LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — During the next few weeks, thousands of college students from across the valley will soon walk across one of the biggest stages in their academic careers.
“I’m excited because I know I would be able to put that [degree] into good use,” said Gigi Morris, Nevada State University student.
Morris is a Philippines native and a mother of two. She will be graduating from Nevada State University, formerly known as Nevada State College, with a degree in interdisciplinary studies and education leadership on Saturday.
However, unlike many students, this won’t be the first time Morris sports a cap and gown.
She received her first bachelor’s degree in business administration in 2015.
“The value of education here in United States in so many ways are really helpful and because you feel that overwhelming gratefulness of the education that you get, you want to share it," she said.
Morris said many of the students in the Philippines don’t have the financial means to get the same education she received in the U.S.
Nevertheless, Morris said she wanted others to experience the same feeling she felt when getting an education, which is why she helped open an agricultural trade school in a rural area of Batangas, Philippines in 2016.
“I put that education to work when I went back to the Philippines, so I started a school there,” Morris said. “I think you can say that it’s a natural progression for our family because we are a homeschooling family, and my husband being a lifelong agriculture extensionist, he supported me in starting the school. We started a farming school and technical vocational education in the Philippines. That school allowed us to train and certify youth, women, and teachers and serve our farming community.”
When the school first opened its doors in 2016, it started with only four students.
However, in the nearly 10 years the school has been around, close to 1,000 students have been able to receive an education and be given new job opportunities.
“I am overwhelmed and grateful; that’s really how I feel about it,” Morris said. “Not everyone has the opportunity to affect the life of other people.”
Now that Morris will be getting her second degree in interdisciplinary studies and education leadership, she will use what she learned and apply it to the school in the Philippines.
“I started the school without an education degree, it’s a business degree that I have, so I said, ‘let me take education.’ But because I am also leading a group of trainers and educators now, then I have to be a really enhance my leadership, so that’s why I took interdisciplinary education and leadership. But at the same time, I took several classes to focus on educational technology because I wanted to stay relevant to our 21st-century learners. I also use that to also train my trainers in the farm, in our school, so that they can stay relevant,” Morris said.
Morris will be graduating on Saturday, May 4, inside the Thomas and Mack Center at 11 am.
Morris tells Channel 13 that her education will not end after graduation; she plans to go to graduate school in the fall.
