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Mary Greene has never forgotten the opportunities that Polk County Schools offered her as a student.

Thus when her career path led her back to the district, Greene decided to focus her efforts on continuing that legacy, to work to help students build foundations for and follow pathways toward future success.

To merely say she’s achieved that, especially in her 16 years as director of Polk County Early College, might be understating all that Greene has accomplished.

“Mary Greene is Polk County Early College,” said Todd Murphy, human resources director for Polk County Schools.

Almost three decades of service to Polk County Schools will soon end as Greene plans to retire at the end of the current academic year. Her absence will most certainly be felt at PCEC, where she has worked since the school opened in 2007 on Polk County High School’s campus and has guided its growth as the school’s director since 2009.

“I love high school-aged kids,” Greene said. “I just remember the impact that my teachers had on me in high school, how they helped me, put me in spots where I would be successful and thrive and gave me opportunities that my family couldn’t afford. So I tried to do the same thing with the kids here.

“I grew up in this community, so it is important to me to give back to the people who helped me.”

Perhaps making Greene’s impact on Polk County Schools even more resonant is that she never planned to be in the position to do so.

As a student at Gardner-Webb, Greene envisioned a career as a broadcast journalist, pursuing a major in communications. She began covering local news stories until work on a fatal car accident and fatal drowning altered her plans.

“I went back and I said, ‘Can I just do marketing and advertising?’ So I stayed at Gardner-Webb another year and added on English,” Greene said. “And then, while I worked there after I graduated in admissions and financial aid, I got my master’s in school counseling.

“So that’s been a blessing to know how to help the kids here in that situation as they apply to colleges and they’re doing transfer stuff and the scholarships and financial aid. It just seemed like a natural fit.”

Polk County Early College is part of the Learn and Earn initiative launched by then-Governor Mike Easely in 2004. It provides an opportunity for students to earn both a high school diploma and a two-year associate’s degree or two years of transferable college credit. Students take classes from in-house instructors, all of whom have master’s degrees, as well as online courses.

Under Greene’s leadership, the school has maintained its core mission of targeting first-generation college students and those considered at-risk while evolving to meet changing needs. One significant improvement has been reducing the time needed for students to earn both their high school diploma and associate’s degree from five years to four.

“Mary Greene has been a dedicated and inspiring Polk County Early College leader, always putting students first,” Murphy said. “Her passion for education and genuine care for each student’s success have made a lasting difference in the lives of many. Whether in the classroom or offering support behind the scenes, Mary’s commitment to her students’ success shines through in everything she does.”

During Greene’s time at PCEC, the school has moved from the PCHS campus to the former Polk County Public Library in Columbus and now to its own building steps away from PCHS. All of those locations have afforded Greene the chance to work closely with students, to get to know them personally, to learn more about each student beyond just what goes in the gradebook.

The intimate environment has also provided Greene the means to see the impact that the PCEC program can provide, and those are some of the memories she’ll treasure most.

“A lot of the success stories that we’ve had for the kids that I know struggled, but were able to break a cycle of poverty or whatever else is going on,” Greene said. “And to know that you’ve set them on a path and that their family will be much better off than they were when they were growing up.”

Technological advances helped make it possible for Polk County Early College to be the first virtual early college in the nation. Now, almost two decades later, current technology offers almost unlimited learning opportunities to any student who wishes to pursue those.

Greene, though, doesn’t feel today’s landscape means a lesser future for PCEC.

“I don’t think so because we’re still dedicated to having teachers here that are also hired by us,” she said. “So we have in-person classes because that’s important to ninth graders. You are not going to throw a 14-year-old in a college class without support. We’ll continue to hire people with master’s so they can be hired at (Isothermal Community College) and facilitate more courses here.”

As for her own future, Greene has just one plan at present. “I want to sit at the plaza in Tryon with my dog and read a book by the water fountain,” she said with a smile.

Whatever comes next, Greene leaves PCEC having fulfilled her mission of creating opportunities for countless students, just as her teachers once did for her – and with gratitude for the chance to do so.

“I just appreciate everybody and I’m thankful for that opportunity and for them allowing me to stay around,” she said.

Polk County Schools and its students are equally glad she did.