Durham Tech trustee sees service as way to give back to community

Durham Tech Board of Trustees member Dr. Pat Ashley has spent her career and retirement dedicated to public education.

“Everybody that you touch is a student,” Ashley said. “It’s a way to make an impact on making the world a better place. Over the course of 54 years, you touch a lot of lives.”

During the span of her 54-year career in education, Ashley has worked with students from kindergarten to college.

She also has been heavily involved in the community wherever she has lived.  

“Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve really participated in the community,” she said. “I’ve always tried to give back to the community.”

She has done that through both her work as an educator, joining civic organizations and serving on a variety of boards, including currently with Duke Regional Hospital’s and Durham Tech’s.  

Ashley began her career teaching in Durham after graduating from Duke in three years’ time with the Class of 1970.  

She credited her education at Duke with putting her on the path to a career in education.  

“There were great professors. I loved the history courses I took,” she said. "And I decided to get my teaching certificate in my second year. That put me on the track for public education.”

During that time, she also received a master’s degree in counseling at N.C. State University and a fellowship to get her doctorate, which she finished in 1974. She has worked as a school counselor in Wake County, and a school psychologist, head of social studies curriculum, a middle school principal and head of Student Services for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district.  

When her family moved to Pennsylvania, she was hired as principal of State College High School. When they moved again, this time to Kentucky, she was selected as principal of an elementary school in Owensboro. The school, which had been among the state’s lowest performing schools, became the highest performing elementary school in Kentucky under her leadership.  

Ashley came full circle when her family returned to Durham in 2004, and she went to work with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to help turn around low-performing schools.

When she retired from DPI, she saw an announcement in the newspaper that Durham Public Schools, which has designated seats on Durham Tech’s Board of Trustees, was accepting applications.  

“I was looking around for ways to get involved in the community more after retirement,” Ashley said. “I was very interested in the community college as a next step for students.”

She also had worked with community colleges in previous roles, helping set up an early college in Kentucky and developing a partnership for community college students to volunteer in her elementary school there, which helped significantly increase the elementary students’ proficiency rates.

“The community college in Kentucky was a resource for my students, so when I saw the ad for Durham Tech’s board, I thought about what we could do here in Durham to give back in service,” Ashley said.

She said Durham Tech serves multiple purposes for the community. It’s easily accessible and an affordable option for students who want to continue on a path to a four-year college. It also is a great option for students who are unsure what they want to do to explore different career pathways.

Ashley also is proud of the opportunities the College provides students who want to quickly enter the workforce in a profession that may not require a four-year degree.  

She sees great opportunity for the College to benefit the community through key partnerships.  

“Duke, Durham Public Schools and Durham Tech have people and talent resources,” she said. “Synergy can be created when institutions find ways to work together. That creates new opportunities. That’s where new knowledge and opportunities come from.”

An example of that collaboration is the new Durham Early College for Health Sciences, which the three institutions worked together to create with a Bloomberg Philanthropy grant. The Early College will open in fall 2025.

She said she hopes that the three institutions continue to look for other ways to partner to benefit the community.

Although technically retired, Ashley now teaches at N.C. State, where she does principal preparation.  

“Principals have a tremendous impact,” she said. “Good principals really make a difference in the quality of a school.”  

She also conducts training for school boards across the state for the N.C. School Board Association.

She remains intensely committed to the work that Durham Tech is doing, though.  

“We could improve education, health, medical services and nutrition services through ways our partnerships don’t exist today,” she said. “We could do it in ways that would benefit all of the people who live in the community.”