Alamance Community College Instructor Helps Advance LGBTQ+ Inclusivity in Alamance County
By Paige Parker
This is part of a series of blog posts written by students in an Elon University First Year Writing course. For the course, students wrote profiles of people, places, and events that contribute to LGBTQ+ life in Alamance County.
When I attended Alamance Community College (ACC) as a queer person, I never quite felt that my gayness was “okay” there. Then, just months after I left ACC to start as a student at Elon University, I discovered that there was in fact a safe space at ACC that was just beginning to sprout. Fortunately for the rest of the LGBTQ+ community there, one Communications instructor took a huge step towards making the school a more queer-accepting space.
Catherine Bowen
Catherine Bowen (she/they) teaches Public Speaking at Alamance Community College, and took it upon herself in Spring of 2025 to start the PRISM club: Pride, Raising Awareness, Involvement, Support, and Mentoring - just what a college with a gay community was in need of. When I asked her about starting the club, Catherine said, “I noticed that there weren’t a ton of resources for our queer students on campus. So I started putting out some feelers, and got back a lot of support, from both faculty, staff, and students who were like, yeah, actually, this would be great. And so eventually we got chartered in the spring.”
Catherine has many plans for the expanding resources for LGBTQ+ inclusion at ACC, including fun events open to students and staff, Safe Zone training, representing ACC at Alamance Pride, and providing a safe space for queer kids through nonjudgmental one-on-one mentoring.
Safe Zone training is one of the things Catherine is excited about getting underway. Safe Zone training is a program dedicated to informing staff of the experience of LGBTQIA+ identifying students. The training would aim to encourage staff to act in such a way that would greatly reduce stress for queer students, especially during the anxiety of the start of semesters. Catherine enthusiastically described the differing topics that would be reviewed in order to ensure a welcoming environment for the queer students, including introducing the importance of pronouns, providing inclusive ways of avoiding deadnaming trans students, and how to generally interact with queer folks.
Alamance Community College
Catherine’s insightful grasp of different perspectives is the backbone to the success of her club. They realize that there is work to be done, and she’s doing it, respectfully and diligently. Catherine states, “If you think that you've never interacted with a queer person, which you definitely have, but if you think you haven’t, what are some of the basics that you should know about the community and its identifiers?” This continues to display her commitment to serving and preserving her community. Catherine and PRISM’s contribution to the betterment of Alamance County is seen through preserving through difficult moments of backlash with the sole motivation of providing a safe space for the queer community.
People like Catherine deserve more recognition in Alamance County. For anyone in the Queer community at ACC who is interested, give Catherine a visit!
