May 8—AUBURN — Kathryn Welgoss’ graduation from Central Maine Community College on Thursday will complete a journey she started 21 years ago.
After retiring and moving to Auburn in 2020 with her daughter Jody Collins and son-in-law, she said she felt it was the right time to finish her degree — with a little prodding from her daughter.
Welgoss, who raised two children, always had a dedicated work ethic, Collins said. She rose to the challenge of going back to school about four decades after she graduated from high school.
“She’s always had that drive,” Collins said.
Welgoss, a New Jersey native, said she was working for Johnson & Johnson in 2003 and had taken a new position, working with documents before they were submitted to the federal government. Most of her colleagues had college degrees, though the position did not require it.
She said she felt she should at least be working toward a college degree, which the company paid for. For the next 11 years she attended Raritan Valley Community College taking one class a semester that was business related. However, she never actually intended to graduate.
In 2014, one class — algebra — stood in the way of her completing a degree, she said. However, she did not feel ready to put herself through the math course so she stopped taking classes. “All I had left was algebra and my brain just wasn’t going to go in that direction,” she said.
For the next several years she continued to work at Johnson & Johnson, retiring at 80 after 25 years with the company. By that time she had moved into an apartment at her daughter and son-in-law’s home overlooking Taylor Pond.
Once Welgoss decided to retire, her daughter started encouraging her to enroll at CMCC to finish her degree, Collins said.
“I want to say nag would be a better word to be completely honest,” Collins said. “… Just kind of planted the seed and kept bothering her about it, and then one day she’s like ‘yeah, I’m going to go over to the college and I made an appointment to meet with an adviser.'”
Welgoss said she decided completing her degree would be a good way to keep her mind open and active. With Collins by her side, she met with an adviser, who was very supportive and helped her map out a route to graduation.
She attended her first class in-person in the fall of 2022 and attended classes the next two years. She only needed four more classes to complete her general studies degree, combined with classes she took in New Jersey.
Her favorites were ones about people and the environment, she said. She also took a course on the sociology of aging and was surprised at how much she learned that she did not already know from her own lived experiences.
The classes were enriching and helped her notice things around her she might not have otherwise paid attention to, she said.
“I had a couple that I hated but made me more aware,” she said. “Like ethics, I hated that class so much but there are still things I noticed because of that.”
After completing her four required classes and just when she thought she was ready to graduate, she learned 25% of classes for her degree had to be administered by the college, not counting those taken in New Jersey. It left her once class shy, which she completed.
She said she is most looking forward to not having homework.
Looking ahead, she plans to continue participating in activities that will keep her mind open and raise her awareness, and “do anything I want, that’s what’s next.”
Shying away from the idea of being admired for her efforts, she said there were many others taking care of families and working full time while attending college who deserve admiration more than her.
“There was three or four or five other people, women who have families, working full time, taking a full load, those are the people to admire, not me,” Welgoss said. “I just get that because I’m old.”
But Collins said there is still much to admire about her mother and she’s proud of her accomplishments.
“I’m so proud of her, my brother’s proud of her, my husband’s proud of her,” Collins said. “It’s a huge accomplishment to just keep on going and to do that. … I think she doesn’t give herself enough credit sometimes where credit is due on things like that, but she definitely can do anything she puts her mind to.”
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