Whether it’s the first step or the first step back on a college campus, Georgia Highlands College (GHC) is working to ensure adult learners have all the tools and flexibility they need to earn a college degree.

Adult learners are students who have typically been out of high school for five years or longer and may have a family and/or work full time.

GHC has joined the Adult Learning Consortium from Complete College Georgia to help students like this finish a college degree.

A virtual event (via Facebook Live), titled the Adult Learner Open House will be held on Thursday, April 1, at 7 PM. You can register for the event online.

This event will provide adult learners with instructions on how to get back in school and finish their degree, apply for financial aid, review options for paying for college and learning how to engage in online learning.

“Financial issues, job schedule changes or increased responsibilities at work, family issues, childcare issues and sickness of an individual or their family member are common reasons for students to pause and stop working toward their degree,” GHC Coordinator for Veteran Affairs Amy Wise said. “This event will help those students discover what options they have available to start or re-enroll at GHC and while emphasizing the overall importance of earning a college degree.”

Currently, several University System of Georgia institutions form the Adult Learning Consortium. This consortium is designed to assist in improving adult learner-focused services, programs and outreach to Georgia adult learners who are interested in completing college.

You can register for the virtual information event online now. Additional sessions will be held on June 1 and July 1.

Recently, Chinelo Nwokike received a surprise phone call from Georgia Highlands College (GHC) President Don Green. She had been chosen as the Board of Regents Academic Day representative for GHC.

Her perfect 4.0 GPA and a nomination by her mentor and advisor, Jon Hershey, who serves as dean for the School of Humanities, led to her selection.

“I was shocked, excited, nervous and humbled all at the same time,” Nwokike said. “I had to process all these emotions during the phone call with the president because I wasn’t even aware that I was nominated.”

Nwokike was born in Nigeria as the first of five children. She is fluent in two languages, including her native language, Igbo, as well as English. She works as a certified nursing assistant primarily with children with disabilities through a home health agency.

She is currently also enrolled in the nursing program at GHC.

Outside of college and work, Nwokike enjoys cooking and spending time with her husband and their two children, a boy and a girl. When not studying or working, Nwokike likes having fun with her family.

Academic Recognition Day began over 30 years ago as a celebration of Georgia students’ academic achievement. The honorees receive a resolution from the Georgia House of Representatives along with a letter of commendation from USG Chancellor Steve Wrigley.

Each of the system’s institutions select a student with a 4.0 GPA who also reflects the system’s best qualities: “They aim to strive for excellence and have the ability to share knowledge in various areas of expertise.”

“Now that I am a student of GHC, I am glad I heeded my husband’s advice to enroll because the level of attentiveness I have received from my instructors is second to none,” Nwokike said. “One thing about me is I am very resilient and a determined person. I learned these attributes from my parents. With nursing being my passion, it only came natural to me to strive to see that it comes to fruition.”

Nwokike resides in Smyrna and attends classes at both the Marietta and Cartersville sites. She will be recognized during a future Board of Regents meeting.

For Georgia Highlands College (GHC) student Camille Brown, adapting to change, staying focused on goals and putting in hard work to succeed are not the only attributes of a successful college student – you also have to have some fun.

Brown utilized all of these elements to create a TikTok video that won a recent TikTok Thursday challenge for the Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) Awareness Week. Brown serves as vice president of social media for GHC’s chapter, Alpha Psi Omicron. Inspired by a fellow classmate’s passion for PTK, Brown brought metaphors of hard work and personal growth to the small screen accompanied by the music of Michael Jackson.

“I knew that I wanted to show myself multi-tasking and working towards my goals because Phi Theta Kappa is all about perseverance, hard work and the drive to be excellent,” Brown said. “I’ve always loved Michael Jackson, so eventually I had the idea of using his song ‘Workin’ Day and Night’ to harness the ultimate message of this honor society. Next thing you know, I found a sparkly glove and I was ready to groove while paying homage to him.”

In the video Brown showcases a book from her World History class titled “The Silk Roads: A Brief History With Documents” and a book from her World Literature class titled “The Norton Anthology: World Literature.”

“My World Literature book is pretty thick, so in showing it, I was illustrating that Phi Theta Kappa members are leaders who don’t take shortcuts,” Brown said. “When I was highlighting the books, I was showing that being a part of this honor society requires one to pay attention to detail and to be organized. When I was dancing in the video, I was showing that Phi Theta Kappa may be a lot of hard work, but it is also a lot of fun.”

