Staff Spotlight

Any Concord University student that lives on campus or eats that the Libby Alvis Dining Hall is bound to have met one of the most kind and vibrant spirits on campus, Miss Bobbie White. Bobbie usually works the cash register in the cafeteria and always greets stu- dents with a bright smile and a “hey there, sugar.”

Bobbie was born and raised in Princeton, just a few minutes from Concord’s campus. She was offered a job by a friend at the university and has been working in the cafeteria for a little over a year.

Bobbie loves to see people smile and to make people feel at home. She understands that college is a scary experience for many students, and she be- lieves that a smiling face can make a huge difference. She says that she always makes a special effort to smile at every- one and say hello, and that once she comes to work, she “leaves [her] problems at the door” so she can do her best to make students’ days a little brighter.

Bobbie has taken her sweet nature to an entirely new level for Concord’s international students. She understands that some students have left their homes and families and traveled thousands of miles for the opportunity of an education and wants to make those students just as comfortable as students from the area. To do this, she did something extraordinary. 

“I learned how to say ‘hello’ in five different languages,” she explains, “Korean, Japa- nese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish. I think it makes people happy when you speak their native language.” This strategy proved to be more suc- cessful than she ever expected in welcoming the international students. “I’ve got some stu- dents that call me ‘Momma’ now,” she laughs.

Bobbie puts everything she has into her job, and her work doesn’t end when she leaves the university. Besides being a surogate mother to students on campus, she’s also a full-time grandmother and is currently raising her two grandchildren, aged one year old and six years old. “My day starts at five o’clock in the morning, seven days a week,” she says. Her daily schedule is hectic and exhausting, but to her, it’s more than worthwhile and she says she wouldn’t change a thing. Five years from now, she hopes to be exactly where she is today.

Bobbie cares deeply for the students she sees every day and wants each one to live up to their full potential. If she could give each student one piece of advice, it would be, “Finish your education. Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

Bobbie is a self-proclaimed people person and her sweet disposition shows in every- thing she does. She is always friendly and deeply compas- sionate to students. “I hope to be here at Concord for a long time”.