From Ghana to ECC: President talks about his 40-year journey

Cathy Janek

 

David Sam, Ph.D., J.D., is president of Elgin Community College. He came to the United States 40 years ago as an exchange student from Ghana.

David Sam, Ph.D., J.D., is president of Elgin Community College. He came to the United States 40 years ago as an exchange student from Ghana.

For the last nine years, David Sam has served as the president of Elgin Community College where 10,338 students were enrolled last fall.

However, 40 years ago, Sam first came to the United States as an exchange student from Ghana, West Africa who attended his senior year at Eureka High School in central Illinois.

Returning recently to Eureka, Sam gave a presentation to the Eureka Illinois Rotary about his life journey which is an “inspiration to any person who only sees locked doors instead of opportunity.”

Sam said, “My experience at Eureka High School gave me the foundation for everything I’ve done here in America. The teachers and the Brockman family [his host family] gave me a better understanding of the United States. It was a life-shaping experience.”

The principal of Eureka High School at the time, Leonard Savage who has kept track of Sam along the way, just like he does many of his former students, remembered even 40 years ago Sam was a “young man you would remember.”

“He has a desire for education and a thirst for knowledge that is unbelievable,” he added.

Savage who invited Sam back to Eureka also wanted to share with the people of his hometown “what kind of opportunities our community gives to others by just opening up our homes.”

Sam told the group, the biggest difference between his life here in the United States and his life in Ghana are the educational opportunities.

In the 40 years, since Sam left Eureka he has made the most of those opportunities earning six advanced degrees.

After earning degrees in economics, political science and history from Illinois State University, Sam earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in international economic and political relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University as well as an M.B.A. in finance and marketing from Northwestern University.

In addition, he has a law degree from the University of Akron Law School as well as an master of laws (L.L.M.) in Energy Law and Policy, Center for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at University of Dundee, United Kingdom.

One of Sam’s long-term goals is to open a school in Ghana, a university of entrepreneurship and workforce development.

When Sam came to Eureka as a teenager, he was placed in the home of Herman and Marlene Brockman who he still calls “mom and dad” today.

Marlene Brockman said Sam who she still calls Dave always remembers to call them on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

At the time, the family recently relocated from Normal where Herman taught biology at Illinois State University to Eureka where their home was not fulling completed.

For a time, the entire family including the Brockman’s six children slept in the basement until the upper floors of the home were completed.

Once the home was completed, Sam slept in a room with two of the Brockman’s sons.

“They definitely were not posh conditions,” Herman Brockman said, “but he adapted very well.”

Marlene Brockman said Sam always was “a go-getter, who doesn’t give up.”

Along with the Brockman’s daughter who also was a senior at Eureka High School in 1976, Sam plans to return to Eureka this summer to attend their 4Oth reunion.

“This will be the first reunion both of them will be able to attend,” she added.