Samantha Eggart knows how important second (and third) chances can be. It took more than one attempt, after all, to get her college education off the ground. But once she was ready, Walla Walla Community College was too.
“They never closed the door on me — even if I tried to close doors on myself,” she says.
Thanks to her patience and perseverance, the 2018 WWCC graduate is now living her dream of teaching math at a community college and couldn’t be more grateful to the school that helped launch her career.
A strategic restart
When she first took courses at WWCC as a high school student in Running Start, Eggart (then Bristol) admits she wasn’t ready for college-level coursework. She ended up dropping out of the program. After graduating from high school, she tried again — but with the same results. “I still didn’t have the skills I needed to be successful,” she says.
Instead, she went to work for a few years in low-paying customer service jobs. But she didn’t see a future for herself there. She knew that community college could open more doors. But her third try had to be different. “I knew at that point, the only way I was going to be successful was if I really integrated myself into the community of the school,” she says.
That insight led her to apply for a job at the college bookstore. It was one of the best decisions she could have made.
Through the bookstore, she started to meet other students, interact with professors and get to know college staff. She became a familiar face around campus—making connections with people in Financial Aid, Continuing Education, Marketing, Business and more. “I was building this group of accountability, and I was making so many awesome friends,” she says. “I felt like CC was sort of like my family in a way.”
Inspiration strikes
Numbers had always made sense to Eggart. So her initial plan at WWCC was to earn a two-year Accounting degree. But as she immersed herself in campus life, she noticed how energizing her interactions with people were. “I realized being behind a computer was not for me,” she says.
She saw something that might be, however, when she took a Precalculus class from Professor Juli Connell-Sachs. “I had the most wonderful, amazing, kind, funny teacher,” Eggart says. She’d gone into the class dreading it, but Connell-Sachs made math fun. And that lit a fire in Eggart. “I thought, you know what, I could be a math teacher,” she says. “Look at her: She’s funny, she’s nice, she’s smart. I want to be that.”
Connell-Sachs became a mentor and sounding board, who Eggart counts as a friend to this day. Professors Frank Skorina (Physics) and Steve May (Environmental Science) also made a big impression. They made STEM fun and connected it to the real world, Eggart says. And they helped inspire her to pursue a career in teaching.
Finding the right support
At first, switching from a two-year Accounting degree to a four-year transfer degree was daunting. As the first person in her family to earn a college degree, Eggart struggled to imagine that transferring to a four-year university was even an option for her. “There’s no way I’m going to afford this, and if you look at how I’ve been as a student, they’re not going to be impressed,” she thought. “My fear of rejection was so high, I just didn’t even want to take the step.”
But she didn’t give up. Through her work in the bookstore, she’d learned about TRIO — a program designed specifically to support first-generation, low-income students like her — and she reached out for help. TRIO offered skills tests to help her identify her strengths. They held workshops to work on resumes, essays and applications. They visited college campuses. And the advising they offered was particularly meaningful. “They listened to everything, not just what was going on in school, but life,” she says. “They were just all so kind and encouraging.”
They helped Eggart recognize that being a first-gen student was a strength — not a weakness. They coached her on how to share her story in college essays and emphasize the positive path she was now on.
All that preparation paid off when Eggart received a full-ride scholarship to Gonzaga University in 2018. She graduated from WWCC and headed to her new home in Spokane.
A bachelor’s and beyond
In Gonzaga, Eggart found a school whose small class sizes and accessible teachers reminded her of the best qualities of WWCC. And as she had before, she drew inspiration from the people around her. In the majority-female faculty of the math department, she saw her future as a math professor. And her teachers and advisors became role models and mentors.
Eggart had met her future husband, Cameron, while at WWCC. While she was pursuing her math degree at Gonzaga, he was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Idaho, with the goal of working in the aerospace industry. So together, they set their sights on Florida as a possible next stop for them both.
She applied to the Florida State University (FSU), which had one of the best graduate math programs in the state. And once again, because of the hard work she’d put in, she was offered a full-ride scholarship.
‘Life’s gonna throw curveballs’
When the COVID pandemic closed in-person classes in 2020, Cameron’s parents were an important lifeline for Eggart. She moved in with them and finished her senior year of Gonzaga online from Walla Walla.
That support system was crucial again when, after moving to Florida to start her classes at FSU in the fall of 2020, their campus closed as well. “That was the hardest six weeks of my life,” she says. Thousands of miles away from the connections she’d so carefully built, she struggled. So when Cameron’s parents invited her back to Walla Walla, she came gladly.
By the time in-person classes resumed in 2021, Cameron had graduated from the University of Idaho and been accepted to FSU too. So the now-engaged pair was able to move back to Florida together to finish their degrees.
“Life’s gonna throw curveballs,” she says. But she tapped into her support system and didn’t let the pandemic derail her plans.
She also made sure to keep her ties to WWCC strong. Throughout her time at Gonzaga and FSU, Eggart tutored TRIO students in math. It was her way of giving back to the program that had helped her realize she could achieve her goals.
A bright future
In 2022, Eggart graduated from FSU with her master’s degree and, at last, began her dream of teaching at Tallahassee Community College as an adjunct professor of math.
As a teacher, she loves seeing students have “little lightbulb moments” when a concept she’s teaching suddenly makes sense. She encourages her students to be curious and ask questions — and to surround themselves with people who do the same.
Today, she lives in Arizona with Cameron and works at Chandler Gilbert Community College as an adjunct professor, teaching courses like college algebra, intermediate algebra and calculus. Her next goal is to get a full-time math faculty position at a community college, where she can make a difference to first-gen students like her.
“CC showed me that I was worthy of an education and that there were no limits to what I could accomplish if I put in the work,” she says. “They allowed me to find my way and still come back.”