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Cathryn with three of her eight grandchildren.  Cathryn Vandiver Age: 56 Institution: Dalton State College Why is completing your college degree important to you? Completing my college degree will be a dream come true! I started this journey over 37 years ago and did not finish. Since then, I have raised a family as a single parent for 14 years with three young children. I worked two jobs for many years, and I was a legal secretary for attorneys for over twenty years. I currently keep three of my grandchildren while my two daughters teach school. I want my college degree because I need it to pursue my ultimate goal, and to be an inspiration to others that it is never too late to learn and contribute to society! Thank you for the opportunity eCore gives students like me who could not otherwise attend classes in person to get their college degree. Why did you choose to take online classes through eCore? It was offered by the college I wanted to attend, Dalton State

If you are currently, or soon-to-be in the market for a new job, then you have probably heard the saying – it’s all about networking. Employers today receive stacks and stacks of resumes for open positions, making it harder and harder to stand out as an applicant.  Sure, you may have impressive work experience and a killer cover letter, but odds are that there is at least one applicant in that stack who already has name recognition within the company – and that person is much more likely to get an interview. When searching for a job – it’s all about who you know. If you don’t know the right people, and the right people don’t know you – then you need to change that. The way to do that is through networking. Ten years ago, networking had a completely different meaning than it does today. Sure, joining and being active in professional groups is great, but today we have a much more powerful professional networking tool right at our fingertips  –  LinkedIn. To a beginner, LinkedIn can

If you are or ever have been a college student, you know that textbooks are expensive. Affordable Learning Georgia estimates that at the current rate, students in the University System of Georgia would spend a total of $1,400,000,000 on textbooks. With student loan debt already a major issue in our country, it goes without saying that this type of expenditure needs attention. So – what is the higher education industry, particularly in Georgia, doing to address this issue?   The answer is Open Educational Resources, or OERs, which are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching and learning. Many colleges and universities are making efforts to transition to the use of OERs in their classes as opposed to traditional textbooks, which provides a zero-cost textbook option to students. Our state is paving the way for this movement, with programs like Affordable Learning Georgia, which has set a goal of providing faculty in the USG with a ze