The video also features Brown wearing a GHC sweatshirt to represent her daily life as a college student and PTK member and drinking coffee from a Batman mug to show being a PTK member and officer is a daily job.

“I have to work day and night to maintain my grades and to maintain the chapter’s page,” she said. “Batman is my favorite superhero so drinking from the mug as I work brings in something that entertains me as I work towards accomplishing goals.”

The video concludes with Brown taking a sigh of relief.

“It took me about two hours to produce the video just because I wanted to make sure that the different scenes flowed coherently, and the music was timed perfectly with my dance moves and accomplished tasks,” she said. “In other words, I wanted to make sure that the video was edited to the best of its ability so that it could conceptualize the work ethics of PTK members.”

Camille Brown is a Business Administration major who resides in Douglasville and currently attends classes online.

Phi Theta Kappa is the international honor society for two-year colleges. Students who achieve a 3.50 cumulative GPA with at least 12 credit hours at Georgia Highlands College are invited to join. The GHC chapter is Alpha Psi Omicron and was chartered in January 1994.

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Georgia Highlands College graduates now have a way to take and use a certified electronic diploma wherever they need it. In addition to receiving a printed version of their diploma, graduates now have the option to receive a duplicate CeDiploma.

A CeDiploma is an official, secure and verifiable PDF version of a diploma that allows for unlimited sharing with family, friends, employers and social media, as well as proof of education with only the important details.

Each credential provides a unique 12-digit Certified Electronic Document Identifier called a CeDiD. The CeDiD allows for instant proof of a graduate’s accomplishment using Validation Services, which can be used a number of ways, including enhancing a resume with a CeDiD and validation URL to a CeDiploma.

Registrar Ed Rosser said the CeDiploma is a win-win for students, employers and the college.

“As advancement in technology grows, GHC works to stay competitive with the new ways of delivering services to our students that give them an advantage in the job market,” Rosser said. “A company can use the student’s CeDiD code and validate the student’s degree in seconds on the link on our website.”

GHC has partnered with Paradigm to offer this new option for graduates.

Benefits of a CeDiploma include:

• Exact Duplicate – A CeCredential is always an exact duplicate of the paper credential, leading to greater confidence in the marketplace.
• Unique Identifier – A CeCredential always has a unique serial number that can be shared and validated without providing the actual digital credential.
• TruSeal – The seal that is securely printed on a paper diploma is woven into the very fabric of a CeCredential.
• Visual Cues – Borrowed from the banking industry, a CeCredential contains immediate visual cues to provide visual confidence in the credential.
• Real-time Validation – The CeCredential is the only digital credential that allows real-time validation through the issuing institution’s website.
• And more

Please visit GHC’s commencement page at highlands.edu for more information on the new CeDiploma.

Daniel Belisle’s recent internship led to work in a national competition. And for Belisle, it was an “incredibly fulfilling” opportunity to take his classroom knowledge and “apply it to a project that was viewed on a national level.”

Belisle is a Georgia Highlands College (GHC) student enrolled in the Bachelor of Business Administration’s Logistics and Supply Chain Management program, and he worked as an intern with a local Cartersville startup and community transportation service called URways.

He was given the opportunity to apply the skills he has learned in the classroom to a real-world setting through the internship.

“I worked on a large variety of tasks throughout the internship, but there were several things I did that stood out,” Belisle said. “The first project that I worked on was helping design a PowerPoint for a national innovation competition that URways was set to participate in which contained all of the important information that investors or other interested parties needed to know about URways’ unique concept.”

For Belisle, helping to craft a presentation for the 2020 Shared Mobility Start-Up Spotlight competition was the most rewarding aspect of the internship.

“It was the first time that I had a project of that significance put under my control,” Belisle said. “It was incredibly fulfilling to take the knowledge that I have acquired through school and apply it to a project that was viewed on a national level. I also have gained an incredible amount of comfort and familiarity in communicating in a professional setting.”

He said his work with URways helped him to gain perspective on the depth of projects he will face in the workforce, such as ongoing communication with local government and business leaders.

