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’d play “school” with his older sister while he was younger. She would always be the teacher or the principal because she was older, leaving him to be the student.
It wasn’t long, though, before he was graduating high school (the first of his father’s side of the family to do so) and then graduating college (Berea College, in 1998; the first from his father’s side or his mother’s side to so). Kirkman said he felt a strong burden in being the first.
“It was like, if Dawayne doesn’t do it, then there is no hope for the Kirkman family,” he said. “I didn’t want to let anyone down.”
The experience he had at Berea is important to him. Kirkman said he is “extremely proud” to have graduated from there, in part due to the atmosphere. At Berea, all students must work at least 15 hours a week, according to Kirkman, in order to pay for tuition. Kirkman said he made “about $2 an hour” and the rest went to tuition. Because of that, the student body is more equal.
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.
After graduating from Berea, Kirkman next went to Appalachian State University for a semester, where he said he was struck by the different atmosphere.
“I was like, oh, I don’t miss this,” Kirkman said. “There were kids there driving cars that I couldn’t afford today!”
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. Kirkman said he applied for the job in Boston, and initially did not get it. 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. Kirkman said they called him back and gave him the job, and he did end up getting paid.
Kirkman had also started at Wright State University by then, where he worked in the same program and helped raise money. One day, a friend told him about a job opening in Outreach at Sinclair Community College. He said he looked at it and applied; his first day as admissions counselor was August 13, 2002.
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. Kirkman said he did that for 3 years.
“It was a lot of fun,” Kirkman said.
Right about that time, Sinclair had decided to open a Learning Center in Englewood. When Kirkman heard about it, he said he was determined to get the job.
“I will apply, and I will get that job,” Kirkman said.
He did end up being hired, but it wasn’t only on his own skills. Kirkman said he enlisted his friend Kelly Vogelsong to help him create a marketing campaign to get himself hired. They created flyers, mailers and other items, all in their free time, outside of Sinclair.
Kirkman was hired in March, and the Learning Center opened May 8, 2006. Kirkman said he was responsible for hiring his own staff for the first time, and in the process was able to create a culture.
“We had to ask ourselves, how do we make this thing work?” Kirkman said.
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).
“This will sound cheesy, but it was all sweet,” Kirkman said. “The best compliment I ever got was, someone told me that the Learning Center reminded them of when [the downtown campus] was younger. Sinclair as a whole is big, but our campus feels like a family.”
Although Kirkman doesn’t teach often—he said he did teach a student success course, though— he does feel like he is a teacher because of his interactions with his student workers.
“You know, our student ambassadors do more than answer phones,” Kirkman said. “They are geniuses. They’re better marketers than us, they know what is cool and they know what they want.”
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.
“Students make the job easier,” Kirkman said.
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. He hopes that the degree will help him “make the right choices for students.”
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.
“I didn’t create this quote, but I love it,” Kirkman said. “It’s not about counting heads, it’s about making heads count.”
Kirkman said he also loves the quote from Sinclair’s founder, David Sinclair, which also serves as the motto for the college: find the need and endeavor to meet it.
“That’s a beautiful quote, because the need always changes,” Kirkman said. “The need in the spring of 2006 is different than the need in April of 2011. We’re still endeavoring to meet it.”