Congratulations to Clark College students Julisse Hopmann and Kellie Langston, who were named to the 2020 All-Washington Academic Team. The students were recognized for their achievement during the June 10 Board of Trustees meeting.
Julisse Hopmann is earning her Associate of Applied Science degree in Business Administration with a Certificate of Proficiency in business management. She expects to graduate Winter 2021. Running Start student Kellie Langston graduated from Clark College in June with her high school diploma and her Associate of Arts degree. Read more about Julisse and Kellie below.
Julisse Hopmann
Sometimes we find ourselves in over our heads—treading water and about to go under. But then a stranger comes along at just the right moment and pulls us to safety. Four years ago, when Julisse Hopmann was a 25-year-old diner waitress, a customer pulled her from the brink and changed her life.
Julisse explains, “During that period of my life, I was drinking heavily. I wanted help, but I didn’t feel I could get the help I needed.”
An astute customer approached Julisse, pressed a card into her hand, and told her she had turned her own life around through a 12-step program.
“She probably could smell the liquor coming from my pores,” Julisse recalls. “She gave me her card and said she could help me. Sometime later, [I had] one really bad night when I was drinking so much that I didn’t think I was going to wake up, and I didn’t want to wake up. But I did wake up—so I called her that morning and asked her to help me.”
Julisse says, “My life was one big struggle, but at age 25, I turned my life around. That was my second chance. My redemption. Now I ask myself how I can be a beacon of hope.”
Today she juggles her classes at Clark, cares for her 3-year-old son, and helps others through her involvement with a 12-step recovery program.
“I try to help others the way I was helped,” she says. “Some people just need to get to 12-step meetings. Some people need resources. Alcohol and addiction come with other issues, including mental health issues.”
Before her alcohol addiction and recovery, she ran away from home and joined the carnival when she was 18. She had always wanted to travel. Shortly after earning her high school diploma via Clark’s Running Start program, she told her parents she was joining a friend and going on the road to work at a carnival, Funtastic Traveling Shows.
“My parents told me they’d do anything they could to stop me,” Julisse recalls. “So, I left a note on the kitchen counter and left in the middle of the night. I caught up with the carnival at the rest stop near Battle Ground. I left everything behind.”
For six seasons she traveled with the carnival to state and county fairs throughout Washington and Oregon. She discovered she enjoyed the work and was good with people and at business management. The carnival owner, Ron Burback, who had earned a business degree at Portland State University, saw something in Julisse and gave her increasing responsibilities. She started out making cotton candy, but by the time she left, she was managing a burger stand and two cotton candy stands.
She recalls the 80-year-old carnival owner telling her, “This carnival is my dream. You need to go back to school and find your own dream.”
She doesn’t have any regrets about joining the carnival. “I picked up a lot of useful skills: leadership, communication, working with people, learning how to handle stress, working long hours,” she says. “When people tell me starting your own company is hard work, I know I can do it.”
Five years after leaving the carnival, she’s following Burback’s advice. She’s back at Clark College and pulling straight A’s. She’s been a Clark student before. She completed her high school diploma as a Running Start student in 2009. After she left the carnival, she enrolled at Clark but didn’t stay. “I wasn’t in the right mental space to take care of myself,” she says. “My drinking picked up. I got depressed. I couldn’t do it.”
Julisse grew up on Larch Mountain near Hockinson, “way out in the sticks,” she says. “I was always in the woods. Nature is healing for me.”
After she graduates from Clark, her career goal is to combine her love of nature with her desire to help people struggling with addiction to find connection.
“I get a lot of personal connection from a 12-step program. Everybody needs connection,” she says. “My goal is to start a nonprofit naturopathic clinic to help people with addictions to connect with each other and with nature.”
Kellie Langston
If there’s a volunteer project to be done, Kellie Langston is likely rolling up her sleeves. During COVID-19 quarantine, the 17-year-old volunteer helped distribute meals to the students at Hearthwood Elementary, where her mother is a teacher.
Kellie has faced multiple challenges: coping with her parents’ divorce, abuse, toxic households, and going back and forth between two families. As a result, she struggled with mental health issues. She chose to use that struggle to guide her volunteerism. During her first two years at Mountain View High School, she volunteered with her school’s chapter of Youth Suicide Prevention Program, which trains youth to recognize the signs, risks, and triggers of suicide and how to get help.
“I wanted to use my story to help other students realize that they aren’t alone,” she says. “I know how someone with suicidal thoughts feels. Students pay more attention when it’s a peer speaking rather than an adult.”
Kellie served as the club’s co-president her freshman and sophomore years. She and fellow club members wrote inspirational chalk messages on the school’s walkways and opened doors for and greeted students when they arrived at school to help them feel welcome and connected.
But what Kellie enjoyed most about being involved in the club was speaking to more than 50 classes and leading discussions about youth suicide, mental illness, stressors, helpful hotlines and how students could find extra support when they needed it. “Presenting helped me deal with my own mental health problems and my trials and tribulations,” she says. “It was powerful and rewarding.”
Kellie was invited to participate in a KATU News town hall on youth mental health along with other teen volunteers with youth mental health programs. She had her turn on the air answering students’ questions.
During her junior year, Kellie became a full-time Running Start student. She joined Phi Theta Kappa and volunteered for service projects including distributing Thanksgiving meals to more than 100 Clark students in need.
In the fall Langston plans to continue her studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. If the campus isn’t open for face-to-face instruction due to COVID-19 restrictions, she says she likely will stay home in Washougal and take her courses online. She plans to pursue a degree in education or perhaps business entrepreneurship.
“My dream job is to be a writer and a public speaker,” Kellie says. “I hope to inspire youth to overcome their own obstacles.”
About the All-Washington Academic Team
In all, 65 students from Washington’s community and technical colleges were named to this year’s All-Washington Academic Team. Traditionally, students are honored at a reception at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia in late March, but this year, the COVID-19 outbreak canceled the event.
The All-Washington Academic Team is a program of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year college. It recognizes academic achievers in the state’s community and technical colleges who have demonstrated a commitment to scholastic achievement and service to their college and community. To qualify for the team, students must participate in PTK and fulfill other competitive criteria.
Each All-Washington Academic member receives a Phi Theta Kappa medallion and a $250 scholarship from KeyBank. The top-qualifying students also will receive scholarships from Washington State Employees Credit Union and the Washington State Association of College Trustees. Additionally, students who choose to attend Washington State four-year colleges and universities are eligible to receive additional scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $12,000.
Photo: Clark College/Jenny Shadley
