VGCC paved way for student’s international education
This month, former Vance-Granville Community College student and Warren County native Uriah “Uri” Ferruccio heads off to China as part of a J. William Fulbright Scholarship. Ferruccio (pictured above; photo courtesy The Warren Record) can trace the success he has had in education back to his parents and his time at VGCC.
Growing up in Afton, Uri was home-schooled by his mother, Deborah Ferruccio, who currently teaches English part-time at VGCC’s Warren County Campus. In fact, the Ferruccios are quite a VGCC family, since his father, Kenneth Ferruccio, has taught English at the college full-time since 1990 and part-time in the 1970s-1980s. Uri’s sister, Kyra, and her husband, Geo, also attended VGCC before completing their education at UNC-Wilmington, where both graduated summa cum laude in 2008.
Before entering the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ferruccio attended VGCC in 2001 and 2002 when he was 16 and 17 years old, as part of the dual enrollment program. He is among many home-schooled teenagers in the area who have found that VGCC courses can enhance their high-school education. Ferruccio’s College Transfer courses included sociology, science and English. “It was important for me to go to VGCC before transferring to Chapel Hill,” Ferruccio said. “Because I was home-schooled, Vance-Granville was my first experience with a traditional classroom. My instructors were very friendly and passionate about their subjects.”
Ferruccio transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill as a freshman, but almost all of his VGCC credits were accepted, meaning that he had accumulated almost a whole year’s worth of college education. That came in handy, because it freed up time for Ferruccio to take a wide variety of courses at UNC. He graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Asian Studies. Ferruccio was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest college honorary society, in part because of the variety of courses he had successfully completed. “Vance-Granville was the reason I had the luxury to do that,” he recalled. “I had the freedom to take enjoyable courses at UNC and not have to worry about finishing on time. Looking back, my time at Vance-Granville was invaluable, and it was great preparation for UNC.” Ferruccio encourages all high school students to take advantage of the opportunity to take VGCC courses, which he says typically transfer with ease.
Experiences at UNC piqued his curiosity about the world, especially China and the Middle East. Ferruccio has studied in China, Taiwan, India and Jordan. He has been awarded several fellowships through the Fulbright Program, the international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Since graduating, Ferruccio has also worked in New York City and Washington, D.C., including at the Center for U.S. Global Engagement, where he had the chance to meet luminaries such as Bill Gates and Colin Powell. His newest scholarship will allow him to study the Mandarin Chinese language and Chinese policy toward the Middle East, over a period of 14 months, first at Harbin in northern China and then at Peking University in Beijing.
