Kelly Browning’s second act is shaping up nicely.

  The Locust Grove resident is a year away from realizing her dream of becoming an elementary school teacher, as her junior year at Mercer University is wrapping up this week. She just took a less conventional route to get there.

  After 17 years as a preschool teacher, she enrolled at Southern Crescent Technical College with the simple goal of gaining certification that wills help her advance in her current job. Within a couple of years she found herself representing SCTC around the state as the recipient of the schools top leadership award.

  She decided to continue her education at Mercer, which in itself was a dream of hers as a teenager but something she had long thought was not an option. Now she is one of that school’s ambassadors, helping newer students navigate the uncertainties of higher education while continuing on her own path to graduation.

  Her studies as a high school student and young adult were hindered by Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), although she didn’t know it at the time because it was seldom diagnosed. She dropped out of two different colleges while in her 20s.

  Her family settled in Henry County in 1998 when her husband was hired at Delta Air Lines upon leaving military service.

  “I had always wanted to be an elementary school teacher,” she told the Times last week in an interview from her home, where she was finishing up the semester remotely as all Georgia college students are doing. “I taught preschool instead because that way I still got to teach without having the degree. Then I finally got the courage to try again.”

  By 2017 her own children were in college and not doing as well as she thought they should be doing. There were frequent phone calls as she tried to encourage them in their studies, reminding them of the great opportunity they had – one she wished she had taken advantage of.

  One day her son responded, “Well, Mom, why aren’t you doing it?”

  She thought about it and decided, ‘Why not?”

  Her initial enrollment at SCTC was simply to get a certification to make herself more valuable to her then-employer. “Three classes and be done,” she said. “But one thing led to another.”

  It was a combination of the help and encouragement she received from SCTC and her own realization that she could overcome the things that held her back in the past, like ADD, that kept her going. She earned all As the first semester and decided to continue enrolling.

    After being nominated by one of her professors, Browning was chosen from a field of 26 candidates for the school’s Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership (GOAL). It is the top award of each of the state’s 22 technical colleges and it involved an extensive interview process. After becoming SCTC’s selection, she entered the regional competition and was ultimately one of the nine finalists for the state award. Not bad for one of 217,000 technical college students in all of Georgia.

  “It was exciting,” she said. “It changed the trajectory of my life.”

  Going through that process helped Browning realize that she didn’t need to stop with just an associate’s degree, which was her original goal when enrolling at SCTC. She knew she could go farther.

  It was almost the beginning of her tenure at Mercer when she was asked to be a student ambassador. There are 11 at the Henry County campus, answering questions for new students who come in. She has also begun sharing that knowledge through an “Ask Kelly” column that appears in The Den, Mercer’s online resource center for campus news and information. She has written four pieces, mostly about the current virtual learning situation, covering such topics as how to do group assignments while isolated or just how to juggle school and family responsibilities with everything going on right now.

  Browning did her studies at SCTC while continuing at her preschool job, but she no longer does that because of student teaching requirements that come with her Mercer program. She was working one day a week at Rocky Creek Elementary School until the COVID-19 shutdown.

  But her professional experience, not to mention her life experience, since that first attempt at college so many years ago has made the second time around much easier to handle. She also gives much credit to the current configuration of Georgia’s technical college system.

  “In the past, technical colleges just gave certifications and diplomas. There was no way to go to a four-year college straight from there,” she said. “The way Georgia has aligned everything, now you can do that. Just about every one of my classes transferred to Mercer. I didn’t have to start over. That’s important for parents and kids to know today.”

  So now she is in a position to realize a goal she thought was unattainable 30 years ago.

  “Mercer was a dream of mine since I was a teenager. I never thought I’d have the chance to go – and here I am.”