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Rogue Community College
Iain Pangburn was born and raised in Grants Pass. His early education was mostly homeschool and charter schools, but when he was 15, he got tired of the high school curriculum and took a placement test at Rogue Community College. At first, he pursued welding. Iain had always liked the idea of building things and knew he didn’t want an office job. After meeting a...
Everyone’s path through higher education is different. Some start college right out of high school, others work for years before enrolling at a community college. There is no wrong way to be a student. As Keaton Fournier says, “The biggest thing I’ve learned is that it’s never too late to learn, it’s never too late to reevaluate and change what path you’re on.” Born and...
Ben Ochsner graduated from Phoenix High School in 2003. “No one had ever talked to me about community college,” he recalls, “and I went straight to Oregon State University.” Quickly, he realized that he was in over his head academically, as many young students are during their first year in university. So Ben came back to the Rogue Valley and got a job with a...
Ben Davis didn’t finish high school knowing what he wanted to do next. He worked in landscaping jobs for a while, then became a teacher’s aide at an elementary school. For years, the idea of going to college had been hovering around him, but he hadn’t known what he would want to study. As a teacher’s aide, he got to explore his passion for teaching....
Brina Collins could be the star of that old Johnny Cash song — she’s been everywhere. After graduating high school in Ohio, she moved to a remote Alaskan island. It became difficult to access medical treatment for her child, who has a rare lung condition, so she came back to the mainland in 2020, moving to Oregon to be closer to medical facilities and find...
At the time Kristen Morales finished high school in 2014, the question of what to do with the rest of her life was overwhelming. She took a year off of school to try to figure it out. She started at Rogue Community College in 2015 but still didn’t know what exactly she wanted. Always having been drawn to business, she took some prerequisite courses but...
Originally from Merced County, California, Holly Smyth has been in Grants Pass since 2005 and started attending classes at Rogue Community College to get her GED in 2012. Years later, she decided to return to finish what she had started and received her GED in October 2019. She is now working for her associate degree. “I know I need an education,” Holly says, “because I...
Nik Sorensen had already earned two master’s degrees when he decided to pivot in his career path and enrolled in science courses at Rogue Community College. Since graduating high school in Talent, Oregon, in 2007, Nik has been on a journey to discover his passion. He served a two-year church mission in Taiwan, then attended Brigham Young University, where he double-majored in history and Chinese,...
Michael Surgeon has always wanted to teach. Right out of high school, he knew he needed to start higher education — but the nearest university was too expensive, so he turned to community college. “I definitely made the right choice,” Michael says. “RCC was the place where I developed as a student. Erika Giesen and Verne Underwood really kept me on track in the humanities.”...
At age 16, Kelsey Carlson graduated from Crater High School in Central Point, Oregon, but she was unable to afford college, so she started working. She spent years in low-wage jobs, but when her husband started classes at Rogue Community College to become a diesel mechanic, she thought, “If he can do it, I can do it.” So she did. Kelsey started at...