Real Students of Macomb

You would never know it if you had watched her deliver her “Break Every Chain” essay to volunteers at Macomb’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service luncheon on Jan. 19, but Kamaria Norwood was “so timid” when she attended high school in Detroit.

“I was quiet, and so I was picked on,” relates the 20-year-old, “which only made me shier.”

That changed almost immediately after starting classes at Macomb.  She found herself in a “pleasant” environment with “great teachers” and built her grade point average up to nearly 3.5.  She was also approved for a work-study assignment with Charles Muwonge, director of Special Projects at Macomb.  Among those projects is a peer mentoring program, and Norwood has given back as much as she has received.

“After being mentored myself, I became a peer mentor, and that really brought me out of my shell,” says Norwood. “It helped me build my self-esteem.”

To earn the honor of addressing volunteers at the luncheon, Norwood wrote the winning essay in the annual MLK Day competition opened to Macomb students.  Before writing, she turned to her mom for advice on getting started and was gently directed to read King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

“What Martin Luther King did was not an easy task, but he was able to pull out a miracle for me and future generations,” wrote Norwood in her essay. “What I learned is anything is possible. As long as I try and keep believing in myself, nothing can stand in my way.”

Both Norwood’s mom and grandfather were in the audience when she read those words.  Volunteering with her earlier that day was little sister Halo.  They joined others at South Campus to write letters of gratitude to active duty military and craft homemade dog toys for the Michigan Humane Society.  While it was the first time that Norwood volunteered for the MLK Day of Service, she has given her time to Children’s Hospital in the past and has helped out at Student Life and Leadership activities on campus.

“It’s been great to get involved and meet new people,” says the once timid Norwood, who appreciates the new perspective on social activism that her research on Dr. King has given her. “I never took time out to think about what people like Dr. King did for me.”

Norwood will graduate with an associate degree in general studies next year.  She plans to transfer to Central Michigan University’s main campus in Mount Pleasant to earn a bachelor’s degree in health administration. She is excited about the prospect of living on campus, but says she will never forget the home she found at Macomb.

“I have a family here,” says Norwood.  “This was a very good place to start my future.”

After years of facing an unpredictable home situation and struggling to meet friends, Aleyah Williams, 18, has found a comfortable environment and active social life at Macomb Community College.

Growing up, Williams lived in the Downriver community of Brownstown Township with her mother and three of her brothers. She was happy, well adjusted, and had many neighborhood friends. Little by little, everything changed. By 9^th grade, her brothers had moved out, and her mom relocated to Mississippi. From that point through the end of 11^th grade, they “started hopping from home to home,” forcing her to repeatedly switch schools. She began to feel like an outsider.

“It was hard,” Williams relates. “It’s not like I knew anybody, because I kept on moving.”

Their journey eventually brought them back to Michigan. Shortly thereafter, Williams’ father took her in, and she finally found some stability. She completed 12^th grade at Harper Woods High School, alongside her older brother and younger sister. Their friends became hers, and she even made some new ones on her own.

Following her graduation, Williams came to Macomb upon recommendations from her mother and oldest sister. From day one, Macomb has challenged her to grow her social network.

“Many of my classes made us interact with each other,” says Williams. “It broke a lot of people out of their shell.”

Now in her second semester, Williams is focusing on her general studies, but is also considering working toward a communications degree. Among her favorite things about coming to Macomb, she enjoys the flexibility in setting her own schedule, as well as the helpful and understanding faculty.

“I enjoy going to class every day,” relates Williams. “I don’t think I would want to be doing anything else with my life, other than coming to Macomb and learning.”

Long term, Williams would like to pursue a marketing career in social media advertising. She’s gotten a taste of this during her on campus experience in Macomb’s Marketing and Communications department through the Federal Work-Study program.

“I get to do something I am passionate about every day,” says Williams, “whether it’s researching different social media (platforms) or actually coming up with different ways to improve our posts.”

Growing up, Amanda Schoeninger was no stranger to doctors and hospitals. A dance student, she broke both of her feet more than once and was as familiar with orthopedic charts as her friends were with Snapchat and Instagram.

“I had a high pain tolerance,” says Schoeninger, who, nevertheless, gave up competitive dancing and enrolled at Macomb after graduating from L’Anse Creuse North in 2017. “I wasn’t interested in going away to school yet, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  I went to the intro class for the Medical Assistant program and liked what I heard.  I have really enjoyed this program, especially phlebotomy.”

Perhaps it was those earlier experiences as a young patient that led her to the idea of a service learning project that involved making blankets for Children’s Hospital in Detroit and the Turning Point shelter for victims of domestic violence.  She presented her idea at a meeting of Macomb’s Student Organization of Medical Assistants (SOMA) and received two thumbs up from her classmates.

