Congrats to our Perimeter associate degree nursing graduates, and the Perimeter nursing faculty and staff who supported their journey. The 2022 Perimeter College nursing class received a 95.74 percent pass rate on the National Council Licensure Examinations (NCLEX). According to the National Council of the State Boards of Nursing, the 2022 national average for associate degree nursing students taking the NCLEX was 79.23 percent. Passing the NCLEX is required for all nurses before they can receive their license to practice nursing.
Patrick Rodriguez, interim director of the Georgia State Prison Education Project, has been selected as one of 50 promising professionals to serve in the 2023 Georgia Forward “Young Gamechangers” program. The nonprofit is organized by the Georgia Municipal Association and brings professionals from across the state to work on the persistent challenges of a Georgia community. Rodriguez will join other gamechangers to work in Columbus-Muscogee County in April.
Dr. Valerie Matthews’s book chapter, “Outfoxing the Foxes: Revising Mammy as Subversive Social Justice in Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow”’ is in the book, “Black Popular Culture and Social Justice: Beyond the Culture,” and was recently published by Routledge Press. Matthews is an associate professor of English and interim English Department chair on Clarkston Campus.
Sooyean Kim will be a featured presenting artist during the 38th Annual Alabama Clay Conference in Auburn, Ala. Feb. 10-11. Kim is a Fine Arts ceramics instructor on the Clarkston Campus.
Perimeter viola instructor Amy Leventhal and her opera, “A Sacred World,” were featured on WABE’s City Lights with Lois Reitzes. The opera premiered Saturday, Jan. 21 in the Cole Auditorium on the Clarkston Campus. Read more about Leventhal and the opera here.
Students in Tami Thomas’s criminal justice classes collected donations of blankets, toys, stuffed animals and other comfort items for 15 backpacks for Project Renewal, a tri-county shelter for women and children dealing with domestic violence, and Adventure Bags, a nonprofit that donates backpacks to children recently placed in foster care. Her students also collected clothes, toiletries and hygiene products and delivered them to the Alcovy High School Clothes Closet. Thomas’s students learned that absenteeism and chronic truancy is often because students lack appropriate clothing or hygiene projects. Chronic truancy has been linked to delinquency among adolescents and future adult criminal behaviors.
The projects were selected by students to help address specific community needs identified through Newton County’s Family Connection office and is part of the Newton Campus Academic Community Engagement (ACE) program. ACE connects relevant classroom work with community-identified needs. Thomas is an assistant professor of criminal justice on the Newton Campus.