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by Kathy Kepley
Davidson County Community College
April 8, 2011
Davidson County Community College student Dailian Silverio will be honored April 14 as a recipient of the North Carolina Community Colleges’ Academic Excellence Award.
Silverio will be recognized during the annual excellence events in Raleigh which include a private reception with Governor Beverly Perdue as well as a luncheon with fellow Academic Excellence Award winners from North Carolina’s other 57 community colleges as part of “The Great Within the 58” celebration. Governor Perdue proclaimed April 10-16 as North Carolina Community Colleges Excellence in Education Week.
Silverio, a Thomasville resident, is scheduled to graduate in May with an associate in science degree. She will enter the DCCC Associate Degree Nursing program in the fall. Her ultimate goal is to pursue a career as a physician’s assistant.
“We are extremely proud of Dailian and the standard she sets for students to strive for academic excellence,” said Dr. Mary Rittling, DCCC president. “Our faculty and staff also deserve recognition for the outstanding academic preparation and guidance of students like Dailian who obviously took advantage of the educational opportunities and support offered by our College.”
In both her educational and life journeys, Silverio has discovered that life’s greatest successes sometime occur after overcoming challenges that are potential roadblocks in achieving dreams.
As an 11-year-old, Silverio immigrated to the United States from her native Dominican Republic to join family members, including her mother whom she had not seen since age four. She traveled alone to New York and recalls the experience as “kind of scary” since she spoke no English and did not know what to expect in the new country that was about to become her home. Her mother allayed her fears by enrolling Silverio in a school that taught lessons in both English and Spanish. She quickly made friends and learned the language.
Today, Silverio is an articulate, confident young woman who speaks fluent English with only a trace of an accent.
As Silverio was about to enter her freshman year of high school, her family again uprooted and moved from New York to North Carolina. After she graduated from East Davidson High School in Thomasville in 2008, she wanted a college experience that would provide smaller class sizes and one-on-one interaction with instructors. She chose DCCC.
Almost immediately, Dailian had to face her most daunting challenge in the classroom – mathematics. Assessment scores placed her at the developmental level. Instead of being upset, she decided to embrace the opportunity to fill in the gaps of her mathematics education. She has since reaped dividends from that decision.
“I took up to pre-calculus in high school, but I had the hardest time,” she recalls. “I knew something was missing, so I decided to take the preparatory courses and work my way up.”
In her very first class, Dailian met an energetic, encouraging instructor who changed her attitude about math and as a result, helped her excel overall as a student. She has maintained a 3.7 grade point average and is a dean’s list student.
“My instructor always related math outside of the classroom, such as shopping experiences or using chocolate bars when we studied fractions,” Silverio said. “She taught me that I did not have to ‘love” mathematics to do well in a course, but rather to learn to study and put it into an everyday perspective. With this new outlook, I completed all developmental and curriculum math including successfully completing Calculus I.”
In accepting the challenge to improve her math skills, Silverio not only turned a perceived weakness into strength but also has assisted fellow students needing assistance in the subject through the college’s tutoring services.
“Dailian is a very hardworking, intrinsically motivated person,” said Jennifer Comer, Silverio’s math teacher and mentor who nominated her for the award. “She has defeated the odds and has seen great success as a reward to her hard work. She was a great student in my math class, and it was a pleasure having her return to my class as a peer tutor.”
In addition to finding in-classroom assistance, Silverio said she learned the importance of interdependence by seeking out other resources that made academic success easier. She is a participant in the Student Success Program for first generation and low income college students.
As a student leader, Silverio has supported causes such as cancer awareness through the Relay for Life Club and service to her community through participation in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service projects.
“Through these experiences, I have been able to build my self-confidence and my sense of community,” she said.
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