Deborah Kimbrough-Lowe

It was May of 1982 when Debi Kimbrough-Lowe walked onto Nassau Community College’s campus as an Instructor/Counselor in the Department of Student Personnel Services(SPS) with duties in the Financial Aid Counseling Center. While in Financial Aid, she coordinated the College Work-Study program, packaged students’ federal and state awards, and provided financial and academic counseling. After several years while working in Financial Aid, a committee was formed on campus to study the feasibility of starting a developmental/remedial program to assist students who scored low on the entrance exam. Debi accepted this assignment and became a member of the Study Group. The committee reviewed the research on developmental education, visited other colleges to examine their programs, and finally launched Nassau Community College’s Basic Education Program (BEP). Along with another colleague from SPS, she wrote the curriculum for the SPS 093 Counseling Seminar course, the program’s counseling component. Debi taught the course for about 30 years.

Around that time, Debi left Financial Aid and accepted the position as a Counselor in the Educational Counseling area, now known as the Center for Educational and Retention Counseling (CERC) in SPS. Through her work in that area, she became a full professor, developed an interactive online Academic Probation Workshop, wrote the curriculum for SPS 103 Academic Success and co-wrote the curriculum for several career courses. She also co-authored a textbook for the SPS 093 course, and along with her colleagues on the SPS Steering Committee started the SPS 093 Scholarship. After several years in that role, Debi opted for a position in the Transfer Counseling area of SPS, where she stayed until her retirement.