Jill Biden at CPCC: Community colleges are gateways to success
Second Lady Jill Biden must have felt at home Thursday, not necessarily in Charlotte – but among community college faculty and students who crowded into Bojangles’ Coliseum for Central Piedmont Community College’s graduation ceremony.
Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, has taught English at community colleges for more than 20 years and teaches now at a college outside Washington, D.C. She is believed to be first second lady who works full-time while her husband is in office.
So if CPCC was looking for a powerful advocate to preach the values of community colleges, they found one in Biden. She told hundreds of graduates that their diplomas are from one of the best community colleges in America:
“Central Piedmont is equipping students with the skills they need to excel in careers in some of the fastest growing industries in the United States. By partnering with local businesses, you are answering to the call of our nation, to provide a well-equipped and well-train workforce.”
More than 1,800 students graduated. About 800 participated in the commencement.
Biden said she’d met CPCC President Tony Zeiss last summer in Switzerland at an international conference on workforce training. Ever since, he’s extended several invitations to visit the college.
CPCC was the sixth community college where Biden has spoken at graduation. She’s visited more than 60 campuses since becoming second lady.
She continues to be a voice for President Barack Obama’s initiative announced in January to make a community college education free to students who keep a 2.5 grade point average and work toward a degree.
Last week, Obama delivered a commencement address at a South Dakota community college, pushing his initiative.
Thursday, Biden did the same in Charlotte.
The president and vice president, she said, “understand what we all understand – community colleges are America’s best-kept secret, and it is time to let the secret out.”
She said it was difficult to give community college students advice about “the real world” because many are “already in the real world.” But she told them about lessons she’d learned from her students: to seize opportunity, to be charitable and to “always, always, be yourself.”
Biden told a story about an 83-year-old Korean man who took her class just to improve his English. She said community colleges were starting points for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, star athletes and public officials.
“They started their careers here just like you,” Biden said. “Community colleges are a gateway – a gateway to a new career, to a four-year university and to a more prosperous life.”
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White House staffer, a 2011 CPCC graduate, comes back to Charlotte
Second Lady Jill Biden shouldn’t have had troubles finding her way around Charlotte.
In her advance staff was Crystal Carson, a 2011 CPCC graduate who was on loan from the White House communications staff.
Carson had grown up in Anchorage, Alaska, but after graduating from high school moved to Charlotte with her best friend and her friend’s mother. She enrolled at CPCC to become a pharmacist and earned an associate’s degree in science. But shortly after graduating, she got an internship with the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.
After that, she did advance work for the Obama-(Joe) Biden campaign, setting up grassroots events around the country. She thought her foray into politics was over after the 2012 election, but soon was offered a job as assistant to the White House communications director.
Her desk is in the West Wing, just down the hall from the Oval Office. She sees the president often.
“CPCC built my confidence,” Carson, 26, said. “The school was always very supportive and pushed me to do things that I didn’t think I could do. They opened my horizon and proved to me I had a voice and that I should use it.
“Had I not found that, I don’t know that I would ever have applied for that internship with the DNC and then I wouldn’t have the job I have now.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2015 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Jill Biden at CPCC: Community colleges are gateways to success."