From organizing his cousins’ games as a child to shaping the educational journeys of thousands of North Carolina students, Colby Cochran ’75 built a career on leadership, service, and heart – values first nurtured at Pfeiffer College and carried through nearly four decades with the Rowan-Salisbury School System.

Cochran’s journey to Pfeiffer started in part when he was still in seventh grade, just down the road from the college at Harrisburg (N.C.) Junior High. He learned about student councils when running for and winning the position of vice president in seventh grade.

“They explained I would represent students, make decisions, and that just appealed to me,” Cochran said. “I was always interested in doing things and being in charge, organizing things for my brother and my cousins when I was little.”

The next year, he ran for and was voted president of the Harrisburg Student Council.

His involvement in student councils at the state level came later, starting with his attendance at a local gathering while in high school.

“I found out they had a state convention. I told my advisor, and we went to Raleigh,” Cochran said.

“We went to the summer workshop, which was always a big event, a week-long leadership workshop. I must have made an impression, because the executive director asked me to come back and help the next year.”

Cochran said he first learned about Pfeiffer from his student council advisor at Central Cabarrus High School, Norma Wentz Sanko ’58. During a class project, Sanko connected him with Dr. Ed Horne, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and head of Pfeiffer’s Psychology Department at the time. The meeting got him on campus.

“As a ninth grader, going on that campus, that was big,” Cochran said.

“When it got time to go to college, I had had that experience at Pfeiffer, and I felt it was close enough that I could get in my car and come home if I needed to, but yet it’s far enough away that I stayed on campus.”

He graduated from Central Cabarrus High School in 1971 and joined the freshman class at Pfeiffer the following fall semester.

Along with pursuing his A.B. degree in Social Studies, Cochran worked in the finance office, typing W-2 tax forms for each Pfeiffer employee. He also made photo IDs in the printing office on the bottom floor of the administration building. He served as an assistant to Dr. Fred Hollis, Professor Emeritus of Education, and for Mary Wheless, Director of Housing, during the summer.

Being at Pfeiffer, he said, was being part of a unique community where you knew all the staff and professors, even if you didn’t have them for a class.

“I was just at home. Pfeiffer gave me a great foundation,” Cochran said.

He also worked with new student orientation and assisted with many events at Pfeiffer, though he never ran for a student government office in college.

Cochran won the Pearl Walton Fisher Citizenship Award in 1975. The award is given annually to the senior who exhibits strong civic contributions, has a good scholastic record, has made contributions to the university, and has a positive standing among peers.

After one year of teaching social studies at South Rowan High School, Cochran traveled to the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, earning a master’s degree in educational psychology in 1977. He later earned administrative certifications at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.

Cochran spent eight years as a middle school counselor at West Rowan Junior High and a year at China Grove (N.C.) Middle School, eventually supervising counselors and serving as the Director of Exceptional Children.

Finally, he moved to the school system’s central office and accepted the testing position, a post he had held for 28 years. At the time of his retirement, Cochran was the Director of Assessment and Accountability Services for Rowan County’s public schools.

“I tried to make it as easy as possible for teachers to administer tests and do all the things they needed to do. If I could do that, then that’s my service,” Cochran said about his approach to testing.

He wanted teachers to “focus on the children you see every day. Let me worry about all these little details. When test day comes, just pass the tests out. If you’ve done your job, it’s probably going to be OK. If it’s not, we will just figure out what you can do better the next time.”

During his time with Rowan-Salisbury Schools, Cochran was a fixture at state events for the North Carolina Association of Student Councils, having attended 53 summer workshops in a row, including after becoming the Executive Director for the association.

Cochran said many students came up to him during his last summer convention and said how much they would miss him.

Students saw him up on the stage, he said, and told him they knew he was the man behind the scenes, but that “when you talk to him, it’s like he’s really looking at you, that he cares about you. You’re not just another face.”

It was his dedication to the state’s student council organization that led to his induction into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, in 2011. The award, conferred by the Governor of North Carolina, is one of the most prestigious in the state and is awarded for “exemplary service to the State of North Carolina.”

Cochran remembers one former student from Roxboro, N.C., of whom he said would always have a place at the state workshop. She went to Appalachian State University and was elected student body president. Anderson Clayton, now the state party chair for the North Carolina Democratic Party, is the youngest person to serve as a state party chair in the nation.

Cochran also fondly recalls that country music star Eric Church stood out as a leader when he was on the student council at South Caldwell (N.C.) High School.

“The students who have come through this program are what has made this work so fulfilling,” Cochran said.

“They go on, and you see them go out and do big things, and you look back and think maybe you had a little part in helping them become successful. That’s what made it worth it.”