The Incentive to Gain an Education
Dr. Mary Kirk is president of Montgomery Community College (MCC) and the outgoing president of the North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents. She describes the city of Troy, North Carolina (where her college is based,) and Montgomery County overall as "beautiful, with farms, peach orchards and pottery makers at one end and millionaire homes at the other.” MCC thrives under Kirk's leadership. In her thirteen year term, full-time enrollments have grown from 600 to 1,050 students.
Small county, big challenges
But in spite of the pastoral surroundings, Montgomery County and MCC face some challenges. In 2005 the county lost its textile plant forcing locals to leave for work elsewhere. The county also attracts refugees and immigrants from Laos and Mexico and while the second and third generations speak English the first generation does not. Many locals therefore grew up seeing their parents not securing high school education and working in low wage jobs.
For these and other reasons Montgomery County has a 14.7% unemployment rate and 32% of adults over age 25 lack high school diplomas. “As long as businesses hire individuals without a high school diploma, there is less incentive to gain an education,” she says.
Education is the solution
Arming rural North Carolinians with a solid education is important to Kirk, especially as the state’s rural and urban divide becomes stronger. She hailed from small town America and believes her own training and excellent mentors led to her success. Prior to MCC, Kirk was interim president of Carteret Community College, (CCC) in Morehead City, N.C. where she climbed the ranks, starting off as an administrative assistant. For years she drove three hours each way to attend classes in order to secure her doctorate in education from North Carolina State University. "It was worth every hour I spent," she says.
Dr. Kirk’s answers to the challenges
- Kirk feels everyone who wants an education deserves one. One thing Kirk finds helpful in achieving this goal (in a small town) is actually meeting with business owners to urge them to hire new employees with high school diplomas. “I market the value of hiring educated employees who can better help their business grow.”
- Kirk works with her public affairs officer, Michelle Haywood, and her faculty to market their unique programming. Their two-year programs in forestry, pottery making, gunsmithing and taxidermy keep the college alive and enable locals to run their own businesses, she says. The gunsmithing program attracts students both nationally and internationally and constitutes 17% of their college enrollment.
- Kirk works with her community to generate scholarship funds so students are not saddled with college debt upon graduation. Separately, she recruits qualified, talented locals who moved away for their careers and then lost their jobs, to come back home as faculty. MCC students benefit from their professor’s outside experience and excellent skills.
- As outgoing president of the North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents, Kirk says presidents must always work for the good of the whole. "We grew together as a system; now we must stand together as a system," she says, in reference to state budget cuts and the proposed merger of local community colleges earlier this year.
Kirk is eligible to retire next year, but she's not so sure she’s ready. “I love this school, I love this community and I'm just going to fight my hardest to keep it as the best community college in the system," she says.