VGCC Women’s “Her”story – Evelyn Harris

In honor of March, Women’s History Month, Vance-Granville Community College is recognizing a few of the many strong and talented women that are a part of the VGCC community in a special feature series called “Her”story.

Today in the fourth installment of the series, we would like to highlight Director of Distance Education Evelyn Harris.

Vice President of Institutional Research and Technology Dr. Ken Lewis nominated Harris, because she has provided a lasting impact on the quality of distance education for the students of VGCC.

“As VGCC’s Director of Distance Education, Evelyn has dedicated herself to helping VGCC build online courses that engage our students,” said Dr. Lewis. “She is a known leader in distance education across the state and is regularly called by other community college distance education leaders to gain insight and find out more information concerning statewide DE initiatives.”

Harris graduated from Louisburg College with an Associate of Arts in General Education. She also has two Associate of Arts degrees from Durham Technical Community College in Computer Programming and Microcomputer Applications. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her Master of Business Administration from Wake Forest University. She also has a Website Developer Graduate Certificate from East Carolina University.

Harris has been at VGCC for more than 16 years and in that time she has researched and helped to implement standards in VGCC’s distance education, such as Universal Design, Quality Matters, ACUE and ADA compliance. She also was the president of the North Carolina Community College Association of Distance Learning from 2011-2013.

Last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most on campus classes were switched to online education. This effected not only curriculum classes, but many of VGCC’s Continuing Education courses as well. Dr. Lewis said Harris led her team in building online programs and making the transition as smooth as possible with minimal issues. He said her attention and countless hours of hard work have helped many areas retain more students.

“She has helped lead VGCC in the new era of education where most programs will include an online or distance education component as part of their course sequences, as well as numerous completely online programs,” Dr. Lewis said. “Her efforts in Continuing Education will help that division provide additional services and training via distance learning now and in the future.”