Meet Central Carolina Community College’s top student, Ramon Gomez 

Ramon Gomez has excelled in some of Central Carolina Community College’s most intellectually challenging courses, facing fears and doubts as he tackled the toughest material, and emerged victorious. 

For his extraordinary academic record, his positivity, and the support he has provided to other students, Gomez was recognized with the 2026 Academic Excellence Award for Central Carolina Community College. 

The award, bestowed by the North Carolina Community College System, State Board of Community Colleges, and North Carolina Community Colleges Foundation, is the system’s highest academic honor. It goes to one student per community college in the state and is selected by each college. 

Gomez, who lives in Sanford, is dually enrolled as a Lee Early College student and as a CCCC student. Early College Coordinator Nick Testa nominated Gomez for the award. He said Gomez may be one of the overall strongest students with whom he has ever worked. 

“You look at his transcript, he’s got an A in everything,” he said. “He’s taken some of the hardest classes we have here, between the calculus classes and the physics classes, and still gotten A’s in them.” 

What stands out to Testa is both Gomez’s academic record and his personality.

“You talk with him for five minutes, you can tell how great of a young person he is,” Testa said. “Your day is just better, anytime you cross paths with him.” 

Gomez said that in the eighth grade, when it came time to consider where to attend high school, he was initially reluctant to attend Lee Early College, partially because he thought it would result in hard work that, at the time, he did not feel like taking on. 

At his mother’s insistence, he said, he applied and was accepted. As he continued his education, he said, she kept pushing him to apply himself to his studies. 

The biggest challenge he faced, he said, came from fears in times when he did not understand the topics he needed to learn in his classes. Those times left him doubting his professional future and worrying about the possible consequences of failure.

The antidote to those fears was doing the work that led to better comprehension. Being forced to adapt in a tough class made it easier to adapt the next time. 

“Once you are used to being in difficult situations, you just get better at dealing,” he said. 

Gomez also grew his comprehension by helping other students with science and math as a tutor at CCCC. 

“Whenever I help someone with it, it reinforces my basics,” he said. 

A turning point for Gomez came when he discovered how much he enjoyed calculus. Where he had thought he might become an anesthesiologist, he began to focus on engineering and courses like Calculus II, Calculus III, and Physics. 

He said he has benefitted from conversations with teachers who have insight into his career interests, such as Science Instructor David Baker. 

“Because he’s a physicist, he’s worked around a lot of other physicists and engineers and I’ve learned a lot about what engineering life and physics life is like as a student,” he said. 

Gomez possessed the eligibility for graduation from Lee Early College a year prior; however, he elected to extend his tenure for a fifth academic year, a provision sanctioned by the state of North Carolina, to enable his engagement with engineering coursework at CCCC and the exploration of that vocational path. He is scheduled to graduate in May from Lee Early College, where he will receive an Associate in Engineering from CCCC, supplementing the Associate in Science he has already attained.

Next year he plans to attend NC State University, where he said he has been accepted to the school’s mechanical engineering program.

“This is only the beginning for him,” said Testa. “That’s what’s so exciting.” 

April 21, 2026

Provided.

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