Halifax Community College will celebrate its 55th Founders Day Thursday at 9 a.m. in the Griffin Centre.
The keynote speaker will be the North Carolina Treasurer Dale R. Folwell.
He is responsible for the more than $111 billion state pension fund that provides retirement benefits for more than 950,000 teachers, law enforcement officers, and other public workers.
He was elected in 2016 and re-elected to his second term in 2020.
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His public service career as an elected official includes serving on the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education and serving four terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He also served one term as speaker pro-tempore.
He began his career as a blue-collar worker and became a certified public accountant and investment advisor after attending Winston-Salem State University and earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from UNC-Greensboro.
In 2013, he was named the assistant secretary of commerce and led successful efforts to pay off $2.7 billion in federal unemployment debt and build a $1 billion surplus in just 30 months.
Married for more than 30 years, he and his wife, Synthia, have three children and live in Winston-Salem.
During the Founders Day Ceremony, HCC will also have an alumni spotlight from Jeanne Johnson who graduated from HCC in 2005 with an associate of arts degree in teacher prep. While a student at HCC, she was awarded the state Community College System Academic Excellence Award and was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society.
After graduation from HCC, she continued the teacher prep program with Elizabeth City State University and graduated summa cum laude with her BS in elementary education.
Currently, she is a teacher at Belmont Elementary School in Roanoke Rapids where she teaches first grade and cooperating teacher for a student teacher in fall 2021, and currently is the grade-level chair for first grade.
In 2016, she was awarded Teacher of the Year at Belmont Elementary School.