Out of the 91 graduating seniors from the Entrepreneurship and Business Academy at Kempsville High School, 17 of them have completed 61 credit hours and are getting their Business Administration Associate’s Degrees alongside their highschool diplomas. May 11 was supposed to be the graduation ceremony with Tidewater Community College (TCC} for the students; however, due to COVID-19, the academy has taken to Instagram to recognize and honor the students.

An associate’s degree in business administration prepares graduates to begin or advance their careers in business. The degree has them covering the fundamentals of business, management, critical thinking, project planning and implementation, business software and communication.

Ryle Lancaster, one of the 17 graduating seniors who has earned an associate’s degree, took the classes in the beginning of her freshman year and every summer up until her senior year. This helped her to be ahead for college, and be one step closer to her career in business.

Although the degree has opened many doors for Lancaster, she emphasizes the challenge in doing so.

“It is extremely difficult to be with college and high school students. The workload is ginormous and they are completely different in institution. College testing is much more high pressure and grade-heavy so it would be hard to have a TCC class one day and be expected to “jog laps in PE” or some meaningless high school curricular when one bad test grade could kick us out of the TCC program,” said Lancaster.

On top of being a part of college classes, Lancaster participated in numerous school groups and activities: National Honor Society, the Spanish Honor Society, the Math Honor Society, the National Business Honor Society, Interact Club, volleyball, and softball.

Due to rising costs in tuition and college expenses, the TCC classes will benefit Lancaster in the future.

“It saved me over $40,000 that I would have spent at a big university instead of a community college,” Lancaster says. “It also put me higher than the competition in the workforce.