“We needed some volunteer hours, and I had been making these blankets for my family,” relates Schoeninger. “You get a kit and then tie together fabric and fleece.  Half of the blanket is plain, the other half is fanciful.”

The students worked in groups of two or three on the project before and after class, spending about 30 minutes a day for two weeks.  When they were done, they had tied together 44 blankets, which they will divide equally between Children’s Hospital and Turning Point, just in time for winter.

“It was really fun for us to get together to make the blankets.  Our goal had been to make 12,” says Schoeninger, who works part time at a veterinary office.  “I was proud that we had made as many blankets as we did.  We plan to take them to the hospital and shelter in December.”

Schoeninger, who enjoys golf in her spare time, lives at home with her parents and canine companions: Milo and Ellie. After she receives her associate degree from Macomb in May, as her dad and sister did before her, she intends to transfer to the University of Detroit Mercy or Wayne State University to earn a biology degree. After that, she hopes to enroll in a master’s degree program to become a physician’s assistant.

“I’ve had a great experience at Macomb,” says Schoeninger. “The teachers are very helpful, and they point you in the right direction.”

By his account, Ryan Brown, 28 and from Detroit, had a completely normal upbringing. He grew up in a two-parent household and was the middle of three children. However, his life was turned upside down at 13, after his father passed away.

“It was just hard after that,” shares Brown, who began to ask himself, “Am I really going to graduate?”

Brown struggled throughout high school and bounced between three schools. He attended Detroit East Catholic High School in ninth grade. Following its closure, he transferred to the Detroit School of Arts in 10^th grade. “That didn’t work out so well, so I ended up leaving there and going to Consortium College Prep High School,” says Brown.

After graduating, Brown questioned whether he really wanted to continue his education. He ultimately decided upon Macomb and has been studying general business. “The environment was more controlled and accepting,” relates Brown. “It was easy to make my decision to come here.”

While Brown is set to earn his degree in December, he’s not finished with his studies. Aspiring to become a personal trainer, Brown intends to return to Macomb and earn the Certified Personal Fitness Trainer certification. But, that’s just one of several vocational aspirations.

“I think I’ve always wanted to do a lot of things,” says Brown. “I never found myself being consolidated into one thing.”

Inspired by the Food Channel, Brown also hopes to open a food truck. Diverging from the path set by others, he shuns the notion of serving common dishes such as tacos or macaroni and cheese. Instead, his plan is to offer breakfast. “Breakfast is one of those things that most people don’t get,” says Brown.

Another goal for Brown is to take his passion for writing, currently an outlet, and turn it into a career. His primary interest is in poetry, but he’s also penned a few unpublished self-help books.

“I went through a portion of life where I suffered from depression and anxiety, and it really got to me,” relates Brown. “I want to be on the other side of the spectrum, because I know what it feels like.”

Through his classes at Macomb, Brown feels he has the tools he needs to become a successful author. “It has expanded my abilities to think outside the box,” says Brown, “with the chance to continuously reach out more with my own works.” Beyond that, his classes challenged him to come out of his shell.

“My experiences (at Macomb) were good, because I forced myself to be open and more communicative with other students and teachers,” says Brown. Enrolling in the business program “was one of the easiest things I could have done.”

During the two weeks she volunteered at three orphanages in Africa, Lauren Vukovich visited with zebras and giraffes in a protected sanctuary, learned how to say hello (hujambo) in Swahili and couldn’t wait for the sunrise each morning.

“When the sun hits your face, it’s like the Kenyan people are warming you with their loving nature,” says Vukovich. “I had been searching for an experience like this since I was 16.”

The opportunity to visit Kenya was presented to Vukovich by Rochelle Zaranek, Macomb social work professor, whose class also led the undecided student to consider a certain career path.

“I’ve been trying to listen to my passion. I knew I really wanted to make social change,” says Vukovich, 20. “But nothing really called to me before my first social work class at Macomb.”

Although this was the off year for Macomb’s study abroad trip to Kenya, Zaranek arranged for Vukovich to meet up with other U.S. students who were volunteering at the orphanages. For her first trip abroad, Vukovich flew 16 hours to Nairobi and then travelled by bus between the three orphanages. In this eastern African nation where the landscape and culture are dramatic, Vukovich experienced multiple climates and terrains, and met people of all ages who were intensely curious about the Americans in their midst.

“When you get there, they are so excited to have you,” says Vukovich. “The children are fascinated and love you. The teenagers want to learn your language.  The 20-year-olds want to know about your government and how you live, and the older people love the American fashions. They are all extremely intelligent and friendly.”

