Our Featured Students
Luba Yesipenko
The student, the stork, and finding time for Chemeketa
College isn't a cakewalk at any time, but Luba Yesipenko has survived and thrived at Chemeketa Community College through some of her most trying times, even pregnancy.
"Last spring, I enrolled for spring term but I had to tell my instructors that I probably wouldn't make it through to the end. I had wonderful teachers throughout my pregnancy," said Yesipenko.
When she had her son, Timothy, near the end of her term, Yesipenko's instructors allowed her to finish her course work almost two months after the term ended.
"Everyone was so accommodating. It was like the first time I came to campus. Whenever I asked a question, the staff would not only tell me where I needed to go but lead me there," she said.
Yesipenko, whose family emigrated from the Ukraine, chose Chemeketa after being homeschooled throughout her high school career. She'd earned her diploma at the age of 16.
"It was so much more socialized here. It was so much better. There were so many clubs to join and activities to do," she said.
Yesipenko chose criminal justice as her major, with hopes of doing forensic work, and also found a job with the student life office. She completed her associate's degree in criminal justice by the time she was 18, but "still couldn't get enough of Chemeketa."
Her life outside of school was charging forward at full speed. She'd gotten married and soon found out she was pregnant. The pregnancy changed not only her home life, but her school work.
"I had to take a lot of online courses and a lot of evening courses, but everyone was very accommodating," Yesipenko said.
Working with the student life office, Yesipenko found she'd honed a skill for event coordination.
"I've been in charge of Project Pageturner for the past three years and I've loved planning every detail of it," she said.
Each year, Project Pageturner brings together a group of students from Hayesville Elementary School and Chemeketa students, faculty and staff to read books over milk and cookies.
"The (elementary) students also get to take free books home and watch a magician before they leave," she said.
She decided to continue studying at Chemeketa to pursue an event management certificate.
In addition to diverse course offerings, the diversity of the student body keeps Yesipenko coming back.
"I love the diversity here. You get to meet so many different people from different countries and learn from their experiences," she said. "It's one of the reasons I like working right next to the Multicultural Center."
Alex Morales
Learning the hard way
Alejandro "Alex" Morales expected Chemeketa Community College to be stricter than his experiences in high school.
"In high school my teachers were pretty lenient, and I learned that I could turn in certain assignments and not others and still get an 'A' in the class. It didn't serve me well," said Morales.
Morales, 19, enrolled in Chemeketa's Early College High School program thinking he could probably get by turning in assignments a couple of days late or even a couple hours after class. After teachers refused his assignments or lowered his grade because of lateness, Morales quickly adjusted his behavior.
"I learned the hard way that deadlines are deadlines," he said.
The son of a Native American mother and Mexican father, Morales had been participating in the Salem-Keizer School District's Indian Education program when he found out he could trade his senior year of high school for two years at Chemeketa and walk away with a transfer degree and high school diploma.
While some lessons, like deadlines, were tougher than others, Morales discovered an interactive element in Chemeketa classes that he hadn't experienced elsewhere.
"In an addiction pharmacology class we had study groups where we helped each other with homework and prepared for tests. It's not the same as in high school where you have to sort of stick with your own clique," he said. "The students here are always willing to come together to do better in class and get a better grade."
One of Morales' many goals is to become an addiction counselor - and a Lakota language instructor - at his reservation in Rosebud, South Dakota.
"Even as a high school student, I had a lot of friends who used drugs, from alcohol and pot to cocaine and meth, and I just thought that was ridiculous. It's such a hard thing to overcome," said Morales.
Another aspect of the Early College High School program should also prove useful in his chosen profession. Each term Morales must participate in service projects as part of his curriculum. He's discovered that the projects can benefit him as much as the people he's helping.
"Last year, I was a Spanish tutor and having the opportunity to speak it with someone else helped me improve my skills," Morales said.
Now in his second year, Morales is helping students new to the program confront the same challenges he faced. This term he's mentoring first-year students and helping them find their way at Chemeketa, imparting in his charges his educational values.
"Education is the most important thing in my life. I just want to keep it going," Morales said.
Davida Mallette
Life in the Express Lane
While some students are attracted to the wide variety of course offerings at Chemeketa Community College, there are those who are overwhelmed at the prospect of having to choose.
Davida Mallette, 19, was one of the latter.
