Peter Snow

Number 30, July 28, 2015

Peter Snow ’16 is a man in transition. He attends classes at the Camden Center where he is working on his A.S. in pre-dentistry. The recipient of a Bertha S. Galin Endowment Scholarship through the College Foundation, Snow was tapped to attend the Leaving a Legacy of Leadership summit at the University of North Georgia in mid-May with Oni McCoy ’18 and Trevor Strickland ‘16.

According to Snow, the conference encouraged building personal leadership skills and supporting a campus culture of leadership.  “We worked on setting goals and developing the strategies to accomplish them,” he explained. “My personal take-away was team-building – what it takes to work together. I’d like to use those skills in the Student Government Association for Camden.”

He wants his legacy to be connecting the Camden Center more closely to the Brunswick campus, a vision shared by SGA President Robert Mydell.

A non-traditional student from New York City and graduate of the School of American Ballet, Snow began dancing professionally when he was 16. For twelve years, he danced from coasts to continents, with the Los Angeles and Boston ballets as well as with companies in Copenhagen and London. It was in London that a labrum tear of the shoulder required him to consider new careers and the education to make that transition.

“My father is retired military and my parents now live in Kingsland. I began looking at dental schools in Florida and decided to start at the College of Coastal Georgia’s Camden Center,” he explained. “I needed to be able to tightly focus while I shifted gears and I figured a school that was close to home and offered small classes would help me do that.”

The Camden Center, although a commuter campus, attracts more than local non-traditional students. “We have a lot of dual-enrolled ACCEL students as well as recent high school graduates. They are looking for connection, not just classes,” he stressed. “Besides the convenience factor, the small classes make it easy to get to know faculty – and could make it easy for students to get to know each other. We need more activities to tie that together.”

He noted that commuting students want a full college experience as much as residential students. “I believe that more activities could improve retention as well as progression. More traditional students would stay to graduate,” he said. “This summer I’m driving 90 minutes north, round trip, to take the math classes I need.  Offering more classes at the Camden Center through distance learning and video conferencing would be nice. But how can we bring some of that larger campus experience here as well?”

That’s what Snow, Mydell and others will be working on in the coming months.