The 20 or so students dressed in lab coats and sitting behind microscopes at Forsyth Technical Community College yesterday experienced a different side of President Obama than did the 350 people who heard him deliver a nuts-and-bolts political speech on the west campus.
In two of the school’s biotech labs, Obama shook hands with each of the students, often placing a hand on one of their shoulders. He asked them what they were studying and how they wound up in community college.
In Alan Beard’s classroom, Obama chatted with Anitra Monroe-Caldwell, who was laid off from her job in the textile industry. Obama peered into her microscope and blurted: “It’s alive!” then quickly added, “That’s a joke, guys.”
He remained lighthearted throughout his 30-minute visit to the main campus, where he was accompanied by Gary Green, the school’s president, and Gov. Bev Perdue.
He listened intently, often putting his hand on his chin, as students explained what they were studying, which ranged from the culture of cells to recombinant DNA.
“I’m very inspired by what you are doing,” he told students in Lucien Houenou’s lab. “This is cutting-edge stuff.”
David Purser, 39, has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from UNC Charlotte. He is studying recombinant DNA because he wants to pursue a job in the biotech field.
Purser said seeing Obama was “surreal.”
“You don’t see the president up-close and personal every day,” said Purser, who will graduate from Forsyth Tech this month. “I had no idea what to expect, whether he’d show up for the camera crew and talk to us from a distance or whether it would be like this. Everything was a surprise, including the fact that he spent so much time talking with us.”
Kathy Proctor told Obama that she had worked in the furniture industry for 30 years but knew that those jobs were disappearing.
“I seized the opportunity to come back to school and retrain,” Proctor said.
Obama seemed to particularly like that story. In his speech on the west campus, Obama referred to his visit with the students at Forsyth Tech and mentioned how some of them had looked into the future and realized that they needed to improve their skills to better suit the changing global economy.
These days, people can expect to work in a number of fields rather than spend an entire career in tobacco or textiles, he told the students in Houenou’s lab.
“This is where you’re going to get your competitive edge,” Obama told them. “You’ll have high skills, high value and hopefully, high wages.”
lodonnell@wsjournal.com
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