By Chris Curtis

Like most professors, I’ve accumulated small gifts from students over my career: a Sigmund Freud pencil sketch, copies of Psychology for Dummies and The Journal of Irreproducible Results, a collection of Peanuts cartoons titled Way Beyond Therapy.

I teach psychology, if you haven’t guessed, yet my most prized memento is the Delta College-themed water bottle sitting on my desk. I owe it to the Michigan Reconnect Program.

For almost 25 years, I carried around an increasingly dented green water bottle which elicited many comments, including one from Kyle Hanshaw, a Michigan Reconnect student who said, “I bet that bottle has a few stories to tell.” Kyle has a powerful story of his own.

During class, he always sat in the front row near the door, in case he needed to step out for a call from family or work. Not that Kyle isn’t devoted to his studies, but as an older, non-traditional student, and as a parent, his life commitments occasionally require immediate attention.

Kyle is raising a family with his wife, while working as a recovery coach at a local addiction center, all while taking courses at Delta. It’s a busy schedule for an accomplished student—one who has overcome so much to get here.

Earlier in his life, and like many in our communities, Kyle struggled with addiction. As often happens, some bad choices followed and so did run-ins with the law. Clearly, academic studies were not at the top of Kyle’s mind for more than a few years in his life.

However, as he recovered from addiction, Kyle’s focus returned—a focus on his new family; a focus on helping others; a focus on improving himself.

The Michigan Reconnect Program allows students like Kyle to attend Delta College and other Michigan community colleges tuition-free, clearing an obstacle so they can take steps toward a better career—careers that require education, training, and credentials beyond high school.

Careers like the one he’s pursuing: social work. Kyle had stepped away from a career path earlier; now he is reconnected and moving to join a much-needed, in-demand profession that is experiencing shortages.

Kyle’s life experiences, worn in the sleeve of tattoos on his arms and heard in the keen observations of his questions, have already taken him part of the way to reconnecting with his academic potential in social work.

Now the Michigan Reconnect Program provides Kyle the opportunity to leverage his drive and dedication to improve his life, and to help others.

When Kyle shared his perspective on addiction and brain chemistry, I knew he had the time at home to focus on course materials. When he laughed that a class video on perceptual illusions was a dinner-table topic of conversation, I knew he had the time to be present with his family and model what a successful student looks like to his son.

At the end of the semester as I walked down the hall from my last session, I heard a student say, “I know you can afford your own water bottle, but I thought you might like a new one.”

Thank you, Michigan Reconnect, for making college affordable to students like Kyle.