Warrior Magazine December 2019

Cleveland

done everything together. We share everything and she’s been there every step of the way over the course of my career. Everyone always says, behind every successful person is someone there to support and encourage them and that’s definitely the case with me.” Although Cleveland didn’t live on campus while enrolled at ECJC, he was still very active in student organiza tions and activities, including serving as sophomore class president. He was named to Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges and was a member of Alpha Alpha Epsilon Pro fessional Engineering Society and Phi Theta Kappa honor society. Cleveland was also big into sports and participated in numerous intramu ral activities including basketball and flag football, and was the recipient of the men’s intramural award his sopho more year. He said, “I recall the intramural gym was a scene for many pretty heated battles on the basketball court and you’d often find many of us on the gym floor between classes. Some of the professors would stop by to watch or sometimes we’d have a round on the ping-pong tables, including some of the professors. And, of course, you’d see some of the students and professors playing spades on the card tables. It was always great fun and often entertaining.” As an engineering major, Cleveland said academics was his primary focus and he spent much of his time study ing for copious math and science

courses. “The other pre-engineering students and the faculty had a close knit relationship, we often studied and hung out together,” he added. Cleveland recalled all of his profes sors being outstanding at East Central, although he said many of them were very challenging. “In engineering we needed to take several math courses, including four levels of Calculus and Differential Equations. Dr. Shelby Harris taught those courses and he had a reputation as being very tough and most all stu dents feared him, including me. In the end I found him to indeed be tough, but very fair. He pushed me extremely hard and was a tremendous motivation for me to always seek excellence in whatever I was doing. He was very in fluential in my time at East Central and that carried throughout my career.” Cleveland has never forgotten the impact East Central Community Col lege has had on his life and career and, in 2016, he and his wife established the Randy and Nina Cleveland Pre Engineering Scholarship, which assists a freshman student each year who is entering the engineering field. The Clevelands established a similar scholarship at Mississippi State Univer sity, where Randy serves as a member of the MSU Engineering Dean’s Adviso ry Council and MSU Foundation Board of Directors. He was also instrumental in assisting MSU in the revitalization of its petroleum engineering degree pro gram, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree.

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a strong belief that whatever achieve ments you may accomplish or how successful you might be, never lose sight of the fact that it takes everyone involved doing their part. It could be a small part or a larger part, but every one plays a role and everyone should take pride in that. I made sure that everyone I worked around understood that.” Family has always been important to Cleveland, and he said his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Billy J. Cleveland, and his wife, Nina, have been the most influen tial to his life and career. “Clearly my parents were influential in my early years growing up in the country between Decatur and Union and they still live on the homeplace where I grew up. I saw how hard they worked but also the respect they had for other people. They always did things with such high integrity and moral character. They’ve been extremely supportive throughout my life and encouraged me to fol low my dreams, even knowing my career would take me outside the state of Mississippi. My parents and two brothers laugh today about how much I despised working outside in the garden when I was young. I guess that’s why I hit the books and ended up with a desk job. Ironically, spend ing time outdoors is one of my favorite pastimes now. “The other person is my best friend and partner, my wife Nina. We’ve been married over 36 years and don’t have any children so naturally we’ve

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Shepard

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Although Shepard spends most of her time these days enjoying her grandchildren, she continues to remain active in her community as a member of the local garden club and can sometimes be found volunteering at the chamber office answering the phones. Shepard and her husband, Dwight, reside in Carthage and have one son, Jamie (Carrie) Shepard, a 1990 gradu ate of East Central Community Col lege, and three grandchildren.

ALUMNI NEWS

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