Pellissippi State student graduates high school, college in same academic year
When Stephani Turner walks across the stage at Pellissippi State’s Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 9, she’ll be the College’s first student to receive a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in the same academic year.
Turner, an 18-year-old Knoxville resident, started taking classes at Pellissippi State four years ago.
A home-school student, she enrolled part time here and earned high school and college credit through the Dual Enrollment program. Turner received her high school diploma in December and graduates from Pellissippi State with a degree in Business Administration, concentrating in Marketing.
Turner is the oldest of five children, and her parents home-school all of them. When she first started classes at the College, she recalls, her mother had to drive her to campus.
“My mom would bring schoolwork from my siblings to check, and she’d just stay in her car and I would go to my classes.”
Turner says she liked the atmosphere at Pellissippi State, made friends and took about 10 hours each semester on average.
“I think Pellissippi is a great school,” she said. “I would advise anyone who is going to attend a four-year university to start at a community college first. It’s a good transition.”
She plans a dual major in marketing and economics at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville and hopes to start classes there in spring 2010.
Pellissippi State’s Commencement ceremony is at 10:30 a.m., at UT’s Thompson-Boling Arena. This year’s speaker is State Rep. Joe Armstrong.
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