Media Contact
Kenya King
Director
Public Relations and Marketing Communications
Perimeter College
[email protected]
CLARKSTON, Ga.--Martha Wallace overcame multiple odds along her path to becoming a college graduate and published author.
She enrolled at Perimeter College in her mid 50s, after getting laid off from a 20-year career in banking which left her homeless. Yet not even this could dampen her motivation to succeed as a nontraditional student eager to prove to herself and others that she could earn a college degree.
“As hard as I tried to find full time work, it never happened,” said Wallace, who is now a support specialist at Perimeter’s Clarkston Campus Learning and Tutoring Center.
“I was told that I was lacking a college degree, even though I had trained some of the people that I had tried to seek employment with.”
By the time Wallace started classes at Perimeter, she had raised four sons and a daughter, with one of her youngest sons just graduating with his bachelor’s and another with his master’s degree. She received inspiration from her faith and family.
“Each day that I walked onto campus, I carried the spirits of two very important women: my mother and grandmother,” Wallace said. “Neither had the opportunity to attend college.”
At Perimeter, Wallace received lots of awards and an invitation to the Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society’s All-Georgia Academic Team. Her extracurricular activities included participation in TRIO student support services, Student Government as Lyceum Chair and Court Justice. She also served as vice president of Second Wind, the college’s non-traditional student club. A cultural immersion trip to Ghana in West Africa is one of Wallace’s fondest memories of studying at Perimeter.
Wallace’s success at Perimeter led to a full scholarship to Agnes Scott College. There, she studied English, Creative Writing and Africana Studies and continued to excel academically and flourish as a writer, winning the Janet Newman Preston Creative Writing Prize for Nonfiction in 2015. She also studied abroad, attending the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain.
Wallace received her bachelor’s degree from Agnes Scott as a manga cum laude graduate. She returned to Perimeter in 2018, initially as an English tutor with the TRIO Student Success program. Later, she accepted the LTC support specialist position, where she provides assistance to students and staff. She also supervises student workers.
“My work here is so rewarding, especially since these student success programs give me the opportunity to help students in the same way the programs helped me as a student.”
In 2019, Wallace wrote a food memoir called “A Sampling of Life: One Taste at a Time,” which has received favorable reviews. She is currently completing her master's degree in Professional and Technical Writing.
“It all started at Perimeter College,” Wallace said.
Click here to share your Origins Story with Perimeter College. We would love to hear from you.
Text by Kysa Anderson Daniels
Photo by Bill Roa