Tri-State University business management senior Meagan Matthews’ TSU Middle College experience will allow her to graduate from college at age 20, roughly two years ahead of most TSU grads at commencement on May 5.

Matthews numbered among the first four students to take advantage of TSU’s Middle College opportunity for high school students four years ago, while completing her junior and senior high school years through correspondence courses.

The unusual arrangement took a little convincing for her dad, TSU computer science professor Dan Matthews, but he eventually understood that high school lacked challenge for his daughter. “He knew I needed a change and a different setting. After my sophomore year, I didn’t want to go back. I wasn’t challenged, and I’m a person who finds solutions,” she said in her apartment in the Trine Villas this week.

On the advice of a friend, she educated herself at home while taking enough TSU Middle College courses to graduate high school at 17, and entered college with a semester of college completed.

Even at her young age, she felt prepared for middle college, she said. “They’re not throwing you into classes you can’t handle. I knew (TSU Middle College coordinator) Cheryl Thomas from church, and I worked with her,” she said.

The business management and marketing major has secured a part-time paid internship at Innovation in Motion at Vestil Manufacturing in Angola, arranged when the TSU Office of Career Services sent Matthews’ resume to Vestil. Now she writes and designs all the marketing for Vestil’s off-road wheelchair and pediatric equipment.

She presides over both campus business organizations, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and Delta Mu Delta business honor society. The TSU SIFE chapter competes annually in Chicago, and Matthews coordinates those trips, and made presentations last year and this year. She’s looking at both the local and Chicago markets for employment upon graduation.

She called TSU Middle College “a great opportunity because you can get ahead in high school, and if you don’t aim to graduate college early, you can take a lighter load when you get to college.”

The TSU Middle College Orientation and Senior Night will be Tuesday, May 8 from 7-8:30 p.m. in Best Hall Room 229. The special evening honors exiting seniors with a TSU Middle College certificate and gift. Students and their parents will speak of their middle college experiences.

Thomas will also welcome incoming summer and fall semester TSU Middle College students and answer questions from students interested in the opportunity. Course materials for the upcoming sessions will also be available. For more information on the orientation, honor night, or enrolling in TSU Middle College, contact Thomas at 260.665.4307.