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Helping people figure out how to pursue their dreams, despite obstacles, is a challenge. It is also one of the most fun parts of Kelvin Hunt’s job.

“In this business, you are really changing lives,” he said, “Because you are meeting people where they are and then trying to show them the path that can get them to where they want to go.”

�ڰ������� has selected Hunt, the college’s Executive Director of Athletics and Student Outreach, as Staff Member of the Year for 2025-26.

Hunt has been working in outreach at �ڰ������� since 2005, first as an Admission Specialist, then as Director of Student Outreach and Recruitment. Hunt was promoted to his current, expanded role, as Executive Director of Athletics and Student Outreach, in July.

He is excited to help build winning sports programs and interested to help student athletes perform community service and build good will.

At �ڰ�������, Hunt is known for his caring and passion in student recruitment, his data-based strategy, and the insights and suggestions he shares with other college departments.

Scott Byington, the college’s Associate Vice President for Onboarding and Advising, said Hunt would, “modestly say that our record enrollment is due to a lot of people.”

“But let’s face it,” Byington said. “He’s leading the way.”

Ellie Mummert, �ڰ�������’s Associate Director of Outreach and Recruitment, said Hunt goes out of his way to engage with the wider community in Chatham, Harnett, and Lee counties, and beyond.

“Even when he isn't ‘on the clock,’ Kelvin is talking to people about the college and all of the great opportunities we offer,” said Ellie Mummert, �ڰ�������’s associate director of outreach and recruitment. “When he is working, he is cultivating meaningful, lasting relationships with students, colleagues, and other college stakeholders.”

Hunt grew up in a small town called Chadbourn, about 44 miles west of Wilmington. He played baseball at UNC-Pembroke and got a bachelor’s degree in education. After college, he worked at a juvenile detention facility, and for a short time in adolescent drug prevention and mental health, before getting a call from his former baseball coach about a job opportunity doing general student recruitment for UNC-Pembroke. He took the job.

“I loved what I did, but I was on the road a lot and basically lived out of a suitcase for about two years,” he said.

At �ڰ�������, Hunt found an opportunity to continue with his passion for student recruiting, while staying closer to home and his then-girlfriend, now wife.

From their home in Fuquay-Varina, Hunt can get to any of �ڰ�������’s three main campuses, which he frequently visits, in half-an-hour or less.

Hunt works with community organizations to help disconnected and incarcerated youth by going out to juvenile group homes and detention centers and works with NCWorks and other community groups to reconnect adult learners to �ڰ�������.

His conversations with potential students can happen on campus, and by phone or email. But he also talks to them at events in the community and other forums. He even fields questions in the grocery store.

It’s an amazing feeling, he said, to run into a student at graduation and receive a hug and thanks for what he did to help them.

“But really, it’s what they did,” he said. “Because they did the work to get there.”