and cultivating hope along with hard work and fortitude and resilience.”

This school year, everyone is back on campus, and there is no remote option. But as students are quarantined, they will participate just as they did before, synchronously through Google Classrooms. She doesn’t want students missing seat time.

Fox hearkens Winston Churchill and his quote “never let a good crisis go to waste,” commenting, “I can’t say this is a good crisis, but I don’t think we’re letting it go to waste.”

For the remainder of Mebane’s piece, click here.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss. Knauss died during the recent attack on the Kabul airport. According to Mark Sorrells of Fayetteville Tech, Knauss enrolled in FTCC for the fall semester in the Associate in General Education program of study. He was deployed at the start of the semester. In addition, his wife Alena Knauss graduated from FTCC in the spring of 2021.

This spotlight from ABC11 shares more of Knauss’ story. Alena told the outlet, “He was right in the field of work he wanted to be in, and if he knew the outcome, he would do it again.”

The NC Community College System Office is looking for an Adult Learner Specialist. The posting may be found here. As a reminder, you may find other jobs across the system on the system’s job board.

A number of statewide events are coming up that you may be interested in attending, including:

• The myFutureNC Opportunity Youth Network webinar will be held on September 28
• RTI’s Early College Network will host an Early College 101 workshop on October 5
• The NCWorks Virtual Partnership Conference will be held October 12-22

As always, feel free to let us know about upcoming events that might be of interest to our readers.

Cleveland Community College’s new drone program was featured by the local news.

Cape Fear Community College announced a $400,000 gift from a local donor to support nursing students with two new programs — the Sheila M. Saklad Accelerated Nursing Fellowship and the Upward Mobility RN Scholarship.

WHQR, the local NPR affiliate, has a three-part series on Cape Fear CC that they have just released. Per WHQR: “In the first of three parts: a look at the history of the current administration and the fallout from WECT’s 2020 reporting on the college climate.” For the first part in the series, click here.

Central Carolina Community College announced a new grant from the RPM Foundation to support scholarships in automotive restoration.

Craven Community College’s plans for their Volt Building are changing after a recent vote by the New Bern Board of Aldermen. For the full story, click here.

Edgecombe Community College has a new mascot: the eagle.

Halifax Community College hosted Founders Day this week – including a keynote address from Congressman G.K. Butterfield and a ribbon cutting for their new Advanced Manufacturing & Corporate Training Center.

Pitt CC’s Bulldog Promise Scholarship is featured in the local news. The Bulldog Promise is serving 50 members of Pitt CC’s 2021 graduating class this fall — providing them with a tuition free two-year education.

Richmond Community College is now offering a bonus for employees who receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

From a recent Wake Tech press release: “Due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Wake Technical Community College will require employees to submit results of weekly testing or voluntarily submit proof of vaccination.”

The Counter is out with a look at new research on food insecurity on college campuses and the impact on attainment: “Public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that students who lacked consistent access to enough food were 43 percent less likely to graduate than their food-secure peers, and 61 percent less likely to get an advanced degree, like a master’s or doctorate, in the years that followed.”

A study from University of North Carolina’s School of Law and UnidosUS, a Latinx civil rights organization, “argues that Latinx students disproportionately fear taking on student loan debt and face transportation challenges, which both pose formidable obstacles to completing college.”

A new piece from the Wall Street Journal looks at the data behind enrollment declines — particularly the growing gap in enrollment between men and women: “At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.”

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