Sharon McGavick, a former student of Linn Benton Community College LBCC funds a yearly $1,000 scholarship for single parents at LBCC. Her story started at LBCC when the college in its inception rented the space for classes, awaiting their facility to be built.
In order to finance her much desired education at LBCC, 29-year-old McGavick of Lebanon grew cucumbers for sale and sold Avon products. McGavick recalls how her teacher, Mrs. Bennett, took interest in her academic future. In the course of a conversation she saw great potential in the student and advised her to enroll in Oregon State University while signing up for financial aid. That conversation opened the door for McGavick, and she recalls it as a life-changing event.
Along her educational path she met a few inspiring people, such as a Dean of Education at OSU, and Burr Fancher, the Superintendent of the local Education Service District and teacher of agriculture at Lebanon High School.
Appreciative of the people who shaped her career path and gave her confidence, now as a two-term college administrator first at Clover Park Technical College, and later at Lake Washington Technical Institute, McGavick spoke of the nudges that propelled her forward at a national gathering of college planned giving agencies.
“It really makes a difference when one person gives you some encouragement and sees you as someone who has potential,” she said. “I certainly didn’t see it in myself, but she did.”
A grateful student from North Salem many years later recognized McGavick as the person who made receiving his diploma possible, and thus changing his life.
“In my mind, I did nothing, but I did something for him,” McGavick said. “It was a profound lesson for me.”
In the simple act of handing him a job posting when he struggled with his schoolwork, she opened the path for growing his confidence, eventually resulting in following through with his education.
“You just don’t know who you reach, and who you touch.”
By Joanna Rosińska
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