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.”
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.”
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.”
The Sturgeon in the Classroom program is facilitated in Southeast Michigan by Sturgeon for Tomorrow, a nonprofit group that works to preserve and protect the future of lake sturgeon in the Huron-Erie corridor. Plans to develop the program for SC4 came out of a collaboration between the group’s St. Clair-Detroit River chapter and another nonprofit organization, Friends of the St. Clair River, which works to protect the St. Clair Watershed and educate the public about its importance.
The Experience Center’s sturgeon exhibit will provide a living complement to the unique items in the college’s Dr. Bassam H. Nasr Natural Science Museum, which is home the largest collection of fossil artifacts in the Michigan thumb region. Sturgeon fossils appear in rocks dating from 66 to 100 million years ago, meaning the fish was a contemporary of later dinosaurs like the Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus.
