MECC Foundation Announces MECC Promise Program

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Beginning with the class of 2023, high school graduates will receive guaranteed two years of tuition assistance

Big Stone Gap — The MECC Foundation will launch the MECC Promise program, guaranteeing all high school graduates in our service region tuition-free community college beginning with the Class of 2023.

As part of MECC’s 50th-anniversary recognition, the MECC Advisory and Foundation Boards set a goal in 2022 to raise enough funding to support up to two -years of tuition coverage for high school graduates in Lee, Dickenson, Scott, Wise, and the city of Norton.

“The MECC Promise is intended to assist the students who have plans to enroll in community college post-high school, or those that go directly to employment,” said MECC President Dr. Kristen Westover. “While we need workers, SWVA needs skilled workers. Obtaining a skill set that leads to beyond entry-level employment is critical for our residents.”

In April 2022, the members of the Genan Foundation of Charlottesville, visited MECC to tour the campus and learn more about the college’s workforce initiative. MECC staff requested Genan Foundation’s support to raise educational attainment rates in southwest Virginia, which are about 20% below the state average.

In August 2022, the Genan Foundation announced a $750,000 gift to kick off the MECC Promise program, citing MECC’s commitment to building a skilled, trained workforce in the region. MECC President Kristen Westover and MECC Foundation Executive Director Amy Greear visited each local county’s Board of Supervisors and the Norton City Council to request additional support to secure program funding beyond 2023. The program will also be supported by private scholarships, by donors with the MECC Foundation.

To qualify, students must maintain a 2.0 GPA, be continuously enrolled for up to two years, or 72 credit hours, up to the completion of the applicant’s first Associate Degree; reside in the service area and provide proof of residency; complete a FAFSA and submit all required documentation annually, and complete MECC Scholarship Application annually. The MECC Promise scholarship will be a last-dollar scholarship for tuition only.

Greear stated that all students in MECC’s service region should now view college as a viable option in the next step of their future. Training beyond high school is critically necessary to building a skilled, trained workforce. “Students will be required to dedicate long hours of studying to maintain their scholarship funding, and they will have to pay for additional expenses outside of tuition. However, the MECC Promise Program will remove the financial burden of paying tuition. This is an incredible step in building the region’s workforce and the long-term economic stability of southwest Virginia.”

Located in Big Stone Gap, MECC is celebrating its 50th year serving students in Wise, Lee, Scott, and Dickenson Counties and the city of Norton. MECC serves more than 1,300 full-time students and more than 3,000 part-time or non-credit students in a variety of academic and career-technical programs. Learn more about MECC’s Promise Program at www.mecc.edu/promise.

For more information on the promise program, please contact the MECC Office of Public Relations, at 276-523-2400

 

-MECC-

MECC Foundation to Host 50th Anniversary Gala

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MECC Foundation to Host 50th Anniversary Gala

Big Stone Gap — Mountain Empire Community College Foundation will host the MECC 50th Anniversary Gala on Saturday evening, October 22, 2022, at Mountain Empire Community College.

The gala is black tie optional and proceeds from the event will go towards the 50th Anniversary Fund supporting scholarships, infrastructure and unrestricted needs.

The evening will begin with a reception in the Slemp Commons of Phillips-Taylor Hall at 6:30 p.m., followed by a dinner in the Goodloe Center at 6:45 p.m. A short recognition program will follow dinner, and musical entertainment by John McCutcheon will top off the evening.

Tickets for the event are $50 each and can be ordered online at the link above or by contacting MECC Foundation Annual Fund Coordinator Megan Gibson at 276.523.9078 or by email at mgibson@mecc.edu.

MECC Foundation to Host Scott County Scholarship Event

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MECC Foundation To Host Annual Scott County Scholarship Fundraiser 

 

Hiltons, VA – The Mountain Empire Community College Foundation will host Grammy-nominated, 2021 International Bluegrass Music Association’s Vocal Group of the Year and Grand Ole Opry Stars, Sister Sadie, for the 2022 Diamonds and Denim Event.

Sister Sadie

Sister Sadie

Diamonds and Denim will be held Saturday, April 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the beautiful Crooked River Farm in Hiltons, Virginia. Originally scheduled for August of 2021, the event was cancelled due to COVID-19. All paid tickets from the August event will be honored in full.

