When Beth Myers-Rees graduates from Maryville College in December 2017, it will be the culmination of a college journey that began 38 years ago.

After taking classes at two different institutions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she stopped in 1983 with 78 credits. Then life got in the way.

In August 2015, the 55-year-old Maryville resident enrolled at Maryville College to complete her degree and just began her second semester of her junior year.

With Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam’s recent announcement of “Tennessee Reconnect + Complete,” Maryville College hopes more students like Myers-Rees choose MC to complete their degree.
v Maryville College is participating in “Tennessee Reconnect + Complete,” a new initiative focused on encouraging Tennessee adults with some college credit to return to college and complete their degree.

The initiative will bolster the College’s existing efforts to expand its nontraditional student population, said Vickie Smith, Maryville College admissions counselor, adding that the College saw a record number of transfer students, veterans and military-related students this fall.

“We already have several successful initiatives in place to not only recruit nontraditional students but support them while they’re here, so this provides an added boost to our efforts,” said Smith, who focuses on recruiting transfer and nontraditional students.

The initiatives include:
– In 2012, the College joined the Tennessee Transfer Pathways Program, which makes it easier for students to transfer from a community college to a four-year institution – and makes it easier to graduate within two years of transferring.
– The College added two full-time staff members dedicated to recruiting transfer students and veterans.
– Maryville College has an honor society for nontraditional students, Alpha Sigma Lambda.
– This fall, Maryville College was designated a 2016 Military Friendly school, thanks to its ongoing efforts to support veterans. In 2015, MC added a Military Student Center and hired Lt. Col. Ted Higgs to serve as the director of military student services. Also in 2015, the College received the Veteran Reconnect Grant, a competitive grant focused on improving the success of student veterans pursuing higher education.

‘It was all about life’
Myers-Rees enrolled at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1978, when she was 17 years old. Interested in a publishing career, she decided to major in English, but her father brought her home to El Paso, Texas, after she found herself on academic probation during her sophomore year.

She got a job and eventually started taking classes part-time at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1981. She took her last class in the fall of 1983 – she got married during that semester to an active duty member of the U.S. Army and moved to West Germany in 1984.

Over the next 30 years, she lived in Fort Irwin, Calif.; again in El Paso, Texas; Miami, Fla.; and eventually Maryville, Tenn., where she moved in 2000. During those three decades, she experienced ups and downs: the birth of her older daughter, a divorce, a major hurricane, a new marriage and the birth of her younger daughter. She worked in a variety of administrative and accounting positions until February 2015, when she was laid off from an accounting job she held for almost 13 years.

“I always thought about completing my degree, but it wasn’t an option,” Myers-Rees recalled. “It was all about survival; it was all about life.”

Deciding “it was time,” she completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid two months later and started exploring her options. Her path became clear in July, after a chance meeting with a Maryville College faculty member during an open mic night at a local restaurant. Myers-Rees recited her original poetry that night, and Stacey Wilner, lecturer in music and director of choral activities at MC, walked up to her and asked if she published her work.

“I said ‘I would love to,’ and she told me that she’d love to introduce me to Kim Trevathan (associate professor of writing communication at MC),” Myers-Rees recalled.

She contacted Trevathan, and after a “whirlwind process” over the next month, Myers-Rees began the latest chapter of her college career in August 2015.

‘A great experience’
Maryville College accepted 68 of her 78 credits, so she was able to start as a junior and decided to major in writing communication.

“I want to be a technical writer when I grow up,” she said. “I worked in administration and finance for over three and a half decades, but language and the use of language has always been in the background.”

Now in her second semester, she has been “so pleasantly surprised about everything during this experience.” “I realize that this is the kind of college atmosphere I would have thrived in as a 17-year-old instead of being just a number,” she said. “I like the diversity of students and the small classroom settings – everyone is here to provide honest feedback.” When asked what advice she would give to anyone who is considering completing his or her degree at Maryville College, she emphasized the College’s community.

“There are all kinds of nontraditional students all over campus. It is such a community; all you have to do is be yourself,” she said. “For any college student at any school, the experience is what you make it, and the atmosphere here at MC allows you to get the best experience.”

Tennessee Reconnect + Complete
“Tennessee Reconnect + Complete,” announced by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Jan 13, is part of Drive to 55, a statewide initiative aimed at increasing the number of Tennesseans with a postsecondary degree or certificate to 55 percent by 2025.

According to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), approximately 940,000 Tennessee adults have enrolled in a postsecondary institution in the state and achieved some college credit but left before obtaining a degree or credential. Of those, nearly 110,000 Tennesseans have earned more than half the credit hours toward a degree during the past nine years, with 25,000 likely to have enough credits to graduate in only one additional semester.

The Tennessee Reconnect + Complete initiative includes: comprehensive training for college and university leaders on best practices to serve adult students; a targeted advertising and outreach campaign to reconnect with interested adults and help them return to school; a website, www.TNReconnect.gov, to assist adult students in connecting with the right college, finding financial assistance and utilizing prior learning experience to receive college credit.

Maryville College has already received a list of adult students who are eligible for the program, and admissions counselors have sent postcards encouraging them to complete their degrees at Maryville College. Those who are interested in completing their degrees at MC can request information through the program website or contact MC’s Office of Admissions: Darren Dunlap at 865.981.8089 or [email protected] or Vickie Smith at 865.981.8205 or [email protected].