Pensacola News Journal from Pensacola, Florida • 9

Lcec! News Contacts Assault Storm damages A naked man is Mississippi arrested in residents start to East Hill, 2B clean up, 3B 'g More local news at pnj.comnews Pensacola News Journal Discrimination Wal-Mart could face massive lawsuit, 8B Breaking News Tom Ninestine, 435-8698 tninestinepnj.com Chief Content Editor Shannon Nickinson, 435-8539 snickinsonpnj.com Announcements E-mail information on local events to newspnj.com SECTION BPAG Eli Find more news and publish your own at pnj.com. Send tips to newspnj.com Tuesday, April 27, 2010 Inside This Section kg TO OPINIONS Academic standouts are No. 1 Pensacola State College will offer four-year degrees Travis Griggs tgriggspnj.com Business cards, highway signs and campus maps are just the beginning of a long list of items Pensacola Junior Col-. lege will have to replace when it updates its identity later this year. If all goes as planned, Pensacola Junior College soon will become Pensacola State College a name change that would reflect the 62-year-old community college's planned addition of four-year degrees to its curriculum in spring 2011.

The PJC Board of Trustees signed off on the new name in January, pending final approval of the school's baccalaureate program by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accrediting agency. PJC President Ed Meadows said final approval is anticipated in May, and PJC could be PSC by summer's end. "Now we are developing a list of everything that will have to be changed," Meadows said. The college has warned staffers to stop ordering PJC-branded stationery and business cards, and officials are tallying other items that will need replacement. Campus signs and faculty name tags.

Billboards, brochures and bumper stickers. Website addresses, coffee mugs and rubber stamps. The list goes on. "There is a lot involved. It's not a complicated process, but it has to be a thorough process," Meadows said.

It's a process with which officials at Northwest Florida State College in Okaloosa County are intimately familiar. That school has changed names twice in less than a decade from Okaloosa-Walton Community College to Okaloosa-Walton College in 2004, then to Northwest Florida State College in 2008. "It's exciting because it's related to growth but it's tough because we've been OW so long," said Sylvia Bryan, See PJC, 3B I never pass on the chance to extol the value of education. It's impossible to overestimate the importance of academic excellence, scholastic achievement and the need to develop leadership skills in our schools today. We often hesitate to recognize academic achievements while putting way too much emphasis on achievements in athletics and entertainment.

Ewe want young people to value their education, we have to put more Beating all the odds Autistic student graduating with honors emphasis on it and on the students who excel in the classroom and community. High achievers That's why I am honored to be a part of Pensacola Junior College's annual Student Excellence Awards ceremony today at the Jean Paul Amos Performance Studio. State workers spared pay cuts Reginald T. Dogan rdoganpnj.com 435-8543 Carmen Paige cpaigepnj.com Carlos Alvarez, 18, was never supposed to speak. Not one word.

"It wasn't true," he said, smiling. When he was 2 years old, Carlos was diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder or an autism spectrum disorder. "The doctor told us he would never talk or do something great," said Carlos' mother, Layla Alvarez. "Nobody gave us much hope." Carlos and Layla Alvarez did not give up on the youngest of their three children, who is taking Advanced Placement classes at Pine Forest High School and will graduate June 3. He has a 3.6 grade point average and is ranked 27th in a class of 350.

"It is a miracle," said Layla Alvarez. "Carlos is a responsible young man. We are proud of him." Carlos said he's happy to be finishing high school, where he had a tough business class. "It had computers, and I didn't do well with the two-finger typing," he laughed. Autism is a developmental disorder that appears in the See STUDENT, 3B -V rU I -V, V'Y A 1 -'V i.

A iC- I )ii)li ri-ii- ii i iiiitiiTi As the guest speaker, my task is to praise and encourage the more than 130 students who have been selected by faculty and administrators for their success in the classroom, their leadership qualities at school and their service to the community. Among the students of excellence will be Levi Blackmon, who is carrying on at PJC where he left off in high school. After graduating from Jay High School with a 4.0 grade point average and earning a full academic scholarship, Blackmon has maintained a 3.9 GPA at PJC's Milton campus and served as president of the Student Government Association. For his participation in service clubs, Blackmon will receive the Leadership Award. He also was selected by faculty and department heads to receive the Sharlene E.

Burkhardt Award for community service. His service included leading a team of students who collected more than two tons of food in one semester for Manna Food Pantries. He also helped organize a "Rally in Tally," leading students to Tallahassee to lobby the Legislature to put a higher priority on education. Blackmon said he prefers standing in the shadows to shining in the spotlight of recognition for his achievements. But he's proud to be honored by PJC for his success in the classroom and his service to the community.

