By Staff
At Southwestern Michigan College there are traditional students -- those who enter college right after graduating from high school -- and non-traditional students -- those who have started families or careers before entering college.
And then there's the Kitchen family of Dowagiac.
Mom Terri fits into the non-traditional student category.
She'll be graduating with a bachelor's degree from the SMC/Bethel College Organizational Management program on May 4.
But she and her husband Paul's children -- Heather, Bonnie and Brian -- created their own category at SMC.
Two years ago Heather, now 19, graduated from SMC with an associate in arts degree in her junior year of high school.
Following college graduation Heather completed her senior year at Dowagiac Union High School and is now a music education major at Central Michigan University.
Bonnie, 18, studied business at SMC and has already been accepted into Western Michigan University's School of Business, where she'll transfer after graduating SMC with honors on May 3.
Brian, 16, is a pre-engineering major who will transfer to Western next January to continue his engineering studies. He was just 12 when he took his first SMC classes (chemistry and algebra) and may be SMC's youngest
graduate ever.
The Kitchen children's early college experience was part of their home
schooling program. According to Terri, "SMC has made it extremely easy
to be a home school family. They allowed the kids to be undecided and
there was no pressure for them to choose a major until they were ready."
For Bonnie, who started classes at age 13, theatre instructor Maryanne
Arena was a great motivational influence – "She really made me come out
of my shell," – but she found her niche in business studies after a
class with instructor Lisa Goolsby. She hopes to someday be a human
resources director.
Brian singles out math instructors Andrew Dohm and Dr. Keith Howell as
helping make his college experience positive. He also notes that some
instructors struggled with his youth – "There were a couple of
instructors who were shocked at first," – but that they were also eager
to offer him extra help if needed.
SMC President Dr. David Mathews feels the Kitchen children's presence
added to the rich diversity on campus. "College is about new
experiences, learning how to work with diverse groups of people. After
initial assessment indicated that Heather, Bonnie and Brian were capable
of handling college coursework, it was just a matter of adding a younger
age group to our variety of students."
Terri says that she and her husband made sure their children were ready
for the demands of being college students. "SMC classes started out as
a supplement to home schooling and then eventually grew into full-time.
We wanted to wait until they were developmentally ready to be full-time
college students."
It was while her children were finishing their associate degrees with
plans to transfer and complete bachelor's degrees that Terri made her
own goal to "get my bachelor's degree before my children did." The
SMC/Bethel College Bachelor's in Organizational Management allowed her
to juggle being a mom, run Lifeworks counseling center with her husband,
perform her duties as a Cass County commissioner and reach her goal.
Who says what I'm doing isn't fun?" asks Terri. She says she enjoyed
the camaraderie and team atmosphere afforded by the SMC/Bethel program.
with such great classmates."
As Bonnie and Brian prepare to transfer to complete their bachelor's
degrees, Terri is considering master's of business administration
programs at either Notre Dame or University of Chicago.
And although it's not every day that a family collects three college
diplomas in one weekend, the Kitchens seem to be taking all the activity
that surrounds their graduation weekend in perfect stride.