Babbitt credits her determination and Kirkwood degree for her career growth
Kirkwood alum Carol Babbitt can still vividly remember when life was a scramble to just get by.
“I was a single parent with no education. I had a high school diploma, two kids, a minimum wage job and a monthly house payment I couldn’t afford,” she recalls. “I was struggling. I needed to do something so I could support my family.”
It was 1989, and Carol wanted to change her life. She met with a counselor at Kirkwood Community College. Because Carol was mechanically inclined, she decided to enroll in the industrial maintenance technology curriculum. She was one of three women in the program, and it was, she now says, one of the best decisions she’s ever made.
Carol loved her Kirkwood instructors and their hands-on teaching methods. She studied math and hydraulics, working through training modules in labs that presented real operational problems for students to tackle.
“The instructors were just great,” Carol says. “They were really in touch with the work world. The material they taught and the information they covered is what we needed in the real world. I can’t say enough for them.”
With the help of financial aid, work study, scholarships and grants, Carol was on her way. As graduation neared in 1991, she helped organize and establish Kirkwood’s first job fair for the Industrial Maintenance department.
That job fair led directly to Carol’s first job as an entry-level technician with Johnson Controls, an international company with a branch in Cedar Rapids. When she began work at Johnson Controls, she knew she had succeeded in changing her life. Carol was only the second woman working there as a field technician.
Eventually Carol accepted a position at Siemens Building Technologies, the fifth largest corporation in the world. “They said they wanted a ‘fire guy’ and I should be it,” Carol recalls. Quite a compliment in a male-dominated industry, but she had proven herself to be a competent self-starter and a valued team member.
Carol became one of Siemens’ fire alarm technicians, working with many corporate clients. Today, twenty years after her first contact with Kirkwood, she works for ALL Secure Company in Cedar Rapids. Carol is still learning and still taking Kirkwood classes, most recently studying to be certified for Level III by the National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies.
Kirkwood’s assets have served others in Carol’s family, too. Her daughter completed two years of liberal arts courses at Kirkwood before transferring to a four-year college. Her son is taking introductory classes to find a new career. And her son-in-law is a head corporate chef who once taught in Kirkwood’s culinary program.
To those considering Kirkwood, Carol says this: “I’ve had so many positive things come to me from Kirkwood. Doors will open you never imagined.”
Believing in yourself is the first step. From there, Carol recommends the combination of Kirkwood and a good philosophy her dad taught her and her sisters.
“He used to say to all of us, ‘don’t ever let anybody tell you there’s anything you can’t do,’” Carol says. “Kirkwood convinced me that I could do anything.”
[This story originally appeared in the Kirkwood Foundation 2009 Annual Report. To find out more about the Foundation’s work to support students, visit our Web site]: