National Public Radio Features College Unbound Student, Program He Calls “Phenomenal”
August 24, 2010
Radio listeners across the nation heard Rhode Island’s Michael McCarthy discuss the innovative College Unbound program where he is a first-year student on NPR’s August 24th Talk of the Nation.
“I was just extremely excited to get an opportunity to work in a program that was as different and as, you know, just able to integrate my passion and interest directly into what we were doing for coursework.”
“The model was so different that it has just, it has opened up the world to me as far as what I was going to be able to accomplish inside of pursuing a bachelor’s degree, which is something I never thought was possible.”
“I’m going to get this chance to do this work that I’m passionate about, in this case, community access to sailing and maritime pursuits for inner-city students and so forth. And being able to actually do that work currently with my school, so I can apply these different concepts and the different coursework to what I’m doing and vice versa.”
About Michael:
Michael McCarthy is a 28-year-old first-year College Unbound @ Roger Williams University student from Newport, Rhode Island and Rogers High School. Having served as a medic in Afghanistan, Michael returned to Newport to do community work and plan for a college degree. He discovered and applied for College Unbound when designing a sailing instructional program for underserved students at Newport’s The East Bay Met, a Big Picture Learning school associated with the college program.