"I was in high school and I was trying to take a statistics and a chemistry class, but the schedule was so tight that I could only take one in a classroom and another online. You also have to take an art class, but there are so many to choose from, I would get hung up," she said.
When she heard about Transfer Express, Mallette felt like the answer to her problems had arrived.
"It felt like it was designed for me," she said.
Transfer Express allows students enrolled in the program to complete their first year of college in seven terms by taking courses every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Classes will never be cancelled and, if a problem arises, Transfer Express students have a dedicated counselor, Karen Stevens, to help guide them over the bumps in the road.
Transfer Express was developed from specific feedback Chemeketa officials received from students.
"Students would end up with evening classes on Mondays and Wednesdays one term and then have to rearrange their work and babysitter schedules to make room for Tuesday and Thursday courses when the next term began," said Meg McGill, program director.
In addition to providing Mallette with a consistent schedule, Transfer Express took the stress out of her daily campus life.
"I don't have to worry about getting from class to class. I can take it easy because I always know exactly where I need to be and when to be there," she said.
Each term, up to 25 students can enroll in the program and new "express lanes" begin each and every term.
Once complete, Transfer Express students may transfer all 48 credits to any public four-year university in the state or continue on at Chemeketa and earn an associate's degree. Either way, each student receives three free credits that can be used for additional classes at Chemeketa.
For Mallette, whose father works for Chemeketa, Transfer Express allowed her to continue her education at the only place she could imagine doing so.
"I'd been around Chemeketa my whole life, and I didn't want to go somewhere else to start my college career," she said.
Katelyn Redinger
Beauty and the (Academic) Beast. The tale of a college newb.
Katelyn Redinger graduated from West Salem High School with honors in 2005, but for all her achievements, she still wasn't sure about continuing her education.
"When it came to college, my family were complete newbs," she said.
As the first child in her immediate family to graduate from high school, everything was unexplored territory. She was accepted for enrollment at Oregon State University and Western Oregon University, but it hadn't quelled her nerves in the least.
"I had a lot of anxiety problems in my last year of high school because I had really pushed myself in honors classes. I just wasn't ready to be shipped off and start classes and a new life in college," she said.
Chemeketa Community College allowed Redinger to remain in her comfort and support zone near home, but challenged her by offering a diverse range of classes that prepared her for the rigors of higher education at the next level. Redinger began to seriously consider Chemeketa as an alternative, despite the misgivings of her mother.
She toured the campus with her boyfriend and liked the vibe she felt there, but it was the course offerings that hooked her.
"I have been a fan of Japanese anime since I was like 8 years old. When I found out they had a Japanese language class, that was it. I enrolled in the transfer degree program," Redinger said. Redinger had a thirst for knowledge, but she still didn't know where to direct it. She enrolled in the Japanese language courses, but took advantage of many of CCC's other offerings. "I still had a lingering interest in herpetology, but I was taking courses in everything from anthropology to fine art," she said.
Her talent for stained glass work was discovered in Chemeketa class rooms and she took a Zen meditation class that helped calm some of her anxiety. She even began art modeling, an opportunity that eventually led to her becoming a model for several school publications. Redinger found her calling in technical theater, more specifically, prop handling. Redinger was an active theater student throughout high school, but Chemeketa was where she discovered her niche.
"Being a prop master requires being extremely organized and having everything in its place," she said. It seemed to be a perfect match for some of the habits she had developed in her hectic high school career.
In her second year, Redinger became an ambassador for the school. The program includes a grant for tuition and a place to work in the marketing and recruitment office, where she answers the constantly ringing phones and gives tours to campus visitors. She graduated in June 2007 and is now enrolled at Portland State University. Now, even her once doubtful mother believes she wouldn't have been able to do it any other way.
"Chemeketa has given me so much," said Redinger. "I found my calling, I found my niche in art, and I learned about how hard I was going to have to work to make it in college."
Chris Young
Quest to break the text messaging record
You know he's different by the way he holds his cell phone.
No casual one-handed grip and no Bluetooth here. Chris Young stabilizes the top of his phone with his index fingers. The remaining six are interlaced behind the phone, his left pinky juts out just enough to create a lip that keeps the phone from sliding out of his hands. It's not a gesture of love, but utility, his hands create the workspace for the tool, a Nokia 6010, or "Old Crusty". His thumbs fly across the small number pad.
