FROM DROPOUT TO S T ANDOUT


Alum Dukes Works Hard to ‘Save’ High Schoolers from Quitting


Carl Dukes (’12, MEd ’14, EdD expected) quit school in ninth grade. So you might not expect to learn that he went on to become a teacher — who also happens to be working on his fourth degree at the moment.


And last fall, he was named the winner of North Greenville University’s 2018 Young Alumnus Award.


Dukes grew up in the projects of Conway, SC, he says. His mother worked as a housekeeper at a hotel 17 miles away, right on the water in Myrtle Beach.


He remembers his father, struggling with addiction, was hardly in the picture.


With Dukes on his own most of the time, he racked up a criminal record early on. Because of the trouble he caused in class, he was forced to become a home- bound student. Eventually, he decided to give up on school altogether. Tat’s when he ended up in South Carolina’s Juvenile Detention Center again.


Te center — even if it felt “pretty much like jail” — at least offered him a place to reflect. One day, in


particular, he was sitting on his bed when flashbacks from his past filled the frame of his mind.


“I just remember thinking about how, at that age, I’d already carried three of my cousins’ caskets,” he says. “I’m just like, ‘How can I do something different?’ Because where I’m from, I mean, ain’t nobody do nothing different. Everybody hustle. Everybody gangbang. Everybody do they thing to survive, because everybody livin’ in poverty.”


As if in answer to his question, a volunteer preacher


20 | NGU.EDU


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