For Brigadier General Stanley Flemming, early community college experiences helped pave the road to success

Pierce College Alum Wins Prestigious National Award

Stanley Flemming, 1997 Pierce College Distinguished Alumni and 2008 Outstanding Alumni Award recipient for the American Association of Community Colleges, has been in more than a few places and done more than a few things.

The osteopathic physician and surgeon helped found the city of University Place, traveled the world as a decorated officer in the U.S. Army, served the state of Washington as its first elected Native American state legislator, conducted ground-breaking AIDS research and was a candidate to be surgeon general of the United States — to list just a few of his accomplishments. Now he begins yet another career as the president of the new Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences in Yakima, a medical school specializing in disease prevention training for rural physicians.

Still, Flemming, 55, said none of those accomplishments would have been possible if not for a life-long lesson he learned at Pierce College.

Back in the early 1970s, Flemming was a young college student struggling with math. He said a particular instructor refused to let him quit or fail, and took it upon himself to tutor Flemming in one-on-one, 6 a.m. sessions. Even more than the math, the personal concern his instructor showed for him ingrained itself into Flemming’s character.

“I’ve been told time and time again by people that I’m the most unorthodox general or physician — or both — that they’ve ever met; that I’m willing to develop a relationship with them as people, not subordinates, and speak to them as people, not things. And that’s something I learned at Pierce College,” Flemming, a brigadier general in the U.S. Army Reserves, said.

“It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten … maintaining personal relationships with people,” he continued. “All of us come from different backgrounds. We have different goals and dreams, but we’re all people at the end of the day and a title is nothing more than a very short job description.”

Getting Started

As a high school graduate, Flemming knew he needed more than a diploma if he was to attain any of his dreams. He was accepted to Stanford University, but had no funds to attend the prestigious and expensive school.

Prompted by stern but invaluable advice from his father, he took the opportunity presented to him: community college.

“If it hadn’t been for community college, I never would have gone to college at all. I would not have had the opportunity to grow and be who I am today without Pierce College,” he said.

Flemming said there are three main areas where community colleges provide value not typically found in other institutions: convenience, cost and personal attention. Community colleges give students the opportunity, regardless of age, to continue their educations at their own pace and in an affordable manner, he said.

“These days, higher education is getting out of the reach of so many people, but the doors of the community college remain open,” he said.

Students can get their educational needs met with personal, one-on-one relationships with instructors. It’s the nature of the beast that four-year colleges can’t offer a lot of personal attention for students, but students get that at a community college, he added, noting that at most four-year schools, students have to relocate, provide for transportation, housing, food and miscellaneous expenses. It all adds up, usually to a big bill that often puts a student in big debt.

“Community colleges are, by their nature, community-based, and that removes a lot of economic barriers, for younger students who can stay at home and working students who need their classes close by,” Flemming said.

Becoming an Asset

Flemming flourished at Pierce — then called Fort Steilacoom Community College — and with an associate’s degree in hand, he spent the next three years studying zoology at the University of Washington. In between various stints in the military, his many other interests led him to earn a master’s degree in psychology from Pacific Lutheran University and later a doctorate of osteopathic medicine from the Western University of Health Sciences in California.

Always looking for opportunities to give back — “My father said you have two options: you can be either an asset to your community, or a liability” — Flemming has spent a number of years as a clinical instructor, sat on numerous higher education boards and committees, and served as a city mayor and councilman.

In recognition of his outstanding service to country, community and mankind, the American Association of Community Colleges recently honored Flemming as one of five recipients of the 2008 Outstanding Alumni Award. He said his type of journey is one that can be replicated by anyone — all it takes is hard work and faith in oneself, in one’s dreams.

“We can get so caught up in the circumstances of the moment and believe it when we’re told what we can’t do. If I’d listened to people who told me I couldn’t do something I would be exactly where I was 25 years ago,” Flemming said. “Students today should go back and learn to be a kid again, find that joy of learning. Learn to dream dreams, see visions. Without those things, you’ll never take the first step. And never take no as a final answer.

“To be successful at anything, you must believe in yourself before you can ask others to believe in you. A community college is the perfect place to build that self-confidence.”