Dawayne Kirkman said he wanted to be in education since before he went to kindergarten.<\/p>\n
Kirkman, the manager of the Huber Heights and Englewood Learning Centers, said he\u2019d play \u201cschool\u201d with his older sister while he was younger.\u00a0 She would always be the teacher or the principal because she was older, leaving him to be the student.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long, though, before he was graduating high school (the first of his father\u2019s side of the family to do so) and then graduating college (Berea College, in 1998; the first from his father\u2019s side or his mother\u2019s side to so).\u00a0 Kirkman said he felt a strong burden in being the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like, if Dawayne doesn\u2019t do it, then there is no hope for the Kirkman family,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t want to let anyone down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience he had at Berea is important to him.\u00a0 Kirkman said he is \u201cextremely proud\u201d to have graduated from there, in part due to the atmosphere.\u00a0 At Berea, all students must work at least 15 hours a week, according to Kirkman, in order to pay for tuition.\u00a0 Kirkman said he made \u201cabout $2 an hour\u201d and the rest went to tuition.\u00a0 Because of that, the student body is more equal.<\/p>\n
Kirkman said there was no stress about what kind of car you drove or what kind of clothes you wore, because everyone was on the same level.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Berea, Kirkman next went to Appalachian State University for a semester, where he said he was struck by the different atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, oh, I don\u2019t miss this,\u201d Kirkman said.\u00a0 \u201cThere were kids there driving cars that I couldn\u2019t afford today!\u201d<\/p>\n
After that, Kirkman worked first in Boston and then in Hawaii at Summerbridge, where he worked with at-risk children and got his first experience in teaching and administration.\u00a0 Kirkman said he applied for the job in Boston, and initially did not get it.\u00a0 He then called them and asked if they would pay for his room and board but pay him no salary, in order to get experience.\u00a0 Kirkman said they called him back and gave him the job, and he did end up getting paid.<\/p>\n
Kirkman had also started at Wright State University by then, where he worked in the same program and helped raise money.\u00a0 One day, a friend told him about a job opening in Outreach at Sinclair Community College.\u00a0 He said he looked at it and applied; his first day as admissions counselor was August 13, 2002.<\/p>\n
Kirkman was responsible for a wide variety of subjects, including being involved with Dayton Public Schools and their relationship to Sinclair and organizing high school student tours of the campus.\u00a0 Kirkman said he did that for 3 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of fun,\u201d Kirkman said.<\/p>\n
Right about that time, Sinclair had decided to open a Learning Center in Englewood.\u00a0 When Kirkman heard about it, he said he was determined to get the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will apply, and I will get that job,\u201d Kirkman said.<\/p>\n
He did end up being hired, but it wasn\u2019t only on his own skills.\u00a0 Kirkman said he enlisted his friend Kelly Vogelsong to help him create a marketing campaign to get himself hired.\u00a0 They created flyers, mailers and other items, all in their free time, outside of Sinclair.<\/p>\n
Kirkman was hired in March, and the Learning Center opened May 8, 2006.\u00a0 Kirkman said he was responsible for hiring his own staff for the first time, and in the process was able to create a culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to ask ourselves, how do we make this thing work?\u201d Kirkman said.<\/p>\n
Kirkman said he struggles to remember any specific moment during his time at the Learning Centers (he took over the Huber Heights Learning Center in the summer of 2009).<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will sound cheesy, but it was all sweet,\u201d Kirkman said.\u00a0 \u201cThe best compliment I ever got was, someone told me that the Learning Center reminded them of when [the downtown campus] was younger.\u00a0 Sinclair as a whole is big, but our campus feels like a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Kirkman doesn\u2019t teach often\u2014he said he did teach a student success course, though\u2014 he does feel like he is a teacher because of his interactions with his student workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, our student ambassadors do more than answer phones,\u201d Kirkman said.\u00a0 \u201cThey are geniuses.\u00a0 They\u2019re better marketers than us, they know what is cool and they know what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirkman referenced Travis Binkley, now an IT lab specialist with Sinclair, who three years ago helped create the idea for Midnight Madness, an event at the Learning Centers where students can come and register for classes when registration begins at midnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents make the job easier,\u201d Kirkman said.<\/p>\n
Outside of Sinclair, Kirkman said he is working toward his Doctorate in Higher Education Administration at the University of Dayton, with only one more year to go.\u00a0 He hopes that the degree will help him \u201cmake the right choices for students.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his goal is to be the dean of students somewhere, maybe at Sinclair, because he loves making the connection with students and seeing them grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t create this quote, but I love it,\u201d Kirkman said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not about counting heads, it\u2019s about making heads count.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirkman said he also loves the quote from Sinclair\u2019s founder, David Sinclair, which also serves as the motto for the college: find the need and endeavor to meet it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a beautiful quote, because the need always changes,\u201d Kirkman said.\u00a0 \u201cThe need in the spring of 2006 is different than the need in April of 2011.\u00a0 We\u2019re still endeavoring to meet it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dawayne Kirkman said he wanted to be in education since before he went to kindergarten. Kirkman, the manager of the Huber Heights and Englewood Learning Centers, said he\u2019d play \u201cschool\u201d with his older sister while he was younger.\u00a0 She would always be the teacher or the principal because she was older, leaving him to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1EV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6381"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6418,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions\/6418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}