Dr. Kay Kouadio believes in DCCCD's commitment to an open-door education. "I teach at a community college for the simple reason that I can help students from diverse backgrounds and walks of life achieve their intellectual potential," he says. "I do believe in the open-door policy of the community college."

For Dr. Kouadio, who has taught chemistry at North Lake College for the past four years, it has been an interesting academic and career journey that began on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemistry from the University of Abidjan in his native country,  the west African nation of Ivory Coast. When he came to the United States in 1981, he first attended Concordia College in Chicago to improve his English. Then it was on to Florida Tech to earn a Master of Science in chemical oceanography and the University of Rhode Island to earn a doctorate in chemistry.

For almost 20 years, he taught at the university level, serving as a faculty member at the University of South Alabama, the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science and the University of Rhode Island, among others. Today, he says he prefers the community college setting so that he can devote his time to teaching and students rather than research. "I love this job, especially the interaction with the students," he says.

A self-described "natural-born teacher," Dr. Kouadio loves to explain natural phenomena and complex concepts to students. "Many of my students are apprehensive about chemistry," he says. "However, they usually find out that this subject is more demanding than it is difficult. With hard work, they usually transcend and move on to advanced programs." He has another tool to make a difficult subject easier - his own chemistry textbook, which reads more like a workbook, published in September 2005.

But perhaps what Dr. Kouadio most enjoys about his students doesn't have a thing to do with chemistry. It has much more to do with the science of humanity, which he sees as an incredible combination of both diversity and commonality. "I appreciate diversity," says this native of a country which has 65 different ethnic groups and languages in an area less than half the size of Texas. "But we all have the same problems. When I sit down with my students to talk, we usually forget about chemistry. We talk true life."

For Dr. Kay Kouadio, it all began here.