From Musician to University Help: Meet the Former LBCC Student Helping the Next Generation Transfer to Universities – Nicholas May
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| Photo by Skylar Wilkerson |
For many students at Linn-Benton Community College, the path to a four-year university can feel like a daunting maze of transferable credits, shifting deadlines, and intimidating applications. Whether a student is aiming for a "dream school" or simply trying to find their next destination, the logistics can be overwhelming.
At the center of this process is the LBCC Transfer Center – a small but high-volume office upstairs in Takena Hall dedicated to clearing the fog for more than 1,500 students each term.
Nick May, a program specialist for the Degree Partnership Program (DPP), pulled back the curtain on how the center works. He is a “navigator” who understands the students perspective firsthand. As a non-traditional student himself, May’s journey hasn't been a straight line. It’s been a winding path through student employment, pizza shops, and local music stages.
Beyond the spreadsheets and credit evaluations involved in his work, May is a fixture in the local music scene as the frontman for the band Skeleton Boy. In this Q&A, he discusses the "hard work" of booking a multi-state tour, the reality of being a non-traditional student at LBCC, and why the transfer center is about more than just a "pipeline" to Oregon State.
Q: How do you describe what you do here at the Transfer Center?
May: We’re basically transfer specialists. A lot of our work is supporting dual-enrolled students between LBCC and Oregon State, but we do a lot of "extra" stuff too. We help students navigate between where they are at LBCC and where they want to go next. Sometimes that means being a helping hand and connecting them to someone they’ve never met, and sometimes it means sharing valuable info about programs like dual enrollment.
Q: You also work with high school students. What does that look like?
May: Our high school recruiting team often gets questions about Oregon State. Especially in rural areas, students might not be ready for the "whole OSU thing" yet. It can be intimidating to them. We step in to explain that there are other options besides just going straight to a university. We let them know that LBCC is an option, sometimes even for students in Portland who don't realize how close we are to Corvallis and Albany and more importantly just letting them know about their possibilities.
Q: People often associate the Transfer Center strictly with Oregon State. Is that the only focus?
May: People often assume our goal is just to funnel people through the OSU pipeline, but that’s not the case. We just had our Oregon Transfer Days fair, and we had representatives from Nevada, Arizona, and Idaho. My goal is to broaden horizons. Places like OSU or PSU have big name-brand recognition, but we want to show students there are other opportunities – like "weird art schools" nearby or smaller universities that might be a better fit.
Q: How is your role different from a traditional academic advisor?
May: Academic advisors tell you exactly what courses you need to take to graduate. Our office doesn’t do that. We are "navigators." We handle the systems and the process. We’re the friendly people you talk to if OSU isn’t responding to you or if you just don’t know where to start. We aren't necessarily focused on you getting an LBCC degree if that’s not your goal; we’re focused on the "other stuff" you need to do to get where you're going.
Q: Can you give us an idea of the scale of your work? How many students are currently utilizing these transfer programs?
May: It’s a fair amount. We usually have about 1,500 students at LBCC who are part of the Degree Partnership Program and taking classes. That doesn't even factor in the traditional students who aren't in a specific program yet but still want to transfer eventually.
Q: That sounds like a heavy workload for a single office.
May: It’s a pretty significant volume. I was just talking to my colleague, Christine, and she mentioned that since the start of the term, she had already processed 400 individual requests.
We’re a pretty small office considering how large our caseload is, but we stay busy making sure everyone gets where they need to go.
Q: What is your biggest piece of advice for a first-year student who wants to transfer eventually?
May: First, maximize your time in those first few terms. If you do it correctly, you can start the dual enrollment process with just 24 transferable credits. You don't always have to spend two full years here before connecting with a university.
Second, and I tell all freshmen this is to check your email! That is always how people get into trouble. And finally, ask questions. Don’t just feel comfortable asking them; I encourage it.
Q: Being a non-traditional student yourself, what was your own path like through LBCC and on to your next steps?
May: I’m definitely a non-traditional student. After I finished my associate degree here, I wasn’t initially convinced I was going to go on for a four-year degree. I was working at a pizza place and having a hard time balancing my schedule. Eventually, I got my foot in the door at LBCC through student employment at the First Resort.
Once I graduated with my associate degree, I realized I wasn't quite at the career level I wanted to be yet. My boss told me that to keep growing in this role, I needed to work on my bachelor’s. Since I came here (in this position), I have gotten a tuition waiver, so I’ve been able to take classes that fit into my path. It’s given me a really good perspective on what it’s like to be a "winding journey" student. When a 27-year-old comes in feeling “weird” because they didn't start college at 18, I can say, “Hey, you’re not weird. Welcome.” I can fall back on my own mistakes and my own winding journey to help them.
Q: Outside of your work here on campus, I hear you’re involved in the local music scene. Can you tell us about that?
May: Yeah! I play guitar and sing in a band called Skeleton Boy. We’ve been around the Albany/Corvallis area since about 2016. It’s a huge part of how I process my emotions and understand the world. We actually have a small tour coming up over spring break through California, Nevada, and Washington.
Music has been a part of my life since the sixth grade. My mom actually gave me an ultimatum: I had to either join the choir or learn an instrument. She told me if I didn’t like it after a year, I could quit, but that it would be "good for my brain." I picked up the alto saxophone and loved it. I played all the way through my junior year of high school.
Q: What led to the switch from saxophone to guitar and starting a band?
May: It was a bit of a transition period. A lot of my friends in the band were seniors and graduated, and at the same time, I was actually working on the school newspaper, which was a lot of fun. Around that time, I moved away from the saxophone and toward the guitar, and I just haven't stopped since.
For me, art and creation are ways to process my emotions. It’s really just about trying to understand how I feel about this crazy world we all live in.
Q: What kind of theme does Skeleton Boy play?
May: We have a lot of cheeky little references in our song titles and things like that. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's that Y2K pop punk kind of sound. But from the nature of the age groups that we all are, there are a lot of late 90s, early 2000s.
There's also lots of goofy retro gaming things that we put into the music and stuff. We've got a tour coming up over spring break and I've just been taking screenshots from old PC first person shooters and just cropping them down, and then like adding text for our posters and stuff like that so it gives you an idea on our music.
Q: Is the entire Skeleton Boy ban going on tour?
May: It’s not a full-band tour just yet. We’re doing a week-long "test run," following a model a friend of ours used on the East Coast. She went out with just an acoustic guitar, played some coffee shop shows, and then brought the band back once she saw how it went.
That’s our plan. We’ll start in Northern California, move into mid-California, head over to Nevada, go up through Washington, and finally end the run back home in Corvallis.
Q: What has the process of booking a multi-state tour been like for you?
May: It’s cool, but it is incredibly hard work. You spend so much time texting and emailing. I actually told a colleague recently that if I could go back in time and give my younger self advice on what being a "semi-professional" musician looks like, I’d still have to lie to him about how many emails it takes. He wouldn't believe it.
You really have to harden your heart a little bit. You’re presenting something you deeply care about – your art to people who sometimes want nothing to do with it. You just have to get used to sending a mountain of emails and hoping for a little bit of retention.
Q: Does your creative side ever bleed into your office work?
May: Definitely. During the "ebbs and flows" of the term, outside of the rigid registration periods, I get to let my brain go a little bit. I help with posters and finding ways to make the transfer process feel a little more fun or exciting. It’s about taking something that seems like a rigid process and adding some “life” to it.
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