BCC students shine at All-Florida Team Ceremony

From left, PTK Advisor Juan Calle, BCC graduate Natalie Bobb, BCC students Angelica Aguirre,
Kendall Ramsijewan and Patricio Gonzalez, and BCC President J. David Armstrong, Jr.


Florida’s best and brightest community college students were recognized as members of the 2008 Phi Theta Kappa All-Florida Academic Team. The awards ceremony was held at the Florida State University Club in Tallahassee on April 15th.

This year’s team consists of 104 students representing Florida’s publicly supported community colleges, and two private institutions. BCC had three first team representatives and three second team representatives. The first team honorees are Patricio Gonzalez, Paola Mariselli, and Kendall Ramsijewan. The second team honorees are Angelica Aguirre, Christina Frascona, and Ziyad Kadir.

In addition to BCC’s All-Florida First and Second Teams recognition, the keynote speaker at the ceremonies was BCC graduate Natalie Bobb. This is the second time that Bobb has been a BCC student. The first time was just after she graduated from Plantation High School.

“When I graduated from high school, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do,” she said. She turned to BCC and found “I had to rise to the occasion. I had a job working 30 hours a week as a teller and I was taking five classes a term.”

Graduation was a special time for her. “I was the first one in my family to earn a college degree,” she said. The joy was especially evident on the face of her maternal grandmother, Lynette Lam, who saw her daughter drop out of school when she became pregnant with Natalie.

“My grandmom got to see me walk across the stage and get my diploma,” she said. “She passed away suddenly about a week later, but her dreams were realized in me.”

Bobb went on to earn a degree in business from the University of Miami, and found success in entrepreneurship quickly, but also found her life lacking.

“I had a nice car, a luxury apartment in South Beach, but I just wasn’t happy,” she said. “My life lacked passion.”

She reflected on what gave her joy in life and found it was when she put pen to paper and expressed her thoughts.

“I liked writing,” she said. She decided to re-enroll at BCC, take courses in writing and write for The Observer, the weekly student newspaper.

“I found that was what I wanted to do,” she said. Bobb has applied and been accepted in the UM’s graduate program in print journalism, where she begins classes in August.