VGCC Student meets Scholarship’s Namesake


From left, Ann Rose Allen and VGCC student Erica Medlin are pictured in front of the Guild Gift Gallery at Maria Parham Medical Center. (VGCC Photo)

From left, Ann Rose Allen and VGCC student Erica Medlin are pictured in front of the Guild Gift Gallery at Maria Parham Medical Center.
(VGCC Photo)

The Endowment Fund at Vance-Granville Community College makes an ongoing effort to connect the students who receive endowed scholarships with the donors who made those scholarships possible and with the people in whose honor they were established. This often takes place at the annual VGCC scholarship awards ceremony. The namesake of one scholarship, Ann Rose Allen of Henderson, could not attend the most recent ceremony, but still made the connection with the student recipient, and a friendship was born.

Erica C. Medlin of Oxford, a student in the Associate Degree Nursing program at VGCC, became the first recipient of the new “Ann Rose Allen/Guild Gift Gallery at Maria Parham Presidential Scholar Award” this year. As all students receiving scholarships are encouraged to do, Medlin sent a thank-you note to Allen, who was touched by the gesture and called the student. They arranged to meet up for lunch one day.

“When I met her, I was so impressed that she was working on a degree and raising three young children at the same time,” Allen said. “We talked for hours, mostly about our families. She’s as sweet as can be.” Allen has kept in touch with Medlin since then and hopes to continue doing so.

“I told Erica that if I were ever sick, she would be my first choice for a nurse, because she’s so calm and listens so well,” Allen said. “The college did a wonderful job selecting her for this scholarship.”

Medlin enrolled at VGCC after already earning a bachelor’s degree in Health Services Management from East Carolina University. She had worked for a short time as a quality assurance coordinator at a local medical facility. Medlin recalled that in that job, she focused on illnesses and disabilities and how to use management skills to statistically improve outcomes in her previous positions. When she became the patient with a serious illness herself, however, her view of health care forever changed. “I became focused on the patient — the person — and that is why I returned to college to become a registered nurse,” Medlin said. She completed VGCC’s Nurse Aide I program as a first step, receiving a State Employees’ Credit Union Continuing Education Scholarship. Medlin is now on track to graduate with her associate degree in 2016.

“I enjoyed meeting and having lunch with Mrs. Allen,” Medlin said. “She is a wonderful woman with many life lessons that she has so graciously shared with me. I would not be able to accomplish my educational goals without the support of the Endowment Fund and the generous donors. I am truly grateful!”

The endowed VGCC scholarship that Medlin received — the seventh established by the Guild Gift Gallery at MPMC in recent years — was named in Allen’s honor to recognize her service as the original coordinator of the hospital gift shop.

The volunteer-operated Guild Gift Gallery offers convenience items and gifts as a service to both patients and visitors at the hospital. Profits from sales are used to provide scholarships to people entering the health care professions. Allen organized and coordinated the original hospital gift shop in its former location.

Gifts such as those from the Guild Gift Gallery have allowed the VGCC Endowment Fund to award more than 8,000 scholarships to students since 1982. Scholarships have been established by individuals, businesses, civic groups, churches and the college’s faculty and staff to assist deserving VGCC students. Tax-deductible donations to the VGCC Endowment Fund have often been used to honor or remember a person, group, business or industry with a lasting gift to education. For more information, call (252) 738-3409.