Building a Life of Scholarship, Service and Success

Our Vision 2020 strategic plan’s overarching goal is to have more and more students graduate ready to build successful lives. Never is that goal more evident than at this time of year. More than 10,000 WCPSS students will graduate from our high schools between May 20 and June 12.

Over the next several weeks we will take a look beyond the “Pomp and Circumstance” to share with you the stories of some of our accomplished, poised and downright impressive graduating seniors. They come from all walks of life but they’re all headed for bright futures. These amazing young people are graduating fully prepared – for college, career – and life! 

May 20, 2016

Student: Seth Weber McGann

School: Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy

Class Rank: 1

College: Duke University (U.S. Marine Corps ROTC Scholarship)

Fun Fact: Recently scored a hole-in-one playing golf

Seth McGann shows up. And you can’t miss him.

His dapper appearance. His bowtie. The somewhat serious demeanor with a hearty laugh lying just beneath the surface. 

These all make Seth McGann look the part of a leader. But the valedictorian of the Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy’s first graduating class says his experiences there actually made him one.

One word: ‘Service’

If only allowed one word to sum up Seth McGann it would have to be “service.” Seth has dedicated much of his young life to the service of others, through volunteer work and in leadership roles. And, he will be in service to his country for several years after college, to meet the requirements of a full scholarship to Duke University from the U.S. Marine Corps.

This summer will be Seth’s third as a volunteer with the Appalachian Service Project (ASP), where he helps to improve the quality of life for people of need in the North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee mountains. 

ASP volunteers work on teams, meeting and getting to know the families they serve while living in host schools. One of Seth’s projects was to build a wheelchair ramp for a woman who had been homebound for two years. Thanks to Seth’s work, she’s mobile again.

“Honestly, you go up (to the mountains) expecting to give everything to them, but you end up leaving with way more than you thought you could ever have,” he said of the families the ASP serves and what he gains from the experience.

“When you go you don’t have high expectations – living in a middle school, eating cafeteria food, sleeping on a cot for a week,” he said. “But meeting the family, spending time with the family, and getting to know them – understanding the situation, it really puts life into perspective for you. 

“So when I come back down to the Triangle area where everything is pretty affluent, it kind of makes life different. Just coming back and realizing that you don’t really need to have everything you want, and understanding that having what you need is enough.”

That’s an invaluable lesson to learn at a relatively young age. Seth also has learned a lot from other service projects. He was selected to create a curriculum for a youth program at his church and to then teach it to students not much younger than himself. He also took a leadership role in an “Activate Good” project, in which he hosted a dance and game night for students with disabilities from across Wake County.  

Big decisions about school, big payoffs for the future

The opportunity to serve others and to be a leader in doing so are what led to Seth’s decision to take a chance on the then brand-new Wake Young Men's Leadership Academy four years ago. 

The small high school serves about 150 students. It focuses on academics, building leadership skills and the ability to earn college credit while taking college courses through a partnership with St. Augustine’s University. Seth will have 48 hours of transferable college credit upon graduation and might qualify as a sophomore during his first year at Duke.

Seth previously attended Highcroft Elementary and Salem and Mills Park middle schools. He cites great teachers and his parents’ inspiration as contributors to his success as a student and a future leader. Seth was headed for Panther Creek High when he heard about Wake Young Men's Leadership Academy. Something about it appealed to him.

“(The Academy) kind of called my name, because I was always leadership oriented. Also, my dad was a Marine and he raised my two brothers and me to be young leaders who knew how to be good followers first,” said Seth. In fact, under his father’s guidance, Seth and his brothers are following a program outlined in the book, “Raising a Modern-Day Knight.” The book is a guide for fathers to raise their sons to lead honorable lives. 

“It’s pretty serious. Understanding that a knight … is completely sacrificial. Nothing is ever about themselves. They serve because they want to serve. It’s something I’ve come to love.”  

Seth says he “took a lot of heat” from friends for choosing this school over a traditional and proven successful option like Panther Creek. They teased him largely because it was so different, but also because it was all male.

“Looking back, I understand that I decided to make a different choice, and in the long run it’s paid off,” he said.

Seth and his fellow “guinea pig” students hit the ground running. The summer before freshman year, they participated in a leadership camp as part of orientation for the school.

There were leadership skill development sessions, where students from a wide variety of backgrounds studied the various types of leadership styles, along with goal setting and accomplishment skills. That set the tone for Seth and his new friends’ learning experience for the next four years.

“We bonded as brothers and we focused on the importance of leadership,” he said.

 Seth describes his decision to attend Wake Young Men's Leadership Academy and how it has paid off for him

Meaningful learning through different lenses

St. Augustine’s University, a historically black college/university (HBCU), was where Seth dug deep into social issues and the history and philosophies behind them. Being a minority for the first time (and sometimes the only white student in class) was what he calls a “blessing.”

Seth points to the rich and powerful discussions he’s had with classmates over politics and current events. And although he learned about slavery and civil rights in earlier grades, he said nothing compared to the intelligent and thought-provoking discussions about these topics that he was able to have in a class comprising only African-American college students and himself. 

There were many profoundly meaningful learning experiences that transformed his views about many cultural and socio-political issues to which he might not have been exposed in other settings.

“Coming here, it’s put me in different shoes and has taught me so much about perspective,” he said. “Being able to be a minority, some people may view it as a negative. But as somebody who’s almost always in the majority, it was definitely a positive.”

Seth will take his experiences with him to Duke this fall. He currently plans to major in religious studies, but he knows that might change as he investigates opportunities.

Whatever path he chooses, there is no doubt – Seth will find plenty of opportunities to serve others along the way – and he’ll take them. 

Seth McGann will show up.