He's texting.
"I got my first cell phone back in 2001 and a friend sent me a text message. It said, "Look this is a text message, we don't even need to be on the phone," said Young, 26, and a recent graduate of Chemeketa Community College.
A month after getting the phone, he got his first bill. It totaled more than $300. He'd sent more than 3,000 text messages in his first month; he still averages that many per month six years later.
"I liked it for the same reasons I liked instant messaging: I could carry on 20 different conversations at one time," said Young. "When I get on the phone with my Dad, I can pretty much kiss the next two hours goodbye. With text messaging I can be doing other things."
By 2004, and with all that practice, Young realized he had developed a skill for quick texting. For a time, he even worked in T-Mobile call center where he was able to best the "texting nerds" using his left hand. It stirred up hopes for a dream that had been gestating since childhood.
"I was always the kid who checked out the Guinness Book of World Records from the school library," he said. "I always wanted to be the best at something. I didn't care if it was collecting straws; I wanted to crack a world record."
Fastest text messager seemed like the perfect match, although that sounds more simple than it is.
The first question Young had to answer was: What was the current record?
He turned to an old friend, The Guinness Book. But it offered no answers, the book didn't even have a category for it.
"The thing people don't realize is that (Guinness) only compiles 1,800 records a year and those that get printed get an award of $25,000. Obviously, they're not going to give that out to just anybody," said Young.
Young also learned a lot about how thinly divided the text messaging field can be.
Some text message users are fast because the devices they use have predictive text, or software on their phone that makes educated guesses about the word being spelled and offers to complete the word with the touch of a button.
"That doesn't make you the world's fastest texter, it makes you the owner of the world's fastest phone dictionary," Young said.
There are also competitions in which the contestants know what phrases they need to type before the competition begins. A popular one is: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."
For Young, that still didn't cut it.
"That only makes you the world's biggest tweeker at that particular text message," he said.
Young was looking for something that challenged his ability. He found his answer in the Book of Alternative Records, a sort of clearinghouse for all the records Guinness decides not to print.
The holder of the fastest texting record typed a previously unknown, 160-character phrase in 92 seconds. Young knew he could shatter it, but it took more than two years for the stars to align in his favor.
"It was something so simple. All I really needed was someone who could write down a 160-character phrase and flip it over in front of me," he said.
He got his break during the High-Five Challenge, a quiz show competition sponsored by Chemeketa Community College. The organizer, Denice Heuberger, asked Young to tell the audience something interesting about himself. Young told them he was the world's fastest text messager, he was just looking for a place to prove it.
Heuberger set out to make it happen.
To qualify for the record, Young had to be videotaped from two different angles, have two timers, and provide a certificate of authentication from the college. Drawing on Chemeketa students in the visual communications program to help with the videotaping, the group set May 23 as the date Young would go for the record.
Heuberger flipped over the paper and the stop watches were started. The watches were stopped when Young placed Old Crusty on the table.
"We had it set up to where I would have ten attempts," said Young. "It only took two."
Young easily shattered the time record with his first attempt, but he had misspelled bumblebee "bumbkbee". He missed hitting the "5" button once to cycle from "k" to "l".
He clocked in with a time of 62.3 seconds using a phrase Heuberger pulled from the back of a credit card statement. Young declined the opportunity to try for a better time.
"I sort of wanted to leave the door open, because I would really like to try again and use it as a chance to raise money for a charity," he said.
Young had tried to set up the event with both Nokia (his phone provider) and T-Mobile (his service plan provider), but both declined.
After breaking the record (his entry in the Alternative Book of Records can be found by clicking here), Young became a known entity on the Chemeketa campus.
People would say, "Let me see you text message, send me a text message. Even my professors would ask about it," he said.
He's uncertain how long the record will stand, but he has a guess:
"I think it will stand until I decide to break it. I don't think anyone else would have wanted it bad enough to go through two years of trying," Young said.
In the meantime, he's happy enough to have bragging rights.
"I've got something to lie to the grandkids about. I'm going to tell them how I was so famous and went on a world tour. I'm going to cut the Courier heading off the newspaper and tell 'em it was in the New York Times," he said.
Young lives in Salem with his wife Meghan. He is currently a student at Western Oregon University and a self-employed entertainer.