(Back to the index) (Back to the beginning of this issue)	This article first appeard in The Sun News (www.thesunnews.com) of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on May 13, 2010. It is reproduced here with permission. Embedded among the more than 300 students who received degrees, diplomas, and certificates at Brunswick Community College Wednesday were nine students from the Brunswick County Early College High School, the first graduates of the program that debuted four years ago. The nine are among 20 of the school's first graduating class who have chosen to move on this year. Eleven others will not have degrees from BCC, but will have college credits. Thirty others will take the full five years of the innovative high school program and graduate next year. Kiley Brandt, 18, was the first of the first. Brandt led off the BCC students receiving associate degrees and thus became the first early college high school graduate in Brunswick County and possibly one of the first in North Carolina. Brandt said before the ceremony that she doesn't know where she would have gone to high school if not for the program, which allows students to complete high school and college work in four or five years and move into four-year colleges with credits that will vault them forward, possibly taking two years off a traditional four-year course. Brandt received two degrees Wednesday, one each in arts and science, and she will take them with her this fall when she enters Elon University in Burlington, N.C., a private school that touts what it calls engaged learning that involves multiple internships, study abroad, and the like. Thirteen early college high schools were chartered in North Carolina in 2005, said Sara Clark of the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, and all were, like Brunswick County's, five-year programs. That means this is what the state counts as the first graduating year for the initial students, which now total 10,500 in 70 high schools and colleges statewide. Brandt and her colleagues at Brunswick County's Early College High School, which opened in 2006, will statistically be counted as part of next year's graduating class. Horry County has more than 300 students in its Early College High School program, which is designed as a four- to five-year course of study, as are some in North Carolina. Horry County students take their high school classes at Horry-Georgetown Technical College's Conway campus. Now they graduate from their home high schools, but in four years, they will graduate from Early College High School, and a new building is being constructed on HGTC's Grand Strand campus with Horry County Schools. Todd Silbeman of the N.C. New Schools Project, a public-private partnership dedicated to fostering programs such as early college high schools, said North Carolina is not a pioneer of the concept, but it has by far the most participating high schools of any state. Brandt said she will initially enter college as a psychology major but wasn't sure if that would last until she gets her four-year degree. She values the early college experience because it has an atmosphere of small classes and student-teacher relationships that fits her personality better than a large high school, she said. The Early College High School debuted with 90 students in 2006, said Vicky Snyder, the school's principal, and 40 of them decided their education would be best served elsewhere. Brandt and two of her classmates said some students may have wanted to participate in sports or have a greater variety of activities to choose from. Early college high school "weeds out people," Brandt said. "The people who are supposed to be here stay here." Classmate and fellow graduate Tiffany Booker, 17, who got an associate's degree in science at Wednesday's ceremony, said the experience matures students and prepares them for the upper-level college courses they will soon undertake. Booker is headed to UNC-Chapel Hill as an academic junior in pre-med studies. She said the smaller classes were a difficult adjustment at first, but they led to greater growth for her and others. "Now I kind of go out of my shell a little bit and do things out of my comfort zone," she said. Some schools said it will be midyear before they decide in which class they will place their new early college students, and some say it will be the end of the first year, said Secanda Seifred, school counselor at Brunswick County's Early College High School. They will enter as freshmen, officially known as first-time undergraduates, and as such will have the full benefits for housing and scholarships. Fay Agar, director of early college high school for NC DPI and the New Schools Project, said the students will be classified differently for different things. For instance, their status will be as first-time undergraduates for things such as scholarships or housing. But their academic classification may be as a sophomore or junior, depending on the number of credits they transfer from Brunswick Community College. Early college students who receive an associate's degree will be academically classed as juniors. She said the exact number of credits students will receive at four-year schools in the UNC system is set out in an articulation agreement that predates early college high school. Brandt's situation is somewhat different from other graduates because private schools such as Elon aren't bound by the agreement. The uncertainty about college credits that may or may not transfer may be a concern for the students' parents, but students such as Brandt and Booker say their experiences have been valuable, and they're not really concerned about the eventual tabulation. "I would be mildly disappointed if credits don't transfer," Brandt said, "but my mother would be furious." Back to the index	For more information, contact the author, Steve Jones, at sjones@thesunnews.com.