Outstanding Community College Alums to be Honored at AACC Convention

April 19 Ceremony Recognizes a Community-Centered Billionaire, a Brain Surgeon, a Healthcare Crusading Family, a Domestic Violence Survivor Turned Scholar and a Dentist Doing Good Globally

SEATTLE, April 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The success and achievements of five outstanding community college alumni will be recognized April 19 during the 90th annual convention of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). Honorees to be celebrated by more than 1,600 community college leaders include a domestic violence survivor turned scholar, a community-centered billionaire, an internationally-known brain surgeon, a five-member family who all attended the same community college and now work for healthcare access, and a dentist who founded a nonprofit to improve conditions in Thailand.

The gala reception and dinner honoring the 2010 Outstanding Community College Alumni will be emceed by former KOMO news reporter John Sharify. The event will be held at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in the Grand Ballroom from 7:15-9:30 p.m. The honorees are:

Domestic Violence Survivor Turned Scholar: Vivyan Adair

North Seattle Community College, Wash.

A month after waking up in a shelter for battered women with a broken clavicle bone, missing teeth and her infant daughter beside her, Vivyan Adair enrolled in North Seattle Community College (NSCC). With a broken spirit, and no family support, she had little hope. But her teachers nurtured her academically and a janitor let her use a college shower room when she and her daughter became homeless and were living out of her car.

"I often feel I was reborn at North Seattle Community College, I came alive," said Vivyan Adair. "But it also became my family - a family in a literal sense because I was living here and spending all my time here; a family in the sense that my teachers were creating a new person," said Adair.

After graduating from NSCC, Adair went on to earn a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She joined the faculty of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., where she is today an associate professor of women's studies, specializing in examining representations of women on welfare and how they are impacted by welfare reform, education and public policy.

In addition to her teaching and research, Adair has launched initiatives aimed at helping people whose present circumstances resemble her past ones. In 2000 she founded The ACCESS Project at Hamilton College, an educational, social service and career pilot program that helps low-income parents move from welfare and low-wage jobs to meaningful employment and higher education.

The Community-Centered Billionaire: Dennis Albaugh

Des Moines Area Community College, Iowa

Known as the "prince of pesticides" and ranked by Forbes magazine as the 568th richest person in the world in 2009, Dennis Albaugh got his start as an agricultural chemical business entrepreneur at Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) in Iowa. "DMACC is my university," said Dennis Albaugh with pride, as the CEO discussed his gutsy trail to success.

Albaugh earned an associate of applied science degree in agriculture at DMACC's Ankeny campus in 1970. He used his degree to land a job at a local agricultural co-op, where he bought and sold fertilizers, seeds and chemicals to farmers. In 1979 he used $2,000 in savings and a $10,000 home mortgage loan to buy the used truck and 1,500 gallons of weed killer he needed to launch Albaugh, Inc.

His company went global in the 1990s when he acquired Atanor, a herbicide company in Argentina best known for producing glysophate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's well-known RoundUp ®. To finance purchasing a company four times the size of his own, Albaugh had to be gutsy. He raised $20 million by pledging Albaugh, Inc., locating an Argentinean banker willing to lend $30 million, and paid a usurious 20 percent interest rate to borrow $10 million more. His gutsy move paid off. Acquiring 51 percent, Atanor made Albaugh the second-biggest U.S. producer of glysophate, the world's bestselling agro-chemical. He still lives in Ankeny, Iowa.

Dentist Doing Good on the Other Side of the Globe: Usa Bunnag

Montgomery College, Md.

Usa Bunnag left Thailand and arrived in the United States as a teenager and soon left home to find work as a dental assistant. When her infant son was three months old, she enrolled at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md., a school that could accommodate a full-time worker with an infant child. "The program had classes for someone like me who could still work during the day and go to school at night," said Usa Bunnag "They even had some courses on Sundays."

After five years at Montgomery College, Bunnag was able to skip getting a bachelor's degree and go directly into the Howard University College of Dentistry, where she earned her D.D.S. a semester ahead of her classmates. She graduated in 1994 and established a thriving general dentistry practice in Bethesda, Md.

In 2003, she founded Smiles on Wings, Inc., a nonprofit organization that sends missions to remote villages in northern Thailand to provide dental and medical care, educational programs, and funds to help local schools.

