Pearson a role model to students
Counselor uses life experience as map to guide youths

By STEPHEN CLARK
Observer-Dispatch

On the wall of Morris Pearson’s office at Mohawk Valley Community College hangs a colorful painting of the proverbial “village” it takes to raise a child.

Pearson, 36, easily could be one of the children shown dancing with the elders by the fireside. As a youth growing up in Washington Courts, he credits community leaders — such as his pastor, Bishop Alvin Nelson, former Cosmopolitan Center director James Blackshear, and Dave Mathis, director of Oneida County Workforce Development — for helping him survive and ascend to his leadership roles at MVCC and his church.

Or he could be the elder shown carrying a small child on his shoulders. Throughout his adulthood, Pearson has advised, consoled and encouraged countless youth in his positions as counselor at different community centers and prison and currently as executive assistant to the vice president for Student Services at MVCC.

But whoever he could be in the painting, in person, Pearson is one of the 2004 Accent on Excellence honorees, nominated by Jacqueline Troutman, a church leader who has known Pearson for more than 20 years.

“When he was younger, I would have never thought about nominating him,” Troutman said, laughing. “He was a typical teenager who had fun. But I thank God he didn’t get involved with the wrong activities or a bad crowd. He has grown tremendously. He’s more accountable for the thing’s he’s done.”

Pearson said he was “elated” when he found out he was being awarded for his passion and commitment to the community.

But he added, “Success to me is not getting accolades. It’s seeing a student deemed not college material going across the stage for his degree and saying ‘thank you’ to me. It’s the guy inside of prison getting out and not coming back.”

Pearson was the first person in his immediate family to walk across the stage and get a college degree when he graduated from the SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome.

But in high school, Pearson almost squandered the chance
for higher education by being a class clown. He said he earned straight F’s in science class one year that sent him to summer school.

“The last laugh is on you,” Pearson recalled the teacher telling him.

Pearson said the people in his “village” — especially his parents — helped him change his outlook on life. He realized in summer school that “life’s not a joke.”

Pearson pulled a 180-degree turn early enough to earn a scholarship to college. His narrow escape from traveling a harder road in life has led him to reach out to the youth by being a mentor and a role model in and out of the office.

“It’s an awesome experience,” Pearson said. “I don’t take it lightly.”

And when he describes what the children dancing with the elders in the painting means to him, his eyes light up.

“Life can be a dance, and you have to choose your partners,” Pearson said. “A good partner makes the dance easier. But a bad partner steps on your toes, causes you some pain, and makes you look bad. Life is just like that.”