Category: Alumni

Free College Day: Call for instructors and speakers

St. Clair County Community College will host its 17th annual Free College Day Saturday, March 16, 2019, and is seeking instructors and speakers for the event.

This college-wide community outreach program offers a day of free, hour-long classes between 9 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. for learners of all ages. Last year, community members filled close to 2,000 seats in 107 classes.

Faculty and staff members, as well as community members interested in teaching classes that highlight their area of expertise, are welcome to sign up to teach. Please contact Debbie Sta Cruz at (810) 989-5760 or dstacruz@sc4.edu with questions or to sign up today.

For the Wiltons, Success at Blue Water Middle College Academy Runs in the Family

The Blue Water Middle College Academy gave Sharon Wilton’s two daughters a jump on the game with free associate degrees thanks to the partnership between the St. Clair County Regional Educational Service Agency, area school districts and St. Clair County Community College.

Wilton, March of Dimes development manager, said she is amazed at the paths her daughters, Emily and Meghan, have taken since earning degrees from the Middle College, which gives students an opportunity to earn a free associate degree by attending school an extra year.

“All the professors were very welcoming to the Middle College students,” she said. “They helped prepare students for college at a young age, gave them confidence to complete college-level work and provided support along the way.”

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Emily, 22, enrolled in the Middle College as a junior in 2012 while attending Port Huron Northern High School. She was president of SC4’s Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society her senior year and graduated with honors in 2015 with a liberal arts degree in addition to earning her high school diploma – all at no cost to her and her family.

She went on to Northwood University in Midland, Michigan, taking accelerated courses to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration. She was Northwood’s student government president, awarded the school’s prestigious Arthur E. Turner Award and inducted into its Gallery of Distinction.

Emily now works at the Midland Brewing Co. on a consulting project. She and Northwood classmate Sydnie Michael have started a homemade pasta business, Pastamico, and sell at the Midland Farmers Market and in the Bay City-Saginaw area.

Wilton said both Emily and Meghan were captains of Northern’s color guard, held jobs and taught dance classes while attending the Middle College.

“Middle College requires that students work hard because they have classes at the high school and college until their 13th year,” she said. “But they definitely can still work or participate in sports at the same time.”

IMG_1426 (1)Meghan, 19, also a Northern BWMCA high school student, finished Middle College in May. After transferring 64 credits, Meghan is attending Grand Valley State University for hospitality and tourism management, working part time and still helping with color guard.

Wilton herself earned an associate degree from SC4 in 1996 and received her bachelor’s from Baker College and master’s from its Center for Graduate Studies.

“I do have parents ask me if I would recommend Middle College, and I definitely do,” she said. “I think it’s a wonderful program. I am very proud of both of them and grateful they had this opportunity in St. Clair County.”

SC4 president puts the emphasis on ‘community’ with new Experience Center

St. Clair County Community College President Dr. Deborah Snyder began in her role in 2016 focused on enhancing the student experience and re-establishing the college as an integral community partner.

That’s why just four months into her term the visionary alumna, who had already launched numerous other initiatives, boarded a bus with SC4 faculty and staff members to visit the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.

“I had the idea then to connect Ann Arbor specialists and resources with college experts to bring hands-on STEAM learning opportunities to our current and future students in the Blue Water Area,” Dr. Snyder says. “That kind of broader partnership, to my knowledge, has not existed in a community college setting in Michigan, so I’m sure it was a little ‘outside of the box’ initially for some people.”

Only two years later, Dr. Snyder’s vision has become a reality.

Read more from The Keel’s feature story on the Experience Center.

SC4 grads make a difference for MediLodge

John Dillon has always been fascinated by the medical field. He started his career working as a certified nurse aid at MediLodge, a skilled nursing facility with 35 locations in Michigan. In 2004, he earned his associate degree in nursing at St. Clair County Community College. Now he works as a registered nurse for MediLodge of Port Huron.

“I chose nursing because the medical field always interested me,” Dillon said. For him, choosing SC4 was the obvious choice. “The instructors are knowledgeable and the curriculum is at cutting edge of the field.”

Dillon is in good company at his workplace. In fact, 3 out of 4 nurses at MediLodge locations in St. Clair County (Port Huron, St. Clair and Yale) received their training from SC4.

“It’s a pretty cool statistic and a great reflection of how our facilities rely on the SC4 nursing program,” said Cody Hitchcock, regional human resources director for MediLodge.

And it’s not just St. Clair County — 76 percent of nurses from MediLodge of Richmond, 64 percent of nurses from MediLodge of Cass City and 33 percent of nurses from MediLodge of Sterling Heights received their degrees from SC4.

Why do so many people choose the SC4 nursing program? For Dillon, it was hard to narrow down the answer.

“Everything,” he said. “The best part of the nursing program at SC4 is everything.”