Aden Rouse graduated from South Lenoir High School last June and, by virtue of the college credits she earned through a partnership between LCPS and Lenoir Community College, she is now classified as a member of the senior class at North Carolina State University.

A few weeks back, barely six months after she had graduated from South Lenoir High School, Aden Rouse received an email from administrators at her new university, N.C. State. The message was this: Aden was now considered a member of the senior class and could graduate with a bachelor’s degree this spring.

The email was no mistake. It was an acknowledgement – in the mathematical certainty of credit hours and course requirements met – of Aden’s hard work at South Lenoir and at Lenoir Community College, where as a dual enrollment student in a cost-free program called Career and College Promise (CCP) she successfully completed enough college courses to earn two associate degrees from LCC by the time she picked up her high school diploma.

Since she entered N.C. State as an 18-year-old junior, Aden anticipated getting a jump on graduation; but she didn’t figure on earning a four-year degree from a major university in a year.

“I was definitely surprised,” she said by phone from Raleigh last week. “I had already intended staying here for two years to finish up a bachelor’s degree and planned on adding on a minor in nutrition. When I got that email I was thinking, ‘Good gracious, I didn’t think I’d moved that quickly.’”

In the end, the pace of her success has not changed as much as condensed her plans. An animal science major, she intends to add the minor in animal nutrition, finish her bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2022, continue on to graduate school for a master’s degree in animal nutrition and then spend four years at veterinary school, preferably at N.C. State.

“I’ll be 19 or 20 when I get out of grad school and am applying to vet school,” she calculated. She hopes to be a veterinarian and working in Lenoir County by the time she’s 24.

“This is the power of what CCP and advanced classes can do for a student,” said Amy Jones, the district’s director of high school education. “All in all, Aden’s education could include a major, a minor and a graduate school degree and can be completed in approximately the same amount of time and for the same cost as one undergraduate degree.”

Shortening the timeline has become a trend with Lenoir County Public School students. Each year, 30 or more seniors at Lenoir County Early College High School – the district’s alternative school geared to accelerated learning – graduate with a diploma and associate degree; and in recent years, the trend has spread to the district’s three traditional high schools.

In 2016, one LCPS senior from a traditional high school left with a diploma and a degree. In 2020, 14 did, no doubt encouraged by the earlier success of other seniors, open to the opportunity offered by the strong partnership between LCPS and LCC and aware of the financial advantage of dual enrollment – a savings of $20,000 or more in college costs a year.

“The dual enrollment courses help prepare you, but they were also a tremendous help for my family financially,” Aden said. “That was one of the other reasons behind my drive, working so hard and taking Christmas classes and summer classes, because that was something I could do for my family, to take some stress off of my parents. I don’t regret staying busy.”

And she was busy at South Lenoir – FFA, Student Council Association, Vet Tech team, marching band, Quiz Bowl team, Science Olympiad team, Math I peer tutor and an internship at Five Oaks Animal Hospital in Kinston, where she still works every other weekend.

“I’m not going to say it was easy. There was a lot of stress and strain at times, but I would definitely say that it was worth it, that I got to experience clubs and school activities and also being able to get college credit transfers,” she said.

“Aden has always been a student who stands out,” Candi Tyndall, a school counselor at South Lenoir, said. “She doesn't wait for something to be handed to her, she goes after what she wants. I could not be prouder of Aden Rouse and I can't wait to see all she will accomplish in the future!”  

After a first semester at N.C. State spent mostly online and off campus because of coronavirus, Aden is finding her second semester at the university more normal and more to her liking. More of her classes are in-person, including labs that put her in actual contact with animals as opposed to watching them on video, and more opportunities are opening up on campus and in and around Raleigh, like the Wake County horse camp where she’s volunteering.

“I don’t think I got a big shock in transferring to a four-year university,” Aden said. “It definitely was a big adjustment, especially with Covid, but I do feel like I was better prepared as a result of attending Lenoir County Public Schools vs. anywhere, but I’m a little biased.”

As a virtual student for many dual enrollment courses, she came to N.C. State familiar with the university’s online learning systems; and the focus it took to finish high school while accumulating 75 college credit hours “helped prepare me for university as far as the workload and studying,” she said.

But what prepared her most for college, she said, was the support of caring people – her parents, Amy Strickland-Rouse and Gregory Rouse of Seven Springs; school counselors like Tyndall and Amy Eason, the counselor when she was at Woodington Middle; and teachers like Ryan Gardner, the Science Department chair at South Lenoir.

 “I do owe a lot of my success, academically and personally, to the staff and administration of not only South Lenoir but also Lenoir County Public Schools in general,” Aden said. “There were just amazing teachers who strived to see you learn and succeed.”