A week of mannequins, burn buildings, livermush, and inspiring stories

This week, I put over 600 miles on my car, crisscrossing eastern North Carolina from Elizabeth City to Kinston. The reason? EducationNC’s community college blitz.

When we found out we received a grant from the John M Belk Endowment in June to expand our coverage to community colleges, our CEO and Executive Director Mebane Rash had a crazy idea — what if we could visit all 58 community colleges in one week? Two months and countless phone calls and emails later, our staff hit the road, visiting community colleges from Tri-County Community College in Murphy to Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington. Mebane kicked off the blitz a week ago at Halifax Community College, we visited 54 community colleges this week, and we will visit the last three next week to make it 58.

Along the way, we’ve met students, faculty, staff, presidents, business owners, and others involved with the community college system. We’ve heard success stories, and we’ve heard failures. We’ve heard challenges and opportunities. We’ve heard what keeps our community college presidents up at night, and why they continue to do this work day in and day out.

We’ve seen burn buildings, or buildings that are intentionally set on fire so firefighters can practice, mannequin simulators, or mannequins that can move and mimic symptoms so nurses can practice, and a violin-making class where students play while they build. We’ve seen what makes each college unique as well as the commonalities they all share.

Throughout the next few months, we will publish the stories of each community college and reflect on what we’ve learned and where we can dig deeper. We hope you will engage with us to learn about each community college throughout the next months. In the meantime, see some of the highlights below and visit the hashtag #Awake58 on Twitter to view more.

Weekly Insight Higher Education