Some tenacious teachers, and a life turned around

Luke Yeates’ life-changing moment took at least a year to come about and almost didn’t happen at all.

Yeates, now 28, was a laid-off call center worker who enrolled at the College of Western Idaho in 2011 with no clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish. He’s a voracious reader who had gone through the gifted and talented program in the Meridian School District. But Yeates meandered through his early 20’s, making an unsuccessful attempt at higher education at Boise State University. He found a calling of sorts answering an Apple help line for a French-owned company with offices in Meridian.

Yeates, the child of a police officer and an elementary school teacher, was always expected to go to college, but college felt wrong to him, he said. He liked the call center work, where he learned about computers. But he lost his job in the economic crash.

Out of work and living with his parents, Yeates ended up enrolling at CWI, the fast-growing Nampa community college founded in 2007 for traditional students and those returning to school mid-career. A fluent and prolific talker with a powerful low-key charisma, he knew he could communicate, so he chose to pursue a communication degree.

Almost as soon as he started school, one of Yeates’ professors called him over after class, handed him the phone number of the debate coach, and instructed him to call.

But he didn’t.

“I should have done it then,” he said. “But it didn’t interest me. I had a group of people I enjoyed hanging out with, and I was doing well.”

The school year passed, and at the beginning of the next academic year, three of Yeates’ teachers didn’t just ask him to investigate debate; they sat him down and told him he had to try. They had him sit through a mock debate and that did it.

“I remember watching it and going, ‘It’s beautiful. This makes so much sense to me,’” Yeates said.

And so began Yeates’ debate career. In his short time debating, competing against many youngsters who had been honing their skills since high school, Yeates brought home prestigious prizes. He started winning in his first tournament, about three weeks after starting debate, said his coach, Jim Gatfield, CWI’s assistant director of Forensics.

This year, the CWI Speech and Debate team ranked second nationally at the Pi Kappa Delta nationals, an 80-school competition put on by the oldest debating society in the country.

Yeates came in second in one category and fourth in another, almost unheard-of results for such a novice.

“He’s a significant part of why CWI came in second,” Gatfield said. “He was debating directly against people who could have up to eight years of experience.”

The modest Yeates is still absorbing those successes. After earning his associate’s degree this spring, he plans to head for Boise State, a debating powerhouse whose team members are singled out for honors on the Pi Kappa Delta website.

With emotion, Yeates says debate saved his life.

“If it weren’t for CWI, I would be doing literally nothing,” he said a few days before his CWI graduation. “I picked CWI because it was close and cheap, and I had no idea the love I would find for it.”

I know what he means. Like most people, I greatly welcomed the establishment of CWI into an area that was starved for affordable higher education, and I marveled at the hard work put in by already busy people getting the school funded, organized, and underway. But not until I had lunch with CWI President Bert Glandon several weeks ago did the full effect of CWI’s offerings sink in. Glandin told me stories of students who were working full-time, or two jobs, many of them single parents, who without CWI wouldn’t have an opportunity to move their lives forward professionally. With a few years of classes under their belts, those people are now starting bachelor’s programs at Boise State and elsewhere.

Yeates wasn’t the kind of success story I expected. He’s had opportunities and he’s botched them. He wanted to go to a strong, prestigious out-of-state university, but assumed he couldn’t afford it. He wandered well away from the academic path.

He’s still forgiving himself for wasting the lost years. But CWI brought him back, and now Yeates has another chance. This time he’s determined to make the most of it.

Anne Wallace Allen is managing editor of the Idaho Business Review.