A Decade of Opening Doors

In the competitive world of college admissions, dreams are made or lost every May when soon-to-be high school graduates learn whether they’ve been accepted — or not — to their preferred university. With tens of thousands more applications than spots for fall admissions at NC State University, a lot of good students don’t make the cut.

But for the last 10 years, NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) has welcomed more than 700 students through the Student Transition Enrollment Advising and Mentoring (STEAM) program, which offers an alternate path to CALS for qualified students.

STEAM is part of the Gordon Family Farm-to-Philanthropy Program Endowment, which also provides a full-ride scholarship to select STEAM students. Dr. Joe Gordon and Debbie Kapp Gordon established the endowment in 2014 with a $3 million gift to increase access to higher education for rural and underrepresented North Carolina students. 

Joe Gordon earned a bachelor’s degree in animal science and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from NC State. In 1988, he founded Care First Animal Hospitals in Wake County. In 1989, his wife, Debbie Gordon, who double majored in math education and computer science at NC State, joined him as administrator for the hospitals. As alumni of the university, the Gordons understand the difference an NC State education can make and wanted to make sure deserving students had access to that opportunity.

“The competitiveness of primary admission had gotten to the point that it was really challenging for very qualified students who could still really thrive at the university to be admitted,” says Joe Gordon. “The goal was to increase access to the university for these students, and I think we’ve accomplished that with over 700 students admitted through this program.”

The STEAM program is an invitation-only program for students interested in agriculturally-related majors who are accepted through the university’s Spring Connect program. STEAM students receive mentoring, academic support, personalized courses and academic advising both leading up to their spring semester admission and beyond.

The Gordons’ gift also initially supported the A.S.P.I.R.E., or ACT Supplemental Preparation in Rural Education program, to help high school students in rural counties prepare for standardized college entrance examinations. That program has been paused as the UNC System shifts to a test-optional application process.

A decade on, Joe Gordon says it’s rewarding to see students who previously wouldn’t have had access to NC State excel alongside their traditionally admitted peers.

“Watching these students achieve and perform in the university setting at a level that we felt like they really could has just been a wonderful experience,” he says.

Creating Opportunities

As part of one of the first STEAM cohorts, Ben Alig understood the opportunity he was given when he received spring admission through the program in 2015 after initially not getting into NC State the previous fall.

Alig took full advantage of the program’s opportunities and graduated with his bachelor’s degree in poultry science in 2018 at the top of his class. Speaking to his fellow CALS graduates that year, he reflected: “The reason I didn’t initially get accepted to NC State four years ago was due to my grades. Now, the reason I’m standing up here today is because of my grades.”

Alig went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees in poultry science at NC State and today works as a biodevice development and validation scientist at Zoetis, a global animal health company based in Durham, North Carolina.

As more students gained access to CALS through the STEAM program, Debbie Gordon worked with the college and university to launch the full-ride scholarship associated with the family’s endowment.

“My passion was to enable students to graduate debt-free,” she says.

CALS awarded the first scholarship through the Gordon Family Farm-to-Philanthropy Program in 2019. Through program events, the Gordons got to build a relationship with the recipient, Taylor Rhodes Hill. Debbie Gordon recalls being impressed by a speech Hill gave at a Red and White Week event a few years ago.

“To be able to observe her growth from the time she started in the program to that evening was phenomenal,” says Debbie Gordon. “She really, really blossomed.”

Hill graduated with her bachelor’s degree in agricultural business management in 2021 before recently earning her master’s degree in agribusiness management from Mississippi State University. She works as a sales and marketing manager at J. Roland Wood Farms, a sweetpotato farm in Benson, North Carolina.

Forward Momentum

The success of the students in the STEAM program has inspired several other colleges within NC State to create their own version of the program and similar initiatives have also sprouted up at other institutions within the University of North Carolina System.

“It’s definitely an idea whose time has come in terms of providing more opportunities for deserving students,” says Debbie Gordon.

It also helped shift the conversation within CALS and across NC State, including the Office of the Chancellor, to focus less on GPA  and more on whether students in North Carolina’s economically distressed counties have the same kind of access to an NC State education as students in wealthier counties.

“It was neat to watch that conversation change following the initiation of the program,” says Joe Gordon, noting that he hopes to see more students from less-resourced counties gain access to CALS through the STEAM program.

Debbie Gordon also wants to galvanize giving to the endowment so that more students can receive a full-ride scholarship. To date, four students have received the scholarship, including agricultural education major Victoria Cooke, who was a spring 2023 STEAM enrollee.

“When I found out that I was selected as a recipient of the Gordon Family Farm-to-Philanthropy Program Endowment, I was in shock … Many students like me have hopes of achieving their dream careers but are overwhelmed by the financial burden,” Cooke told the Gordons during a 2023 donor event. “You provide opportunities and pathways for students to pursue these dreams.”

“If people can give at whatever level they’re comfortable, the numbers don’t seem so hard to achieve,” says Debbie Gordon. “The more people that participate and give, the more good can come from the program and the more students have a chance to be able to graduate debt-free.”

While the Gordons are excited to see what the next 10 years looks like for the Gordon Family Farm-to-Philanthropy Program, they are even more enthusiastic to see what the future holds for the students who have found a meaningful path in life with help along the way.

“I have a keepsake box where I save every thank-you note, and I’m very sincere about the students sending us text messages and letting us know how they’re doing, what they have going on and to be able to keep in touch,” says Debbie Gordon, a little teary eyed. “It matters to us because we care.”