VGCC nominates student for statewide award
Vance-Granville Community College recently nominated Adriele Andre of Creedmoor, a student in the college’s Early Childhood Associate program, for the North Carolina Community College System’s Dallas Herring Achievement Award. That award was established by the system in 2010 to honor the late Dr. Dallas Herring, the longtime State Board of Education chairman and one of the state’s earliest advocates of community colleges. Each year, the award recognizes a current or former community college student who best embodies Herring’s philosophy of “taking people where they are and carrying them as far as they can go.”
Andre (pictured above) is originally from Brazil and her native language is Portuguese. Learning to become proficient in English had been a challenge for her ever since she had moved to the United States in 2006, but she decided in 2009 to face a new challenge by enrolling at VGCC. Initially, she was attracted to VGCC because it was conveniently located near where she lived. “I later came to realize that VGCC was also a great choice because of its willingness to help me become a successful student,” Andre said. After arriving at VGCC, her placement tests showed that she needed to work on both her math and English skills. “When I finally had the courage to start my first semester at VGCC, I focused on my English,” Andre recalled. “It was not an easy task, but I had a very patient instructor. I asked many questions, though for most of my classmates, the questions did not make sense. My instructor understood the difficulties that I faced and helped me through it. I was shy and I did not want to talk in class because I could not pronounce many words in English perfectly. At VGCC, I have had wonderful instructors that have allowed me to be who I am, a foreigner, without treating me differently.” Andre was also intimidated by her math classes, as she had always felt that she was not good at even basic math. “My math instructor explained the subject so well that for the first time in my life I had an ‘A’ in math,” Andre said. “This gave me confidence in this class and also in myself that I could finally learn math. Now I have received good grades in all the math classes I have taken here at VGCC.”
Andre credits her earliest VGCC instructors with helping her to understand that she could “be successful in any class.” Since then, she has honed her academic skills, completed 40 hours towards her Associate in Applied Science degree and has maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA. Andre concludes, “Vance-Granville Community College has been guiding me to succeed in my goal to become a fine early childhood educator.”