Bunnag's "hobby" is Thai Crossing, a clothing and crafts shop. "When I started to travel to Thailand, I saw all these beautiful things that artists make but have no market for," said Bunnag. "People who come into the store always know that Thailand has good food. The store is a good chance for them to come and learn about Thai culture, as well as the work I do for Smiles on Wings."

A Healthcare Crusading Family: The Molina Family

Long Beach City College, Calif.

Providing access to healthcare for low-income families is a passion for the Molina family. C. David Molina, M.D., founded Molina Healthcare, a health management organization that serves 1.2. million people living in 10 U.S. states, because he wanted for low-income families to have better access to healthcare.

Molina began his higher education career at Long Beach City College, and sent his five children to the college,  which the family praises for its solid educational foundation. "For me it was good to have that liberal arts  background," said his daughter Janet Molina Watt, who met her husband at the college and graduated in 1987. She went on to earn a B.A. in interior design from California State University in Long Beach and a master's degree in architecture from Cal Poly. "Some people know right away what they're going to do with the rest of their life, but in reality most of us going into college need to try a lot of different things to see what's out there."

Dr. C. David Molina died in 1996 and his children, some of whom now work for Molina Healthcare, are still the company's principal stockholders. Fortune lists Molina Healthcare among the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations. The national managed-care research firm InterStudy named it one of the top 15 national managed care firms and Hispanic Business Magazine lists it as the second-largest U.S. Hispanic-owned business.

The Brain Surgeon: Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa

San Joaquin Delta College, Calif.

At age 19, with $65 in his pocket, Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa jumped a fence to enter the United States from Mexico. He lived in a camper migrating between jobs working in California's vegetable and cotton fields. His journey from cotton field to operating room began at San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) in Stockton, Calif.

He wound up at SJDC because a pamphlet arrived in the mail. "It said, 'English as a second language - San Joaquin Delta College,'" said Quinones. "If SJDC didn't send that pamphlet I would never have made it there. It was the only one [I received]." At SJDC Quinones learned English, history and the sciences. "I really had a wonderful time at that place, and I developed a strong foundation for working hard, studying hard, staying focused," he said. "You can't build a tower without a foundation, and for me that foundation is SJDC."

After graduating with an associate degree from SJDC, Quinones worked his way through the University of California, Berkeley and went to medical school at Harvard University. He obtained his U.S. citizenship and made the decision to go into neurosurgery, fascinated by what he calls "the most beautiful organ of our body, the one that we know least about, the one that makes us who we are."

After internships in general surgery and neurosurgery, he came to Johns Hopkins University, where he established a clinical practice and embarked upon a stem cell research project that quickly won a succession of NIH grants. Today Quinones - or Dr. Q to his colleagues - is working on better ways to fight brain cancer. "I'm like a little boy fighting a dragon with a stick," he said. "We don't know how [brain cancer] starts; we don't know how it continues, and we don't really know how to fight it."

To perform his research, which focuses on the brain tumor stem cells that remain even after patients undergo surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, Quinones relies on his patients. "My patients are helping me find a cure for brain cancer," said Quinones. "I have an incredible passion for my patients. They are true heroes."

Among many other honors, he has received the $150,000 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Physician-Scientist Early Career Award, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award, and a Popular Science Magazine Brilliant 10 Scientists Award. Hispanic Business Journal lists him as one of the most influential U.S. Hispanics.

Quinones has never forgotten SJDC. "The fact that you can attend in your community and get a superb education for much less than you would spend at a university makes community college obviously education for people who come from backgrounds comparable to mine."

FAST FACTS ABOUT COMMUNITY COLLEGES

• there are 11.8 million community college students in the United States
• 40% of community college students are enrolled full-time, while 60% are enrolled part-time
• the average age of a community college student is 28 years old.
• 46% of community college students are age 21 or younger, while 13% are age 40 and up
• 56% of community college students are women
• 40% of community college students are minorities
• 42% of community college students are the first generation in their family to attend college
• community colleges educate more than 60% of all new health care professionals

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the American Association of Community Colleges is the leading advocacy organization representing close to 1,200 community, junior and technical colleges nationwide. Community colleges are the largest sector of higher education, enrolling 11.8 million credit and non-credit students each year. To learn more about the AACC, visit www.aacc.nche.edu.

SOURCE American Association of Community Colleges