VaHigherEd.com

Diane Belcher is one of many New River Community College  students who will graduate this May and transfer to Virginia Tech.

Except Diane built a house, married, raised a family and served 10 years on the Floyd County Board of Supervisors before she finally got her chance to go back to school.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t tell you what it’s meant to me,” she says of her experience at New River, where she will earn a human services degree that allows her to achieve her dream of helping others.

Without New River, she’d still be wishing she had received a college degree. Without New River’s internship program, she wouldn’t be working at Virginia Tech in the intergenerational lab that combines elder care with child care in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Diane started college at a business college in the 1980s after high school, but left to concentrate on her job helping run a bed-and-breakfast. Now, she brings so much more experience with her when she sits in a class.  “I’m here because I want to be,” she says.  “I soak it all in.”

Her 4.0 grade-point-average sets an example for her children in 7th and 8th grade — and they will be there to see Mom get her diploma.  “It’s hard to ask your kids to get good grades if you don’t do it yourself,” she says.

At 42, she’s amazed at the diversity of students community colleges serve.  In Richmond this week visiting the General Assembly, she tells legislators she sits in class with ”students 20 years older than me — and students 20 years younger than me.”

She gestures to her fellow students as examples of the latter. Also visiting with New River’s delegation are two homeschooled students attending college for the first time — and loving it — and a recent high school graduate who could have picked a prestigious four year school, but didn’t want to be “just a number.”

Visiting from Germanna Community College is a naturalized citizen from Haiti studying to be a male nurse. “Without community college, I could not be a success,” says Robinson Exume. 

Diane Belcher enjoys her position as an older adviser and motivator for the younger students. There’s a place for all of us, she says. To change the world, she says, “it takes us all.”

Posted by Susan Hayden