My View: Highland Community College Foundation seeks distinguished alums One of the things that continues to be amazing to me is the plethora of Highland Community College graduates who live, work, raise families, volunteer and are involved in their communities in northwestern Illinois.This is contrary to the thinking that local high school grads who get a college degree never return, which may be the case sometimes but not all the time.No one has any solid research or documentation with definitive statistics of which I am aware, so during the five years I have been the foundation’s executive director I have been asking this question before various groups: “If you attended Highland or graduated from HCC, please stand up.” Then I inquired, “Would those of you here tonight who have attended Highland, earned a degree or certificate or graduated from the Leadership Institute or Forum, please stand?”From my place on the stage, it was easy to calculate that more than half over 200 of those present were Highland alumni.So now I challenge you to find an HCC Alum and, if appropriate, nominate one or more for the HCC Foundation’s Distinguished Alumni Award.This year is the 22nd annual presentation of Distinguished Alumni Awards. Recipients will be honored during the foundation’s annual meeting and dinner in October.The nomination form indicates that the foundation is seeking persons who have shown community leadership, made their start at HCC and believe in the mission of higher education. The nominee does not have to live in the HCC district and can be self-nominated.To obtain a nomination form, contact Pat Dunn at the HCC Foundation office at 815-599-3413 or by email at foundation@highland.edu. 16.Since the award’s inception in 1995, the HCC Foundation and Highland Community College have recognized more than 100 individuals as distinguished alumni.Page 2 of 2 – Remember, they’re everywhere. There are many forms of financial assistance available to college students federal as well as state grants, such as Pell grants and MAP grants.The HCC Foundation is the major source of local financial assistance for HCC enrollees. mainImageContainerInnerHTML_sm += ”+mainImageData_credit+”; mainImageContainerInnerHTML_sm += ”+mainImageData_caption+”; $(‘#art-main-image-credit-container_sm’).css(‘width’,smimgwidth).css(‘padding’,’3px ‘+(mainImageData_leftPadding – 3)+’px 0 0’); $(‘#art-main-image-caption-container_sm’).css(‘width’,sm_img.width).css(‘padding’,’5px 0 0 ‘+(mainImageData_leftPadding + 3)+’px’); $(‘#art-main-image-caption-container’).css(‘width’,img.width).css(‘padding’,’5px 0 0 ‘+mainImageData_leftPadding+’px’);