“I believe that the advantage of earning a college degree, especially in today’s economy, has given me the advantage to be selective and more marketable in obtaining gainful employment in this competitive society. I would encourage people, at any age, to pursue their educational goals in order to improve or change their lives.”
The above quote is from an e-mail Brenda Barney sent me late last week. Barney’s name may or may not ring a bell with you, depending on how much you read the print media.
One of the last stories I wrote for another daily was about Barney.
Barney dropped out of Eastern High School when she was 17 years old, way back in the 1970s. She worked as a unit clerk and nursing assistant at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, picking up her General Education Development diploma from Parkville High School along the way.
Then, in 1987, Barney boldly entered the exciting, rewarding and wholesome field of corrections.
OK, so being a corrections officer might not be so wholesome in a state like Maryland, where all manner of miscreants reside in several penitentiaries. Truth is, Barney had to work at some pretty dangerous places. She was a corrections officer at the Maryland House of Correction Annex, the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup, the Baltimore City Correctional Center (part of the Maryland Transition Center) and the now defunct but oh-so-memorable Maryland House of Correction, better known to Marylanders as the infamous House of Corruption.
And not only because of the inmates, I might add.
Barney rose to the rank of captain before she retired late last year. Along the way, she decided she would return to school and complete her education. Nine years ago, after realizing that she wasn’t going to be a corrections officer forever, she got a college degree.
She took a math course at Coppin State University. Flunked it. Undeterred, she enrolled in some courses at Baltimore City Community College. There, she met English professor Lynn Kerr, who urged Barney to matriculate to Johns Hopkins University after she got her associate of arts degree from BCCC in 2004. Kerr also became Barney’s mentor.
In 2006, Barney got a bachelor’s degree in management and leadership. A year later, she got a master’s degree in management and leadership. Both degrees are from Hopkins.
When I told Barney’s story back in June, the ending wasn’t quite resolved. Yes, she did return to school. Yes, she did have bachelor’s and master’s degrees. But in June Barney was still looking for a job that would make all that education pay off. She wanted to teach, or maybe work for the federal government.
Barney felt there was a loose end dangling in her story. Her former co-workers read her story and were impressed, but they figured she was unemployed and down on her luck. That was driven home when Barney attended a funeral for a corrections officer.
“They thought I was destitute,” Barney said of her former co-workers.
She wasn’t destitute then, and she’s definitely not now. In May, Barney applied for a job teaching a criminal justice course online at the University of Phoenix here in Maryland. She was hired on June 27, about two weeks after her story appeared. Her class starts in eight days.
In July, Barney got a job teaching criminal justice at the University of Maryland University College. She begins that job in January.
“I was so happy,” Barney said. “It really hit home when someone sent me an e-mail saying ‘Hello, Professor Barney.’ It’s a big change from ‘Capt. Barney.’”
Indeed it is. Barney wanted to be sure people who’d read her story knew that her efforts at returning to school and getting two degrees did not go unrewarded. And I want to drive home the place where it all started for Barney: at one of our community colleges, perhaps the most underrated, under-appreciated and unheralded of all our institutions of higher learning.
Gregory Kane is a columnist who has been writing about Maryland and Baltimore for more than 15 years. Look for his columns in the editorial section every Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected] .
