Arl Taylor is a 44-year-old married father of two — and college student.
It happened like this: He graduated from Caledonia High School in 1987 and attended East Mississippi Community College in Scooba. Then he got married. Then he went to work at Weyerhauser in Columbus. Roughly a decade later, recurring knee pain forced him to leave that job.
To get himself out of the house, he began working part-time at Green Oaks Golf Course. The work agreed with him and he began wondering if he could make a midlife career change.
He got accepted into Mississippi State University but never took the plunge. He spun the tires a while longer, and then saw where East Mississippi Community College was beginning a Golf/Recreation Management Technology program at Lion Hills Golf Club in Columbus. With his family’s support, Taylor signed up.
He began his second semester in the program last month and though he is old enough to be his classmates’ father, feels right at home.
“I’m definitely the old guy,” he said with a laugh. “But my wife always says I’m childish. I just kind of fit right in.”
EMCC assumed ownership of the former Columbus Country Club in November of 2012 after purchasing it in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Last year the college began using the facility — located on Military Road — to house the college’s turf management program, the hotel & restaurant management program and the culinary arts program.
While students who enroll in those programs take traditional college courses at the EMCC Mayhew campus, the bulk of their classes are at Lion Hills. The idea is to get students classroom knowledge, as well as hands-on experience, said Jason Browne, publications coordinator for EMCC.
The two-year turf management program, in its second semester of operation, is led by instructor Danny Smith.
“The program was really set up to have students maintain the course for real life experience,” Smith said. “We’re talking about athletic fields. We’re talking about municipality parks. We’re talking about schools. Anywhere there is turf to be maintained and cultivated. That’s what this program is designed to teach an individual.”
Smith, who has more than two decades-worth of turf management experience, said roughly 30 percent of the coursework takes place in a classroom. The rest, he said, is hands-on learning.
Students cut grass. Maintain landscapes. Learn horticulture basics and are trained in supervision.
There are 10 students in the program, including Taylor, who still works part-time at Green Oaks Golf Course. All the other students are just out of high school. They tease him about his age, especially after the class attended a turf conference at MSU and several other attendees, thinking Taylor was an instructor, asked him how many students he had.
“I looked at them like, ‘I am a student!'” he said.
But Taylor, who has a 22-year-old son and a 15-year-old son, feels a camaraderie with his classmates.
Smith said that when he is teaching on the course, he leans on Taylor to help reach the students.
“The most important thing I appreciate from him is the advice he can give the younger students in the program,” Smith said. “It’s almost like having a second instructor. I can tell Arl what I want them to know and he can help, because he has done it already. He can help them along, as far as something like driving a tractor. They’ve never done that. He has.”
For Taylor, who already knew how to physically work a golf course’s grounds, the program is teaching him to consider the “whys” behind turf management.
“For the most part, I’ve always just driven right by, or walked right by, the stuff on a course not caring what it was,” he said. “But I’ve learned what it is and the theory behind it.”
Taylor is on pace to graduate in May 2015. He does not know what will come next. He hopes to one day be a golf course superintendent but is not closing the door on any opportunities.
The most important thing he has learned about his midlife college experience?
“It’s never too late,” he said.
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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