WESTPORT — Mark Allen, a senior at Westport Junior Senior High School said his father gave him an ultimatum when he was in middle school — he could get involved in sports or beef up his academic career with college courses.
He started with a reading placement exam at Bristol Community College. His father David Allen, who had worked at BCC in advising and financial aid, told him to take his time and wished him luck.
He came out in about 10 minutes and he scored a 92. Since then, he’s taken one or two courses each semester at night and online.
This past December, Mark completed the coursework for an associate degree in liberal arts with a concentration in behavioral and social sciences at BCC, on top of being in the Top 10 of his class, a member of the National Honor Society and taking Advanced Placement classes.
While BCC offers dual enrollment to high school students, it is rare to complete enough credits for an associate degree prior to graduating from high school, BCC confirmed. The college sees a handful of eighth grade students start course work each year.
Mark, 17, is set to attend the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in the fall to study politics and history, with particular interest in focusing on the industrial revolution. He wants to become a history professor.
“I have such a passionate love for the subject, I want to be able to pass it on to others,” Mark said. “Be that inspirational figure for another generation of students.”
He most looked up to his eighth grade history teacher, Amanda Tetzloff, he said, who made the subject come alive for him through primary sources, newspaper clippings and speeches. She inspired him to pursue teaching history, he said.
Leslie Ruel, his guidance counselor at Westport Junior Senior High, said that in her 15 years in guidance, Mark is the first Westport student to complete coursework for an associate degree prior to graduating high school. Plus, he started taking college-level courses in eighth grade, which is uncommon, she said in an email.
“It is quite a feat and I am extremely proud of him,” she wrote. In a December letter addressed to a scholarship committee, Ruel described Mark as “one of my most hardworking and distinguished seniors.”
At BCC he took sociology, biology, astronomy, English, math, World War II, world history and U.S. history courses. He intentionally set up his schedule to start taking subjects at the college level before learning about them in high school, he said, like pre-calculus.
Mark served as class president during his sophomore and junior year, currently serves as the student representative to the Westport School Committee, is part of the school’s International Exchange Club which travels abroad, and said he’s the only member of his graduating class that has stuck with band; he plays the trumpet.
His dad who is currently the associate director of financial aid operations for the Community College of Rhode Island, said “I give him a lot of credit, he does work hard.”
With shoulder-length hair and square, thick-rimmed glasses, Mark recalled growing up, in part with a grandmother who was an elementary school English teacher and always being surrounded by books, especially history books.
“That early exposure to the subject is probably why I love it so much,” he said while inside his school’s library. He recently finished a book about Ulysses S. Grant and likes to read about Theodore Roosevelt.
Vacations have usually included visiting historical sites such as Valley Forge and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania and Jamestown in Virginia, and he has an internship with the Westport Historical Society. In December, the society published a piece Mark wrote titled “Westport’s Gilded Age: The Rise and Fall of the Charlton Estate.”
Taking the courses at BCC has helped him to gain time management, scheduling and organizational skills, he said. Plus, taking enough classes to add up to a degree has seemed to pay off during the college application process, he said.