"It is important to recognize student achievement, to instill in them that they can accomplish anything and to give them something they can strive for," said Blackmon, 19, who will receive his associate degree in May and enter the University of Florida in the fall to study forestry. Lifelong pursuit As part of my speech, it is expected that I will urge the honorees to continue their pursuit of excellence in all aspects of their lives and to blaze paths for others to follow. I will urge them to develop a lifelong hunger for more more ideas, more information, more good thoughts, more challenges, more of everything. Finally, I will remind them that if their college education was of any value, it should have given them the knowledge to realize that they have so much more to learn. Bill Cotterell News Journal capital bureau TALLAHASSEE State government employees, going on five years without a general pay raise, have been spared a salary reduction and won't have to start chipping in to the Florida Retirement System under budget agreements worked out by House and Senate negotiators.

Appropriations bosses of both chambers came to terms Monday on the framework of an agreement that spares state employees most of what they feared most. "Overall, my prayers have been answered," said Jeanette Wynn, state president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Wynn credited thousands of phone calls from state workers for making the Senate stand by its no-pay-cut position. The House version of the spending plan for the year starting July 1 called for a 3 percent reduction in salary. The cuts could come through layoffs, salary reductions of varying sizes or across-the-board reductions of 3 percent.

"When you look where we started, it ends up being a win for state employees," said state Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, whose Big Bend and Panhandle district includes more state workers than any other legislator. "It's appropriate that we continued the pay cut for ourselves, which is kind of ceremonial but it sends the message that we, too, feel the pain." Legislative salaries of $29,697 a year are 7 percent lower than what they would have been $31,932 if budget writers had done nothing. The Senate backed off a proposal that employees pay one-fourth of 1 percent of gross earnings into the retirement system, which is entirely employer-paid. Sen.

JD Alexander, R-Lake Wales, the Senate budget chairman, said members didn't want to punish state workers but the Senate previously felt the pension system could not remain ion-contributory." Photos by Tony Gibersontgibersonpnj.com Carlos Alvarez, who is autistic, will join his longtime friend Kalli Castleberry in graduating from Pine Forest High School. Alvarez is is enrolled in both regular and honors classes. 1 Carlos Joel Alvarez Age: 18. Education: Will graduate from Pine Forest High School with honors and plans to attend Pensacola Christian College to major in mathematics. Family: Parents, Carlos and Layla Alvarez, premedicine program director and interlibrary loan supervisor at PCC; siblings, Claudia Alvarez Dalton, 23, who has a master's degree in medical science, and Samuel Alvarez, 20, a senior history major at PCC.

Pine Forest High School Senior Carlos Alvarez works with teacher Pat Windham to improve his speech. Grand jury to hear case in woman's burning death Greg Marcille said. Zimmerman was beaten with a crowbar, shocked with a stun gun and set on fire March 24 in an area that is down a dirt road east of Ashland Avenue. Zimmerman, who suffered second-and third-degree burns over 60 percent of her body, died at the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile. Brown and Lee are being held without bond at Escambia County Jail.

Miller is being held at a juvenile detention Quick Read Space heater being blamed for Monday mobile home fire A mobile home in Escambia County caught fire Monday morning, and a space heater is being blamed for the blaze, fire officials said. An unidentified female resident who was home at the time of the 8:10 a.m. fire escaped unharmed and call 911. The blaze at east of U.S. 29 off Becks Lake Road, was out by 9:30 a.m., but Escambia County Fire Rescue Lt.

Daniel Akerman said the home was a total loss. The fire began while the unidentified resident was testing a space heater on her kitchen counter, Akerman said. For safety, before using a space heater, make sure it's three feet away from anything combustible, Akerman said. A grand jury will decide today whether to charge a 16-year-old as an adult in the death of a woman who was set on fire. Britnee Miller, 16, her mother, Tina Brown, 39, and Heather Lee, 27, are charged with murder in the April 8 death of Audreanna Zimmerman, 19.

The victim and the suspects live in a mobile home park in the 900 block of Detroit Boulevard. The cases against all three suspects are scheduled to be heard by the grand jury today, Assistant State Attorney 42-year-old man dies after being hit by train A Pensacola man was hit and killed Sunday night by a train in the Ensley area of Escambia County. The victim Michael Wayne Watson, 42 was struck about 11:10 p.m. on the CSX railroad tracks north of Vine Street, just west of Chemstrand Road and north of East Johnson Avenue, the Escambia County Sheriffs Office said. Escambia County paramedics and Sheriffs Office deputies went to the area after CSX train operator Charles Fowler reported a man on the tracks.

Fowler applied the emergency brakes but was unable to stop the train before it struck the man. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. Follow our feeds online Corrections To report an error, call 435-851 1 or e-mail correctionspnj.com. yj Learn more and subscribe at pnj.comrss We re on Twitter at www.twitter.compnj Evening Cash 3: 7-3 8 Afternoon Play 4: 0-3-0-6 Evening Play 4: 8-7-2-3 Fantasy 5: 1-2-6-29-36 LOTTERY Afternoon Cash 3: 5-3 6.