As a first generation college graduate, Kinkead, who is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Alabama, says that while he didn’t grow up below the poverty line, he did, in fact, grow up pretty darn close.

“Were we below the poverty line? No. But were we poor? Yes. Did we live on the wrong side of the tracks? Yes,” says Kinkead, who laments the fact that most of the neighboring kids he knew growing up have either spent time in jail, are currently in jail, or have become mixed up with drugs.

Kinkead’s parents, both of whom were considered “intellectual giants” in their families for being the first in each respective family to graduate from high school, were determined that life would be different for their only child.

“I’m living proof that one can say no to drugs and yes to education,” he says. “My parents made it clear to me that going to college was in my future. My father was very certain that I was going to be the one in my generation of cousins to change my genealogy. No one, dating back to the 1700s on my father’s side, had ever gone to college.”

Kinkead, a graduate of a private Baptist institution, Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee worked hard to afford his education.

While the tuition for his education could have reached upwards of $65,000, Kinkead received some financial aid benefits which he supplemented by always having a job throughout his college career.

“When I graduated, I only had to pay about $20,000 in student loans,” a sum, he says, which he had saved during college and was able to pay back right away.

“There was a period when I was in school that I worked two jobs that took up 58 hours a week, and I was also spending 15 hours a week in the classroom,” he says, recalling that during that period, his grades were all “A’s,” except for a lone “B” in a one-hour SCUBA diving course.

After college, Kinkead followed a faculty mentor to Arkansas State University, where he was a graduate assistant and debate coach. He earned a Master of Arts in Speech Communication in December of 2003, and began teaching at Dalton State in August of 2004.

Kinkead is sympathetic to students’ circumstances, realizing that many of today’s students work in addition to going to school, some are under-prepared, and many have family responsibilities.

But he also believes that achieving your educational dreams is a matter of personal responsibility and desire.

“If you want it, do it,” he says. “I believe that most people are not doomed to a life of poverty and that none of us are doomed to only achieving certain standards. I tell my students that if they conduct themselves as serious students and commit 100% to their studies, that very rarely will they fail.

“I also tell them that your life can change if you want it to. Our slogan at Dalton State is ‘The Sky’s the Limit.’ I’m always asking my students ‘How high is your sky?’ I tell them that their launch into that sky starts here.”