From a small town to the Navy to TCC and new career

Johnny Moye, supervisor of career and technical education for Chesapeake Public Schools, grew up in a small community tucked in the “Hoosier Hills” of Indiana.

Going to college was never discussed around the dinner table, as farming or factory work were the main employment options during the mid-1970s. That he would someday be named Virginia High School Technology Education Teacher of the Year never entered his mind.

Wanting to escape small-town life, Moye joined the Navy at age 18. He served for 27 years as a radioman, retiring as a master chief petty officer in 2003. Moye says, “The Navy was a way for me to see the world beyond the hills, and I advanced through the ranks very quickly.”

While on shore duty and thinking about life after the Navy, Moye enrolled at TCC’s Virginia Beach Campus. He graduated with a general studies associate degree in 1999, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies and a master’s in occupational and technical studies. “I was the first in my family to earn a college degree,” he says. “TCC boosted my confidence, and it was there that I learned that I could be successful in the classroom.”

Moye was back in the classroom in 2003, this time as a technology teacher at Hickory High in Chesapeake. For five years he taught classes like geospatial technology, graphic communications and computing systems. He also served as an advisor for Hickory’s successful Technology Student Association and was named the Virginia High School Technology Education Teacher of the Year in 2008.

“TCC instilled in me a love of learning, and helped lay the ground work for my Ph.D.” Moye will complete his doctorate in education during the summer of 2009 through ODU.

Moye and his wife have four children; two of them attended TCC’s Chesapeake Campus after high school.