MTC's GOAL Winner Barbara Hayes Atlanta-bound to Tell Story
 |
|---|
| Barbara Hayes, Moultrie Technical College’s 2008 Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership [GOAL] representative, heads to Atlanta this week in hopes of becoming the statewide winner. |
What would prompt a former U.S. Army bomb squad secretary and 37-year-old mother of three children to start all over, enroll in college, pursue a career in nursing and vie to become Georgia’s state spokesperson for technical education?
For Moultrie Technical College’s 2008 Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership [GOAL] winner Barbara Hayes, the answer proved to be much more gut-wrenching than a midlife career change. She will explain just that to a panel of judges this week in Atlanta.
Hayes will compete against 36 of her peers from the Technical College System of Georgia in the 36 th Annual State GOAL Competition May 20-23. The objective of the GOAL program is to recognize and reward excellence among the nearly 160,000 students studying full-time at Georgia's technical colleges.
Each local winner serves as an ambassador to his or her communities, and Hayes will represent MTC in its four-county service area of Colquitt, Tift, Turner and Worth during the coming year.
But the award coveted by the 37 local winners is the honor of traveling the state for a full year on behalf of Georgia’s Technical College System and winning a vehicle donated by Chevrolet.
Hayes, named MTC’s GOAL representative, or ‘Student of the Year’, at a ceremony on March 17, says her decision to return to school after many years outside of a classroom came on February 12, 2004.
“It was on that day, my then 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. After receiving the news, I wanted to curl up in a ball and die ,” she explains. “B ut I couldn't do that because I knew no one else could take better care of my child than me. ”
Hayes says she and her family spent many days and hours at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta as the medical staff battled the cancer in her daughter’s body.
“I met so many wonderful nurses that renewed what I thought was a long-extinguished desire to become a nurse,” she says.
At a crossroads with her family and career, Hayes says she sat down and made a list of what she needed to do at this transitional point in her life. The first decision she needed to make was how and where to pursue her dream of a career in the medical field.
“First, I needed a school that was close to home. With my daughter's illness, I didn't need to be 45 minutes to an hour away. Check one for [ Moultrie] Technical College.”
“Second, being a non-traditional student re-entering school after a long absence, I needed the smaller class sizes and the one-on-one instruction you get at a technical college,” Hayes adds. “Check two…and then the checks really started to add up.”
She says she also needed a school that offered a shortened degree time.
“I was doing this for my daughter, and my daughter was really sick. Technical college offered me that shortened program time. Check three.”
Finally, Hayes says she heard through word of mouth about the success that MTC was having with its licensed practical nursing program, and in particular the program’s graduate pass rate on the difficult National Council Licensure Examination [NCLEX], or “boards”.
The exam covers all aspects of professional nursing practice. Test-takers must pass the exam before they are allowed to begin working as licensed practical nurses, or LPNs. The NCLEX has a national passing average of just over 88 percent annually.
“[MTC] scored a 100 percent first-time state board pass rate for the past four years. Checks five, six, seven and eight…that was just too impressive to ignore,” says Hayes.
Her daughter passed away from complications of leukemia in December 2006, and Hayes says she wanted and had decided to quit school many times.
“But I knew she wouldn't want me to do that. She didn't get the chance to see her mommy walk the stage and receive her nursing pin…but I know she's looking down on me from heaven with her big smile, so proud her mom didn't give up.”
She adds, “It is because of her that I continue on with great pride and that I am able to stand here before you today strong, confident and determined to become Georgia's 2008 State GOAL winner.”
Hayes is on schedule to graduate from MTC’s LPN program in the spring of 2009 with her two sons, friends, family and MTC faculty, staff and classmates cheering her on.