Kenya is marked by economic extremes, with nearly half of its population living below the poverty line. At the orphanages, Vukovich tutored and played with children whose parents had died from disease or violence, or did not have the means to care for and educate them. But despite the difficulties they face, Vukovich found the Kenyan people in and around the orphanages to be some of the happiest she had ever encountered.

“They literally love everything about life and just radiate pure joy,” relates Vukovich, whose   wrist bears a copper bracelet that signifies her “marriage” to the orphanages’ children. “When I was there, I woke up every day feeling so satisfied and fulfilled. If you are looking for a trip that completely fills your heart so much that you never want to leave, then this is it.”

Leslie Borst loves tinkering with code, and has learned a fair bit about it through experimentation. But, for most of Borst’s life, her passion was art. She attended the Art Institute of Phoenix for two-and-a-half years, taking a full class load while also working part time.

“I’ve heard a lot of criticism over the years about art students supposedly having it easy, because they’re just studying art and drawing all day,” says Borst. She reasons that this is a misconception, because a serious art student spends “between 40 and 60 hours per week, just in homework assignments.”

The workload tempered Borst’s excitement for art, but it was ultimately the prohibitive cost of tuition that forced her to change course and return to Michigan. However, one of her required classes at the Art Institute ignited another passion.

“They made us take an HTML class, so we could build our own portfolio site,” explains Borst, who took this skill home and began building upon it. “I would sit on my computer for hours, just playing with the code.”

She revealed this to her mentor, Chris DeMars, senior UI developer for United Shore, who suggested that she turn this hobby into a career. Borst enrolled at Macomb in 2017 and is pursuing an Associate of Applied Science Degree in IT – Website Programming. She expects to graduate following the winter 2019 semester.

“I’ve been loving every second of it,” Borst adds. “It’s way more affordable for someone like me, who’s working and just trying to get an education.”

It was also through the encouragement of her mentor that Borst applied for and was awarded a scholarship to take part in a Grand Circus coding boot camp in Detroit, sponsored by the DEVELOP(her) program. DEVELOP(her) aims to train female developers to enter the technology workforce, a field in which women are largely underrepresented.

Borst attends the boot camp, which runs through December, three nights a week. And that’s on top of her full-time class schedule. Borst is also creating a website for a national car club, and maintains a blog detailing her experiences in development.

“I’m trying to share my story a little bit to encourage people to go to school, get an education, and go after what they really want,” relates Borst. Her goal is to “pass the knowledge on to people who are just starting out and wouldn’t know any of those things that I learned, unless they had a mentor.”

Perhaps it was the influence of his Polish mother, whose native country is known for its tea drinking culture.  Or, maybe, it was because he found coffee somewhat “boring.” But Cody Wallace, a Macomb architectural student, has been drinking tea since childhood and now he is building a subscription tea business that is besting all of his other efforts in online entrepreneurship to date.

“I didn’t have a car and was too young to work, but I had a computer,” says Wallace, who graduated from Chippewa Valley High School in 2017.  “I started out on eBay in middle school, then it was drop shipping, selling pet supplies, furniture from China and women’s clothing.  I even worked at home for Pizza Hut, taking orders from all over the country.”

Wallace launched A Taste of Tea in April with Noah Cannon, his partner and childhood friend. With no marketing other than on Instagram, the duo raised $1,000 with a Kickstarter campaign to introduce their startup to the digital marketplace.  Wallace designed the website, tasteoftea.co, and admits that visitors were few to start.  But benefitting from recent appearances at summer festivals and a write-up in The Macomb Daily, Taste of Tea is finally seeing growth in its customer base. 

“We actually ran out of supplies at the Romeo (Peach) Festival,” admits Wallace.  “It was a mess, but a good mess.”

Taste of Tea blends are made from plants farmed at offsite plantations and packaged by Wallace. He spends a few hours each evening filling orders and appreciates the freedom self-employment has given him to attend classes at Macomb. He intends to transfer to Lawrence Technological University and earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture.

“I took a lot of computer classes in high school, but didn’t like them,” says Wallace, who chose Macomb, initially for its lower tuition rate when compared to a university.  The son of two former Macomb students, he decided to stay because of the quality of its programs. “The teachers have been great and I’m glad I came. Macomb helped me figure out what I wanted to do.”

Hoping to design homes one day, Wallace believes he will still continue toward that goal even if Taste of Tea, which recently attracted a Japanese investor, takes off with pop-up stores and restaurant orders.

“So far,” says Wallace, whose favorite Taste of Tea brew is Orchard Berry, “the future looks bright.”