Now in its third year, Diamonds and Denim has raised more than $100,000 to benefit the Scott County Endowed Scholarship at Mountain Empire Community College. This year’s event will feature a dinner reception, locally sourced wine, beer and refreshments, a silent auction and entertainment.

More than 70 percent of all students in Scott County that choose to attend college in Virginia, attend MECC. The scholarship will provide opportunities for those students to reach their educational and career goals while lessening the financial burden of families.

This award-winning group originally formed after playing a sold-out show in 2012 at the legendary Station Inn, located in Nashville, Tennessee. In the group’s nine years as a band, they have gained many accolades.  In 2018, their sophomore album “Sister Sadie – II” debuted at #2 on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts and was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Bluegrass Album category in 2019.  In March of 2019, they made their debut on the Grand Ole Opry and have been regular guests on the world-famous stage since.  Sister Sadie became the first all-female group to be awarded Vocal Group of the Year at the 2019 IBMA Awards.  In 2020, they repeated that award plus took home the Entertainer of the Year Award.  The band is also featured in the “American Currents: State of the Music” exhibition through March 2022 at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.  Most recently, the band took home, for the third consecutive year, Vocal Group of the Year at the 2021 IBMA Awards show in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sister Sadie is made up of world-renowned musicians and singers – Gena Britt on banjo, Deanie Richardson on fiddle, Hasee Ciaccio on acoustic bass, Jaelee Roberts on guitar, and Mary Meyer on mandolin.

Tickets are $75 per person and $150 per couple. Tickets can be purchased at www.meccfoundation.org/scevent and at the Scott County Farm Bureau office at 378 W Jackson St, Gate City, VA 24251.

For more information on the Scott County Endowed Scholarship or to donate to this fund, call the MECC Foundation office at 276.523.7480 or visit www.meccfoundation.org.

 

-MECC FOUNDATION- 

 

 

Dopesick Author Beth Macy Featured Speaker for John Fox Jr. Literary Festival

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Entries Sought for Lonesome Pine Short-Story and Poetry Contests

Big Stone Gap, VA — The MECC Foundation is pleased to announce the 46th annual John Fox, Jr. Literary Festival, a free virtual event featuring Beth Macy, renowned New York Times bestselling author, and executive producer of Hulu’s Dopesick, on Wednesday, March 2 from 10 a.m. to noon.

Beth Macy

 

In coordination with the festival event, the MECC Foundation will host the 35th Annual Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest and the 18th Annual Lonesome Pine Poetry Contest. The deadline for submitting entries is Wednesday, February 16 at 4:30 p.m. Entry categories include adult, high school (grades 9 through 12), and middle school (grades 5 through 8) categories.  Contest rules are available on the MECC Foundation website at 2022 Contest Rules. Winners of the contest will be announced during the Literary Festival Event. All winners will receive a cash prize.

 

The virtual festival will feature a discussion with Virginia author Beth Macy. Macy is the author of the critically acclaimed and New York Times-bestselling books, Factory Man, Truevine, and Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America (2018). Macy serves as an Executive Producer and writer on the acclaimed Hulu limited television series Dopesick, which is based on her book. All local middle and high schools are invited to participate in this virtual event at no cost. Students and community members are invited to submit questions for Macy at www.mecc.edu/jffestival22.

 

Growing out of three decades of reporting from the same Virginia communities, as her prior books did, Dopesick unpacks the most intractable social problems of our time: the opioid crisis, set against a landscape of job loss, corporate greed and stigma, along with the families and first responders who are heroically fighting back. Overdose deaths are now the equivalent of a jetliner crashing in our country every day, and yet the government response to the epidemic remains, in a word, impotent.

 

Dopesick is, in many ways, the sequel to Macy’s first book, FACTORY MAN. It lays out exactly how the jobless “other America” ended up couch-surfing with the likes of surgeon’s daughters and civic leaders’ kids who fall prey to prostitution, jail, and even death. Tom Hanks describes Dopesick as “a deep — and deeply needed — look into the troubled soul of America.” Stanford addiction medicine specialist and author Dr. Anna Lembke calls it the first book to capture the entirety of the epidemic, “with a fast-paced narrative, colorful and inspiring characters, vivid historical detail, and a profound sense of place.”

 

A longtime reporter who specializes in outsiders and underdogs, Macy has won more than a dozen national journalism awards, including a Lukas Prize for Factory Man, multiple shortlist and best-book-of-the-year honors for Truevine, and a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard for her newspaper writing.

