TRAVERSE CITY — Nancy Gray, 62, a dedicated instructor at Northwestern Michigan College, died unexpectedly Monday night, but her legacy of student advocacy will live on, colleagues said.
“This is a profound loss for NMC and for all who had the privilege of knowing and working alongside Nancy,” NMC President Nick Nissley said. “May we honor her by continuing to lead with compassion, courage, and care for all of our students and one another.”
This acclaimed educator who worked at NMC for more than 15 years was the founder and director for the NMC Neurodiversity Support Center.
“Nancy played a central role in strengthening our developmental English curriculum and in ensuring students could earn credit while receiving the support they needed to succeed,” Nissley said. “Most recently, she founded and led the Neurodiversity Support Center, the first such center at a Michigan community college.
“In just two years, it became a transformative resource and a physical place of belonging for many on our campus.”
Nissley said her excellence as an educator was widely recognized and included receiving the NISOD Award for Teaching Excellence.
“Yet those who worked with Nancy know that her greatest impact was quieter and more enduring,” he noted, “the way she showed up for students, listened without judgment, and advocated relentlessly for inclusive learning environments.”
Traverse City always was home to Nancy. With her father’s work for the military, she moved around in her childhood. But her family moved to Traverse City in 1973 when she was in grade school and she graduated from Traverse City High School in 1981.
She loved to bring people together, her sister Sharon Gray said, recalling Nancy and her husband hosting gatherings called “strums,” with food and music.
If guests were lucky, Nancy would pull out her ukulele and her husband would grab his guitar. Her singing voice was “unbelievable,” her sister said.
Professionally, she embraced inclusivity and community by supporting students with learning differences. Nancy was always looking out for others and trying to help the “underdog,” her sister said.
“‘Who are the people that are disadvantaged here? Who are the people that need the most help?’ That was Nancy,” she said.
And once she knew what needed to be done, she acted.
Liz Larson attended Eastern Elementary with Nancy when she led a “revolt” to liberate the girls from cafeteria work and allow them to be crossing guards, she said in a Facebook post.
“She could manifest anything,” her sister said, and was “widely and highly admired” for her courage.
“She’d go out on a limb and start things that people hadn’t even thought of and make them happen — and you’d realize how much you needed it after she did it,” she said.
The Neurodiversity Support Center was one such example. Her sister said it took Nancy years of work, and a lot of grant writing, before that program got going.
Nancy Gray proposed the center after spending her 2022-23 sabbatical year researching neurodiversity support services provided by many other colleges and universities.
That center opened here in January 2024 and was the first such center at a Michigan community college, an NMC release said.
Neurodiversity includes a variety of learning differences, like autism, anxiety and ADHD. The center helps students with these differences transition from high school to college and from college to the workplace by offering support, training and social opportunities.
Kristen Salathiel, a communications instructor, was hired 15 years ago around the same time as Nancy and had worked next door to her, planning classes and lessons together over the years.
Salathiel said their friendship and working relationship has made her a better teacher.
“Everything I know about how to work with and support students with learning differences has come from her,” she said. “Our community has lost an incredible teacher and human.”
She said Nancy Gray was a true champion for neurodivergent students “before it was cool.”
“Nancy was a fierce advocate for students and individuals who experienced the world differently. Her legacy lives on in the countless students she encouraged, supported, and believed in – often at moments when that belief mattered most,” Nissley said in a statement announcing her death.
Nancy began teaching at NMC in August 2009 and taught Developmental English and English Composition. She was empathic, heartfelt and “excelled at getting students’ commitment to learning,” Communications Department Chair Michael Anderson said.
She would bring snacks in on Fridays and “turned her classroom into a community,” Anderson said, “She was really special.”
Nissley described her as a “teacher through and through.”
In addition to the “countless, thousands, of students she touched,” the center is her legacy, Anderson said.
She really believed that neurodiverse people, if they had the right support, could succeed in higher education, he added. “Her work proved it.”
And that work at the center and that work of her life will continue.
“The student workers helping actually deliver those services (at the center), they’re insisting the show goes on,” Anderson said. “Next week, they’re going to provide NSC center hours and seminars.”
“She had a lot of good work left to do in this world,” he said. “And I think we should all try to live by her example.”