URways founder and owner Claudia Laughridge explained that URways was one of nine top finalists invited to compete in the National Shared Mobility 2020 Start-Up Spotlight competition, in which startup companies worked to create solutions to solve transportation problems.

Laughridge said Belisle was instrumental in creating the skeleton for the PowerPoint, which was then curated and finalized by Deanna Berry, chief operating officer of McWhorter Capital and presented in competition by Claudia Laughridge.

“Daniel built the PowerPoint presentation content as well as initial structure of the competition presentation,” Laughridge said. “URways competed with companies inventing battery charging stations, sensors designed to communicate with vehicles objects are in the road, specialized insurance for mobility companies providing multiple vehicles uses such as shared rides rentals, scooters and the ability to shift coverage based on usage, scooter docking stations and alternative shared ride concepts to acknowledge finalists.”

Belisle lives in Cartersville and attends classes on the Cartersville site. He is a member of the Logistics and Supply Chain Management Association and serves as the organization’s Student Government Association liaison.

Please visit highlands.edu for more information about GHC. Please visit lifechangingrides.com to learn more about URways.

Georgia Highlands College’s (GHC) faculty have been hard at work applying for and implementing a number of Affordable Learning Georgia Grants with the goal of ensuring that every GHC student has access to a quality, affordable college education.

To date, over half a million in grants has been awarded to GHC faculty and has been used to directly benefit thousands of students.

Georgia Highlands College was listed in a press release by OpenStax, a publisher based at Rice University, as a top college in Georgia and as one of the top 10 colleges in the nation that served the most students with the adoption of free college textbooks in the 2017-2018 school year.

The University of Georgia and GHC were the only institutions in Georgia to make the list.

GHC’s faculty have been working since fall 2015 to expand Open Education Resources (OER) courses each semester. OER course conversions are aided by the University System of Georgia’s Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) initiative which promotes student success by providing cost-free alternatives to expensive textbooks.

Currently, GHC faculty have received 46 grants from ALG, but the effort to do more is still going strong. GHC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) has recently launched a LibGuide to support GHC instructors interested in applying for ALG grants.

“Navigating the process for an ALG grant can be challenging, especially since it differs from school to school based on institutional requirements,” Librarian Susanna Smith said. “This guide brings together all our local policies as well as basic FAQs and a list of all GHC open educational resources.”

Rachel Rupprecht, an instructional designer for CETL, said many GHC faculty and students know about the benefits of ALG grants.

“ALG grants are a great asset for both GHC faculty and students,” Rupprecht said. “They provide financial support for faculty to develop low- and no-cost alternatives to expensive textbooks. Those alternatives make a college education even more affordable for GHC students, which helps set them up for success.”

The online ALG information site, affordablelearninggeorgia.org, gives details on the grants, how to apply, how to use the grants effectively and more.

The FIRST LEGO League Challenge returns to Georgia Highlands College virtually this Friday (March 5) as teams of children ages 9-14 are challenged to think like scientists and engineers while utilizing technology and mathematics.

GHC’s School of STEM is hosting the virtual event via Zoom where participants will build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO technology in order to solve a set of missions in the Robot Game.

Thanks to the generous support of the Bartow County School System (BCSS), the number of teams has doubled since last year’s competition. BCSS provided funding for the start-up of nearly 10 new teams, including registration fees, purchase of a robot and accessory kit, construction of game table and more.

The FIRST LEGO theme this year is “RePLAY,” and a full description of the tournament and theme can be viewed here.

Award categories include Robot Game, Robot Design, Innovation Project, Core Values, Rising Star and Grand Champion.

PICTURE: Students participating in a previous on-site FIRST LEGO competition. The 2021 competition will be held virtually.

The annual Highlands Writers Conference (HWC) organized by Georgia Highlands College (GHC) faculty and staff makes a virtual return this year. The event takes place on Feb. 27 and is free and open to the public.

Anyone interested in joining should register early. There is no deadline for registration, but each workshop will only hold 20 participants at a time.

Visit hwc.highlands.edu to register for the free event and even receive a free HWC shirt by mail.

“The HWC is unique in that it offers very close encounters with nationally recognized professional writers across a wide range of genres,” Division Chair for School of Humanities Jessica Lindberg said. “Attendees of the HWC speak highly of how down-to-earth our conference is and how casual and open it is to all levels of writers. We hope all attendees will feel encouraged to keep working on their dream projects and even start new ones after hanging out with our authors.”

