Living 50 Plus 2021

from Northside High School in Warner Robins. He
said, “Growing up, I always thought I wanted to be a
pharmacist, but during my last year of college, I was
a lab assistant for my advisor in the Georgia College
computer lab. I did some teaching assistant work
with her, helping her in her classroom.”
It was during that time when Scruggs found what
he loved, and he turned his sights to teaching. “I
had the opportunity to teach part-time, and then
eventually full-time here. I loved every minute of
teaching. That’s where I felt like I really got to know
the students who are at the heart of what we do.”
At CGTC, Scruggs said the aim is to see people grow
and the communities prosper. In his position as
executive vice president, he deals directly with both
the student and the staff population.
“When I’m talking to a new hire at CGTC, I want them
to understand that we are going to do what we can
to create an environment where they can grow as a
person and a professional. We can’t make it happen
for them, but we can create a culture and a climate
where they are going to have the opportunity
to grow.”
Scruggs pointed out that sometimes that means the
growth will be here locally, and other times it means
that CGTC is going to prepare them for that next
promotion, which, he noted, might very well be in
another state.
“Everybody worries about talent recruitment and
talent retention, but I have an honest belief that
when people are on the outside looking into your
organization, and they see that people come in
and grow as professionals, even if they move on to
somewhere else, you’re going to have a line at the
door all the time of people that say, ‘I want to work
there because I know they care about me as a person,
they care about my family and they care about me as
a professional.’”
When it comes to what he, through his position at
the school, is able to do for the students enrolled
there, Scruggs said that it gets more personal. His
father died at the young age of 27 when Scruggs
was six and his older brother was eight. The passing
of his dad left his 26-year-old mother a widow and
the sole provider. How she was able to sustain them
as a family makes Scruggs appreciate what he does
even more.
“My mom had a good job at Robins Air Force Base,
and what she did was work in electronics. She was a
technician in avionics because somebody taught her
how to do something. She had a good, marketable
skill. So, while we didn’t have much during those
times, she had a good job and she had insurance. She
had a family sustainable wage. Those things made
our lives different. It put us on a different trajectory.”
Scruggs went on to say, “I grew up living off of Green
Street in the projects because when my father died,
my mother lost the house. I’ve lived in low-rent
housing, and so, any job I’ve had at CGTC, when I’m
looking across the desk at a student and I’m hearing
their stories, I’m not sitting in some educator’s
office unable to understand what it is they’re trying
to tell me.”
Scruggs’ belief is that what CGTC does has
generational impact, just as his schooling did for
him. “Somebody taught my mother how to fix
communications equipment that go on Air Force
planes, and because of that, she was able to provide
for us. We do that same thing for the students here.”
There are many points of honor for Scruggs in
his affiliation with CGTC. One, of which he spoke
very fondly, was the school’s involvement with the
Georgia VECTR Center. “It’s one of its kind in the
nation,” Scruggs said. “It’s to help military men and
women, when they’re separating from the military,
to transition into the civilian workforce. We’re
the only school in the nation that’s doing that. The
Georgia VECTR Center is part of us.”
Another point of honor for Scruggs is that CGTC is
the state’s largest provider of inmate education
programs. He mentioned that the school is
teaching in 11 prisons and youth detention centers
around Georgia.
“About a third of the inmates who get out of prison
today will be back within three years, but if they can
walk out with their diploma or GED, and if they’ve
completed a job training program, their recidivism
rate is about cut in half. The human aspect of that is
that you’ve turned that person into someone that’s
going to be able to take care of themselves and their
families when they get out. On the second side, it’s
about $50 to $60 thousand dollars to keep an inmate
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