A frequent speaker, teacher and essayist, Macy has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Oprah magazine, and Parade. Her approach to storytelling: Report from the ground up, establish trust, be patient, find stories that tap into universal truths. Get out of your ZIP code. To do good journalism, be a human first.

 

Her book, Raising Lazarus, Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Drug Crisis (August 2022), focuses on solutions to the opioid crisis and the heroic efforts of frontline workers applying harm reduction practices on the streets of America. It also will document the efforts of the Sackler family to avoid responsibility for the crisis they helped create.

 

For more information on the MECC Foundation, please visit our website at www.meccfoundation.org.

-MECC Foundation-

 

MECC Foundation Announces $1.5M Slemp Foundation Gift for Outdoor Amphitheater

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Big Stone Gap — The C. Bascom Slemp Foundation will provide a $1.5M gift to construct a 1000-seat outdoor amphitheater on the campus of Mountain Empire Community College for campus and community events.

The gift comes as the MECC Foundation launches a campaign to raise $2M as part of the college’s 50th anniversary. Fundraising will support three priorities as defined by the MECC Foundation – scholarships, infrastructure needs, and unrestricted giving. The college commemorated the 50th anniversary of its groundbreaking with a community picnic held on Friday, October 1, 2021. Additional events, including a community concert featuring country artist Darrell Scott and local band If Birds Could Fly is scheduled for Saturday, May 14, 2022 and a 50th Anniversary Gala on Saturday, October 15, 2022.

“MECC is appreciative of the Slemp Foundation’s generous gift honoring our 50th anniversary as well as their investment in providing an amazing outdoor venue for student and community cultural opportunities on MECC’s campus,” said MECC President Kristen Westover.

The outdoor amphitheater project is the first major infrastructure addition to the MECC campus in more than a decade and has been included in the college’s Master Facilities Plan for many years. The projected cost of the project is expected to land between $1.5M – $5M depending on the scale of additions such as public restrooms, covered seating areas, and sound and lighting equipment. The Slemp Foundation has requested a $500,000 match in additional fundraising for the project.

The amphitheater is expected to be constructed in the field adjoining Phillips-Taylor Hall’s Goodloe Center, with the Powell Mountain visible in the background. The college expects to hold graduation, outdoor classroom learning opportunities, Home Craft Days and Mountain Music School events, as well as partner with Pro-Art, the Crooked Road, the Barter Theater, and other municipal and non-profit entities to host community events at the facility.

“The Slemp Foundation is pleased to be able to participate in this project and value the long-term impact that it will have in these communities,” said Nancey Edmonds Smith, Co-Trustee.

When Mountain Empire Community College was established fifty years ago, Virginia Community College Chancellor Dana Hamel proclaimed, ‘It’s a Great Day to be alive in the Commonwealth’ and the late Big Stone Gap native Governor Linwood Holton claimed ‘It’s Opportunity Time.’ The late Governor Holton and Chancellor Hamel were correct 50 years ago … and today. In this 50th anniversary year, and beyond, we can make every day a Great Day and Opportunity Time at Mountain Empire Community College,” said MECC Foundation Chair Mark Musick.

“This is an incredible opportunity for not only the college but our community to host large-scale learning events, festivals, and music and cultural heritage events on campus. This will be a wonderful addition to the venue offerings in Southwest Virginia, supporting economic development and community engagement in our region. We are grateful to the Slemp Foundation for their continued support of MECC, our students, and our entire community,” said Dr. Amy Greear, Executive Director of the MECC Foundation.

The Slemp Foundation is a private foundation established through the will of the late Campbell Bascom Slemp, U.S. Congressman from Virginia. The Slemp Foundation has awarded over $34 million in scholarships, pledges and charitable grants since its inception in 1946. With the growth of this Foundation, virtually every aspect of life in Lee and Wise Counties has been influenced.

The Mountain Empire Community College Foundation supports the mission of Mountain Empire Community College by providing scholarships and funding for student success programs, professional development for faculty, and cultural programs for the community. The Foundation supports more than $800,000 in scholarships annually. For information on the college’s 50th anniversary, visit www.mecc.edu/mecc50. To give to the MECC Foundation, visit www.meccfoundation.org/give.  For more information regarding scholarships or to establish a scholarship, please contact the Mountain Empire Community College Foundation at 276.523.7466 or visit www.meccfoundation.org.