HANCEVILLE – John Glasscock is Wallace State’s new Adult Education Coordinator.
Glasscock, 40, comes to Wallace State after previous stops at Central Alabama and Enterprise State and extensive General Education Development (GED) work in Colorado, where he served as an Adult Education instructor in prisons through the Colorado Department of Corrections in Denver.
“I’m excited to get back to something I’m very passionate about. My dad dropped out of high school and went back to earn his GED. The reason I’m sitting on this side of the desk is because of an Adult Education program that impacted my family. It’s very important to me,” said Glasscock, a native of Elmore County. “I’m excited to be a part not only of the Wallace State Adult Ed program, but the Wallace State family as a whole.”
Glasscock has been at Wallace State for less than two weeks. He takes over the day-to-day operations from Kelley Jones, who has added the responsibilities of Wallace State-Oneonta campus director. Jones has been the college’s Adult Education Director since April 2006.
From 2009-12, Glasscock worked as an Adult Education instructor with the Colorado Department of Corrections, providing GED instruction to remedial and at-risk students in a maximum security women’s correctional facility. He advised the students on community college and career and technical education options available upon GED completion, administered standardized tests to students and ensured the safety and security of the facility.
“The biggest thing I learned from teaching students in Colorado is it’s our job as educators to do whatever it takes to make sure students attain whatever goals they’ve set for themselves. We can help students believe in themselves when no one else will,” Glasscock said. “It doesn’t matter what has happened to someone in the past or what has caused them not to complete their education. If they are willing to learn, I want to do the best I can to help them earn an education. It may sound like a cliché, but getting an education truly does change lives.”
After his time in Colorado, Glasscock moved back to Alabama, where he spent three years as a retention specialist at Enterprise State and three years at Central Alabama Community College as a Title III researcher. Glasscock has also spent time as a high school teacher in Alabama.
Glasscock earned his bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Troy University and a master’s degree in secondary history education from Auburn-Montgomery.
Wallace State’s Adult Education classes are taught on campus, online and at selected off-campus sites in Blount, Cullman, Morgan and Winston Counties. Off-campus sites include churches, community centers, correctional facilities and rehabilitation centers.
Wallace State Adult Education instructors combined to teach 25,619 instructional hours last academic year as the program graduated one of its biggest classes.
“One of the things that impresses me about the Wallace State program is how thorough it is. It’s filtered through a lot of markets. We’ve got a lot of sites and reach a lot of people. That is very impressive to me because Adult Education is sometimes overshadowed and receives a small portion of the financial pie. It seems this program has been able to reach a lot of people with its limited resources,” Glasscock said.
Among some of Glasscock’s initial goals are tracking the educational progress of the Adult Education graduates into college and improving the soft skills or interview skills of the students as they prepare to enter the workforce.
For more information about the Wallace State Adult Education program, contact Glasscock at 256-352-8077.
For more information about Wallace State, visit wallacestate.edu.
