Columbus State’s 2008 All-Ohio Academic Team winners have a lot more on their plates than academics.

CSCC students Dawn Leach and Matthew Wolf were named last month to the “team,” a recognition program run by the Ohio Association of Community Colleges and Phi Theta Kappa, the community college honor society.

Both students posted outstanding GPAs while volunteering for causes that promote cancer research, tolerance, and historic preservation. Leach, 37, a nursing student, was named to the First Team and earned a $1,000 scholarship.  Wolf, 29, an accounting student, was named to the Third Team and earned a $100 scholarship. 

In 2006, Leach left a career as a textbook editor to take nursing courses at Columbus State. She’s now finishing her bachelor’s degree in nursing through a program at Mt. Carmel hospital.

Leach was always interested in medicine when she was a child, but her teachers laughed at her when she told them she wanted to be a doctor. It was only after her mother was diagnosed with cancer that she decided medicine would be her new career.

“I think that as I get older, I realize that if I want to do something, I can do it,” Leach says.

In addition to her studies, Leach is also active with BRAVO, an organization opposed to discrimination and violence toward gay, lesbian and transgendered people. She has raised money, manned emergency phone lines, and is now on the group’s board of trustees.