Growing up in poverty in Spirit Lake, Iowa, Darwin Lawyer, JCCC counselor, remembers a high school counselor telling him that he shouldn't even try to go to college, but just settle for a factory job.

Instead, he persevered, obtaining his associate's degree from Iowa Lakes Community College, followed by a bachelor's degree in sociology from Northwest Missouri State University and a master's degree in counseling from University of Missouri-Columbia.

Darwin also remembers taking a community college course in graduate school. "Professor Gary Cox told me about a new exciting place called Johnson County Community College in Kansas City, so I applied and was hired, starting June 1, 1972," he recalls. "I decided to be a counselor because I have a place in my heart for broken-hearted people. I love to encourage others and watch students become successful when they did not believe at first they could be a success."

Darwin says the most rewarding aspect of his position is that every year he gets to see students accepted to all kinds of programs, the result of long and hard journeys in which there was no surety that it would happen.

"We all have to overcome barriers - my office door is covered with acceptance letters addressed to our students," he says. "My advice to our graduates is that discipline with passion always produces hope and completion of goals."