Dakota Matott grew up all over. His mother’s time in the armed forces made for a transient childhood, and after years of bouncing around from North Carolina to various towns in central New Hampshire, at age 16, he thought he’d found stability living with his grandmother in downtown Concord.
Then came the eviction notice from their home on Fisherville Road, followed by an uncle’s death in 2023.
“It was either try to rapidly find a place to live in the dead of December or try to fix a four-bedroom, three-bathroom where the roof was caving in and everything,” he said.
Those years were complicated. Matott and his grandmother now share the home in Fisherville with his fiancée, who helped restore it to a habitable condition. The Dunkin’ location where Matott works is a stone’s throw from their residence; at 23 years old, he’s already one of the household’s primary breadwinners.
He found a second home of sorts, ten minutes down the road at NHTI, where the maelstrom of life gelled from confusion to sense.
“It’s great to be so close to home, I feel like I got to build a really intimate connection with my town, especially learning about the local flora and fauna,” he said, nodding to his capstone project involving a five-month study of a pollinator field on campus.
Matott analyzed the biodiversity of four segments of land, noting insect interactions on two plots treated with Roundup, the weed-suppressing chemical, and two others that had been instead tilled with oxen. Sapphire, one of the oxen-tilled segments, performed best.
“It’s like a home away from home,” he said.
Matott graduated from NHTI, Concord’s community college, on Friday with upwards of 600 other students. About half the graduating class walked across the stage at commencement to receive their degrees, according to college communications and marketing director Emily Marsh. Matott views his associate’s degree in biology is a stepping stone, first to his bachelors at UNH, where he’ll begin studying anthropology in the fall, then to widened professional horizons bursting with possibilities. He dreams of teaching college classes and traveling to work at field sites across the world.
“I just want to get my hands in the dirt, although I’m quite nervous about not being home,” he said.
A cold drizzle misted students’ caps and gowns as family and friends demonstrated their pride, enveloping graduates in bear hugs and shouting support from the perimeter. Spirits were high, as President Patrick Tompkins doled out wisecracks and wisdom.
Marking its 76th commencement, NHTI has over the past decades provided a home for students of all stripes, he said: those pursuing a technical education fresh out of high school, New Americans seeking better opportunities, and adults returning to an academic setting after having built careers and caring for children.
“Many of you have been rearing a family while raising yourself. All of you struggled along the way, whether with finances or final exams, hunger or health, partying or punctuality, faith in yourself or faith in something greater than yourself. And yet, here you are,” Tompkins told graduates.
Karen Chingwagwe crossed the stage as the recipient of NHTI’s highest honor: the president’s award.
Chingwagwe immigrated from Zimbabwe to Hillsboro, New Hampshire, two years ago. She had never been to the United States before.
“I left everyone I knew and who knew me,” she said.
Living on campus and working as a resident assistant at NHTI, she quickly put down roots and channeled her energy into reciprocating the kindness she received as a newcomer.
“Everyone was so nice and so friendly, I just knew that I would belong here,” she said. “I wanted to stay on campus as a leader, as someone who could make an impact.”
An accounting major, she’s been admitted to a handful of local colleges where she could complete her four-year degree, including New England College and Fitchburg State University. She hasn’t determined her next step yet; at commencement, her only immediate worry was tripping in her kitten heels.
When she turned her tassel, Leslie Bartlett fulfilled an interrupted dream.
For the past five months, Bartlett has left her office at Liberty House, a Department of Health and Human Services facility on Pleasant Street in Concord, and made the brief commute to the Math Lab at NHTI at least once a week.
A program manager with the state’s Employee Assistance Program, Bartlett has spent the last dozen years being a bulwark for others, helping state employees and their families access mental health and substance abuse support, as well as other resources. It daunted her to ask for tutoring at the community college’s Academic Center for Excellence, where the lab is housed, but she didn’t want to risk a blunder with her second chance.
Math had always been challenging. From her time at Saugus High School in Massachusetts, Bartlett remembers hammering concepts from Business Math 1 and 2 courses over back-to-back stints in summer school. The algebra she encountered at Salem State University and North Shore Community College as a young adult seemed beyond her grasp, and ultimately, she relented in her studies.
“I lived within those barriers,” she said. “It was always such a challenge; anything with numbers was not a pleasurable experience.”
When it came to her qualitative reasoning class at NHTI, where Bartlett, of Gilford, took classes online, she relied on countless hours of reinforcement with tutors and the patience of her professors. She kept her nose to the grindstone, knowing it would mean something to conquer the mountaintop that’s always eluded her.
Nursing student Roy Ramirez approaches the graduation platform to receive his degree at NHTI’s commencement ceremony. Ramirez will be working at the Merrimack County Nursing Home after his graduation. Credit: REBECA PEREIRA / Monitor staff 
Graduate Khan Amiri (right) greets his brother, Hussein, and 3-year-old nephew, Ali, at NHTI’s 2026 commencement ceremony. Credit: REBECA PEREIRA / Monitor staff 
Leslie Bartlett, the student speaker at NHTI’s 2026 commencement ceremony, shares lessons and encouragement with other graduates. Credit: REBECA PEREIRA / Monitor staff
She completed the class with a 79.
“Going into it, I was thinking, ‘All I have to do is pass.’ It was a really proud moment for me,” she said. “Now I kind of miss it because it was this part of my brain that had never lit up before.”
On stage at the college’s commencement, Bartlett impressed on an audience of peers much younger than her — the 56-year-old mother of three adult children, the eldest among them married the weekend before their mother’s graduation — that they are worthy of second chances.
She had been practicing her speech to manage her nerves, breaking from her routine for 15-minute intervals to recite it four times in a row. The final lines were troublesome; even in the privacy of her rehearsals, they sometimes made her choke up.
She told graduates: “To anyone who may be wondering if they are too late to start something new, I stand here today as proof that you are right on time.”