Writers to be featured at this year’s conference include Kelly DeLong, Clark Atlanta University instructor and author of the novel “The Poor Sucker” and the non-fiction book “The Freshman Year at an HBCU.” In addition, the event will feature Brian Oliu and Jason McCall.

“Brian Oliu and Jason McCall write in many different forms and across a wide range of subjects, including basketball, wrestling, video games and donuts,” Lindberg said. “We are excited to hear what tips they can provide on writing for a very contemporary audience on untraditional subjects. We are also very excited to host one of our own writers, Mackleen Desravines. Mackleen’s 2018 directorial debut, the movie ‘Smoke,’ is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.”

Student group Brother 2 Brother will host the workshop by McCall, while the Student Engagement Office is sponsoring the conference. The Creative Writing Club will also participate.

A student academic team from one of Georgia Highlands College’s (GHC) bachelor’s programs is ready to compete this weekend in the national Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) Case Competition set for Feb. 20.

Students in GHC’s Logistics and Supply Chain Management program have been given the opportunity to test their supply chain knowledge and use their critical thinking and problem-solving skills to work on real-world challenges, said Assistant Professor for Logistics and Supply Chain Management Lucinda Montgomery.

The 2021 ASCM Case Competition is provided by ASCM in collaboration with Deloitte Consulting LLP. Participating teams present solutions to an exciting end-to-end supply chain management problem as they compete for prize money and recognition. The case may involve distribution, logistics, sales and operations planning, inventory, and other operations management challenges.

Seven teams from GHC competed in the “College and University Round” of the national competition in October 2020. From that group of seven GHC teams, two entered into the “Virtual Qualifying Round” in November 2020. Of those two GHC teams that entered into the “Virtual Qualifying Round,” one team, led by student Stephen Harmon, is advancing to the “Southeast Regional Round” on Feb. 20, 2021. If that team is successful at the “Regional Round,” they will go on to compete in the “Final Competition” in October 2021.

“Students were presented with a case, data exhibits, a PowerPoint template and judging rubric. For this particular case, students had to answer three questions and scenarios pertaining to COVID-19 and the impact on supply chains,” Montgomery said. “GHC’s team is in the Top 8 in our region, and out of over 300 participating colleges and universities, GHC is ranked in the Top 64 overall.”

Students on the team are Stephen Harmon and Raul Madrid of Cartersville, along with Krystal Ellis of Acworth and Trent Mull of Rome. Students are enrolled at the Cartersville site and take classes remotely.

“The members of our team were surprised and excited to learn we would go on to compete in the regional round,” Harmon said. “We had put in a considerable amount of time outside of normal school hours to put our presentation together. I could not be any prouder of my team and team members for the effort that they put into the ASCM case competition.”

Harmon said he and his team feel their classes helped prepare them for the competition, which in turn provided an opportunity to engage in some of the workplace scenarios that graduates of the Logistics and Supply Chain Management program may encounter.

“The course material from our first week in the BBA program through the present is highly applicable to the ASCM case competition,” Harmon said. “It also helped that the BBA program at GHC is not simply textbook learning. There are a lot of hands-on assignments and projects to apply the textbook learning to real-world current issues and situations.”

Students interested in Georgia Highlands College’s nursing program can take part in a virtual information session on March 15 from 6:30PM to 7:30PM via Zoom.

“Attendees of this information session will receive general information about the nursing program and the requirements to enter,” Assistant Director of Nursing Shea Walker said. “Students are notified of the location of the program, program expectations, course load and the clinical environment, to name a few. In addition, attendees will meet the School of Nursing’s director, assistant director and administrative assistant, as well as review resources such as the nursing website.”

The Zoom link for the March 15 session can be accessed by going to GHC’s nursing homepage at highlands.edu where additional dates and times for information sessions will be posted, as well.

The deadline for proof of Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) licensure has been extended to May 15.

Applicants must still submit a nursing application and their official ATI TEAS score report(s) by the April 1 deadline in order to be considered an eligible applicant for the fall semester.

The nursing application will close at midnight April 1, and if you will be submitting your CNA licensure after April 1, please email a copy to chooper@highlands.edu by 11:59PM on May 15.