Learning to be a Good Student Led to Academic Success
Kineka Hull has had a good year. It began with her graduation from UNCG in summer, 2001, with a BS in Biology. At the end of her senior year, she was voted "Outstanding All Around Student" by the Biology faculty.
She won a GANN fellowship for graduate work in Biology at North Carolina A & T University where she is currently enrolled. GANN stands for "Graduate Assistantship in Areas of National Need" and supports minorities in fields where they are underrepresented--teaching, nursing, and the sciences. In the summer of 2002, she was selected as a research assistant in Wake Forest University's Cancer Biology Department at Bowman Gray School of Medicine, where she will take part in research that will be the basis of her Master's thesis.
For all the honors that have come her way, Kineka will tell you that her academic success was not automatic. She had to learn to be a good university student. She did it as an adult.
After high school graduation in 1993, Kineka spent two and a half years at East Carolina as a traditional student. "There was no mom, no dad, no sisters . . . Just me, doing just as I pleased," she laughs. "I went from straight A's in high school to C's," she recalls. "I was surprised to find I wasn't ready for college." She withdrew from school and came back to Greensboro to work.
Jobs in retail and fast food convinced her to give school another try. High school friends had good things to say about UNCG. In the fall of 1998 she enrolled, but success did not come immediately. Kineka initially tried to continue working full-time as well as go to school "My first semester was awful," she remembers, "really bad."
A Key to Success: UNCG's Learning Assistance Center
A teacher recommended UNCG's Learning Assistance Center, which offers a skills assessment to help students determine their learning styles. "I'm a visual learner," Kineka discovered. "It doesn't do me any good to read and reread material . . . As a visual learner I have a short attention span." She learned how to organize information so she could retain it, using highlighters, index cards, flow charts, and pictures. She reduced her course load to strike a better balance between school and work. "The next semester, I had a 3.6," she recalls.
Another strategy for success was to work closely with her teachers. "If I didn't understand something, I'd go see the professor," Kineka says. "Now that I was paying for school, I wanted to be sure I got it." She found that when she showed an interest in the work, her professors "would tell me what I needed to know and then some." "I wasn't the best student in the class," she reflects, "but I worked hard and had a genuine interest. If YOU put forth the effort, your teachers put forth the effort."
Family Support also Important
Having the support of her family--her parents, 3 sisters, and a brother-- made a difference too. In fact, Kineka encouraged her father to return for his college degree, too. Her mom, who is a teacher, posted report cards on the refrigerator for all the family members in school and gave a cash prize to the person with the highest grades. Kineka's dad actually completed his program in Business a year before she did.
Along with her course work, Kineka took a job that offered flexible hours and experience in her field. Through her work at Greensboro Pathology Associates, a surgical dermatology lab, she found her career goals shifting. She realized that she did not want to work in an office as a pathologist. Although she is still interested in abnormalities, she wants to conduct research rather than become a diagnostician. She hopes to complete both a Ph.D. in Pathobiology and a medical degree so that she can sponsor and carry out her own projects.
Campus Involvement Helped Her Grow
"I feel really well prepared for my graduate work," Kineka says, comparing herself to others in her program at NC A&T. "UNCG is a very good school where I had good, nurturing teachers." In addition to her academics, she developed qualities outside of class at UNCG through campus involvement. When she served as an Adult Student Guide (a mentor for other adult students), she assisted a new student who became a close friend. What she learned as a mentor has helped her with the teaching she does as a graduate student.
"I really liked UNCG," Kineka says. "I wish I'd gone there from the beginning. I may have a new school now, but I haven't changed my bumper sticker."
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Page updated: 06-May-2009
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