Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1458054
WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM 16 UCW MARCH 9 -15, 2022 Fayetteville Technical Com- munity College has launched a new center for advising, the University Transfer Advising Center (UTAC). UTAC is designed to serve, guide and support FTCC stu- dents preparing to transfer to a four-year college or university and continue their education. rough UTAC, transfer stu- dents are paired with an advi- sor during the first semester at FTCC and encouraged to obtain assistance with their education and career goals early in their academic journeys. UTAC is in the Horace Sisk Building (Room 612) at FTCC's Fayetteville campus. Students can access the center in person, virtually, by phone and email. e mission of UTAC is to en- gage with students in thought- ful deliberation about where they are and where they want to be. Using a holistic advising approach, UTAC advisors guide students to reflect on their education and professional and personal goals. ey use that insight to devel- op plans to achieve those goals. Students who desire to continue their education beyond the community college have ques- tions about the transfer process, and advisors from UTAC help provide a smooth transition by providing helpful information about the process. After devel- oping a career roadmap with students, UTAC advisors assist students with registering for classes for their first semester at the four-year college or univer- sity to ensure students are in the appropriate courses and off to a great start. e center's professional ad- visors and success coaches offer a one-stop advising approach for first-year students. e center provides com- prehensive support in setting up a degree plan, building a semester schedule, providing referrals to academic support services, and reviewing aca- demic policies and procedures. Workshops and events are also offered throughout the year and are geared toward the college's transfer student population. Representatives from UTAC and the FTCC Foundation office have a plan in the works to host a campus-wide scholarship as- sistance event for all students. UTAC advisors will help stu- dents apply for internal FTCC scholarships, answer questions, and review essays. e center is also playing a vital role in helping plan an "Advising Week" on campus in April in support of FTCC students. EDUCATION Transfer Advising Center Helps Students by DR. KENJUANA MCCRAY & DEAN CAMERON HARMON e tributes that rolled in when North Carolina lawyer Walter Del- linger died Feb. 16 were testimony that he was one of the nation's great lawyers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He was 80. In an Associated Press article, North Carolina native Jonathan Drew wrote that Dellinger's career "marked him as one of the legal giants of our era. Many remembered — and justly celebrated — him as a brilliant and prolific scholar, a titan of the Supreme Court bar, an inspiring teacher and mentor to generations of bright prote- ges now in elected office, federal and state government, and on the bench. "He was also a government lawyer whose advice was important to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Key officials in the Biden White House sought his advice almost literally until the day he died." His son, Hampton, recently con- firmed by the U.S. Senate as an as- sistant attorney general in the Biden administration's Justice Department, gave this tribute to his dad, "Walter lived a wonderful and extraordinary life. He had many loves, first among them his wife Anne but also the State and University of North Carolina, the law and the rule of law, and American democracy." Several years ago I talked to Del- linger for a short North Carolina Book- watch program recorded at Carolina Meadows in Chapel Hill, where he was living. He was working on a chap- ter of a memoir to be titled "Balcony Reserved for White Spectators." He explained his early awareness of the unfairness of the social system in his hometown Charlotte. In the late 1950s he was working on a construc- tion site "where only whites could be carpenters and the black men were all laborers paid $1 an hour. As I was a temporary kid, I was assigned as a la- borer. I was like the token white labor on this crew. "What was interesting and dramatic for me was that the best carpenter by far was one of the African American men who was a laborer. He got paid as a laborer no matter what he was do- ing. So whenever there was a very dif- ficult challenge to the carpentry, the on-site supervisor would ask David to take on the challenge. "But if anybody from company headquarters arrived on the scene, I was sometimes a lookout, David had to put down his carpentry tools. He could be an expert but couldn't be caught breaking the rigid rules. at gives you a sense of how rigid the system was." Dellinger remembered his love of Black music and listening to WGIV, the Black radio station in Charlotte. "I listened to the gospel hour faithfully. ey had a contest to see who could first identify a gospel song, and I knew immediately from the first three bars it was 'Ride on King Jesus.' "e prize was a one-year subscrip- tion to Ebony magazine, which in the segregated South was a whole differ- ent world, particularly the advertise- ments where no people of color were ever in mainstream media." Dellinger's love of music led him to try to attend the Black concerts and dances at Park Center in downtown Charlotte. ere is where he encoun- tered the sign. He explained, "In Charlotte dances that were for African Americans [they] had a balcony reserved for white spec- tators, so it's sort of both literal and metaphorical the notion that I was only a spectator from the balcony on what was happening with race in the South, watching what was happening in the Black community." After four years at UNC-Chapel Hill, three years at Yale Law School, and two years teaching at the University of Mississippi Law School, Dellinger was never "only a spectator" again. He lived and died in the middle of our country's struggle to eliminate the unfairness the carpenter David expe- rienced and the legacy of the customs that put Dellinger in the balcony at Park Center dances. D.G. MARTIN, Host of UNC's Book Watch. COMMENTS? Editor@upand- comingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. LITERATURE Balcony reserved for white spectators by D.G. MARTIN DR. KENJUANA MCCRAY & DEAN CAM- ERON HARMON, FTCC. COMMENTS? editor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. Students move their tassles at a graduation ceremony. (Photo courtesy of Fayetteville Technical Community College.) Walter E. Dellinger III