Future Alumnus: (soon to be) Alumni Award Winner Adrian Puryear

Adrian Puryear, English with a minor in Secondary Education Spring 2011

Adrian is a Metro State senior who is paragon of student leadership, academic excellence, and community involvement. She is a person of great integrity who cares immensely for her fellow humans. Her Nominator Stephanie Martin said, “I believe that as an alumna, she will bring honor to the name of Metro State College for decades to come.”

Currently, Adrian is a Writing/Reading Tutor with Student Support Services (SSS), a Federal TRiO program. She is professional and is incredibly caring with her students and is an excellent teacher to all of them. She has found her right path to become a teacher because she is a natural, and very gifted. As a tutor, she has helped many students who might have otherwise slipped through the cracks to not only achieve success at Metro State, but also to feel as though they belong. She asks excellent, critical-thinking level questions of her students, encouraging them to do their own intellectual work and empowering them with the academic skills necessary for success. She not only works on writing and reading skills with her students, but also fosters in them good study habits, time-management skills, and organizational skills. Adrian does an excellent job of establishing rapport, trust, and mutual respect with each of her students. I have come to rely on her to train newly-hired tutors, to present workshops to groups of students, and to act as a sounding board when students are struggling in non-academic areas of their lives.

After graduation from MSCD with a Bachelor’s degree in English with Secondary Education Licensure, Adrian plans to put her outstanding teaching skills to use in the community as a high school English teacher. We admire Adrian’s choice to enter into this noble profession, where she will work long hours for little pay or glory, but make an enormous contribution to the lives of the youth in the Denver-metro area. Adrian will be an excellent teacher and touch the lives of each of her students, but that she will further Metro State’s reputation for providing skilled, well-prepared teachers for our community.