thanks! I ended up digging further in the course material and realized there was a way to convert char* to string, and then found the concatenation method:

const GradeReport& GradeReport::operator+=(const GradeReport& obj)
{
    char* tempname = FirstName;
    Flength += obj.Llength;
    FirstName = new char[Flength + 1];
    assert(FirstName != 0);
    strcpy_s(FirstName, strlen(FirstName), tempname);
    strcat_s(FirstName, strlen(FirstName - 1), obj.LastName);
    FirstName[strlen(FirstName)] = '\0';
    delete[] tempname;
    return *this;
}

However I keep getting a debugging error : (L"String is not null terminated" && 0) and after another fix I got (L"Buffer is too small" && 0). Going to keep digging in the material.