When NHTI—Concord’s Community College opened in 1965, it had one classroom building, one residence hall, a narrow mission to educate students pursuing engineering degrees and a different name.
A lot has changed over the course of the last six decades.
“We are fondly known as ‘The Tech’, but we have evolved into so much more,” President Patrick Tompkins said. “Every year we are adding new programs that directly meet our state’s workforce needs.”
This weekend, NHTI is holding a big celebration to mark its 60-year anniversary. One of two higher education institutions in Concord, the community college now educates more than 4,600 students annually across over 70 programs. Roughly 32,000 people have graduated from the college during its six decades in existence.
The Concord Monitor spoke with four alumni — a Concord city councilor, a healthcare executive, an aspiring school guidance counselor and the first paralegal to work for the city of Manchester — about their journeys to NHTI, experiences there and path afterward.
Ali Sekou
Ali Sekou grew up in a small village in the Bitinkodji region of Niger and immigrated to the United States in 2012 following a downturn in tourism in his home country. Arriving in Laconia, where he had family, Sekou, then 29, spoke almost no English.
His first stop was Laconia High School, where he enrolled in adult education language courses. A year after his arrival, Plymouth State University accepted Sekou, but he couldn’t afford the tuition. Determined to get an education, Sekou explained the situation to his college adviser.
“He said, ‘That’s simple, Ali. In America, there’s something called a community college where you can go to a two-year degree, and then go to a four-year school’,” Sekou, 42, recalled.
That is what he did.
In 2013, Sekou enrolled in NHTI’s hospitality and tourism management associate degree program. As he studied, Sekou blossomed into a leader on campus, serving in the student senate, participating in the multicultural club and serving as vice president of the regional chapter of the two-year college national honor society, Phi Theta Kappa.
“NHTI gave me the platform to learn and grow, to build the network I need, to have the confidence I need to take on a leadership role,” he said.
In 2023, that foundation led Sekou to run for and win election to Concord’s city council. He is the first Black African, immigrant and Muslim person to serve in the 15-member body, he said.
In addition to his service to the city, Sekou works as the community outreach and engagement manager for New Hampshire Housing. He and his wife are parents to a four-year-old, three-year-old and a three-month-old.
“We chose Concord to raise our family,” said Sekou, who moved to the city in 2019. “Concord is more than home. It’s a place of choice that we made for our family, and I will do all that is in my power to make the city a thriving city — a city for all.”
Sekou, who serves on NHTI’s advisory board, wants other immigrants to know that the college can serve as a launching pad for them, too.
“Everything is possible in America. If I can do it, anybody can do it,” he said. “Starting with almost no English, you can attend college, you can graduate with honors, you can go on to serve the community that you love.”
Heather (Stallings) Dunn
On a typical day in the early 2000s, Heather (Stallings) Dunn would grab a coffee at Dunkin’ on her way to her process improvement job at Concord Hospital. At around 4:30 p.m., she would drive down the hill to NHTI and catch a few precious moments in her car before beginning the day’s second phase: medical coding courses. On the weekends, she would take online classes at New England College as she simultaneously pursued her bachelor’s degree.
“The flexibility is amazing for working adults,” Dunn, 48, said.
Dunn, a Bedford native, credits the medical coding certificate she earned in 2005 with helping her rise to the top of the healthcare industry.
“It’s really become a differentiator,” Dunn said. “It tells people that my approach to work is knowing some of the details as well as being able to lead.”
In March, Dunn was named senior vice president and chief revenue officer of Novant Health, a nearly $12 billion healthcare system that operates throughout the southeast.
After leaving Concord Hospital in 2007, Dunn’s career took her throughout the country, from South Carolina to Maryland, Texas and Nashville. She, her husband and two daughters now reside in Charlotte, N.C.
They make time to come back to New Hampshire occasionally — always between May 1 and May 1. “When I left New Hampshire, I swore I was never going back to the snow,” Dunn said.
However, on a recent trip in 2022, Dunn and her family experienced frosty conditions on the top of Mt. Washington when they took the Cog Railway up on the last day it was operating.
Dunn is also staying connected to New Hampshire, and specifically NHTI, virtually. The school is considering creating a healthcare management degree, and President Patrick Tompkins reached out to ask Dunn if she wanted to help with the development of the curriculum, she said.
“I see so much opportunity in hospitals – in healthcare in general – where community colleges like NHTI could really plug in to help people,” Dunn said. “If they want to be the next senior vice president at $10 billion dollar health system.
Abbi Donahue
Abbi Donahue grew up in the small town of Woodstock, at the base of the White Mountains, and got her start in early childhood education by working at a childcare center through a school-to-career program.
After graduating high school, she enrolled in NHTI’s early childhood education associate degree program in 2014 and moved to Concord, where she lived in the school’s dorms.
Donahue, 29, said she particularly loved participating in the college’s lab school, a childcare center that gave students the opportunity to observe and work with the children.
“That’s an experience that I would say is invaluable — getting that real-world experience,” Donahue said. “You don’t get that at a lot of places.”
Donahue immersed herself in Concord, as well, frequenting Tandy’s Pub & Grille, and becoming close with those in her program, including her second-year roommate, who remains a good friend. She also loved her student adviser, Diana Menard.
After graduating from NHTI in 2017, Donahue went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Southern New Hampshire University. She is now in the process of earning a master’s degree in education from Rivier University.
As she has continued her schooling, Donahue has continued to work at chidcare centers. She currently lives in Orford and serves as the director of a preschool at a retirement community in Hanover.
Ultimately, she plans to work as an elementary or middle school guidance counselor.
“I’ve always loved working with children that have challenging behaviors or children that come from a trauma background,” she said. “I really want to work with the kids that don’t get a lot of attention or love because they have those tough challenges.”
Donnie Shedd
After studying criminal justice at the University of New Hampshire, Donnie Shedd began working as an emergency services dispatcher in Raymond, coordinating police, fire and EMS responses on nights, weekends and holidays.
A year or so later, he decided to become a paralegal and chose NHTI’s certificate program because it’s approved by the American Bar Association.
“Going to an ABA-approved paralegal studies program is like going to an accredited law school for attorneys,” he said.
Balancing work with night classes, the 18-month program took Shedd, 39, six years but he said it was well worth it. Courses were taught by lawyers with expertise in various practice areas and the program was led by Stacy Peters, who Shedd lauded for her ability to “incorporate classroom material with actual working experience that she was able to share.”
Shedd also got to know many of his classmates as the program progressed and appreciated the diversity of their experiences.
“We had working professionals, such as myself,” he said. “We had kids that had just gotten into college, and NHTI was their first experience with higher education. We had people in the class that were retired from a previous career and were working to start over.”
After graduating in 2016 as co-valedictorian of his program, Shedd was eventually hired as Manchester’s first paralegal, a position he still holds. Working in the city solicitor’s office, he said his responsibilities vary widely from preparing discovery for criminal prosecutions, for example, to preparing documents for a tax abatement case.
“I didn’t want to be the person out front in the court, but I like being a paralegal because I basically do all of the prep work to get somebody to that point to be able to do that,” he said.
Shedd also serves as the president of the Paralegal Association of New Hampshire. The organization attends NHTI’s paralegal studies graduation annually because many paralegals across the state went through the program.
