By Molly Lovell
Staff Writer
    Students who drop out of high school can get back on their feet again. Michael Schell of Saco is proof.
    The Southern Maine Community College student was recently named Maine’s New Century Scholar. The New Century Scholar program honors 50 community college students from across the United States.
    Schell beat out 13 other people to represent Maine.
Two years ago when Schell decided he wanted to go to college he set his sights on a four-year university. He applied to a handful of them, including the University of Southern Maine, expecting to be accepted by at least one.
    Schell thought that because he had his General Equivalency Diploma and also served in the Air Force for two years that it would be enough to convince the institutions to let him in.
    “Many colleges didn’t take my application seriously,” Schell wrote in an essay.
    Not one of the universities accepted him fearing that he wouldn’t be able to handle a full course load and almost all of them recommended he spend a couple of years at a community college to fine tune his academic skills before transferring to their university.
    “It didn’t feel too good,” he said, adding that he at first thought attending a community college would be a waste of his time.
    With no other choice but to accept the hand he had been dealt, Schell enrolled in the liberal arts program at Southern Maine Community College.
    Two years later he has a 4.0 grade point average and even tutors other students in math and science.
    “I think it’s really cool,” said SMCC’s Dean of Students, Diane Vickrey, of Schell’s accomplishments.
    She said the New Century Scholar award will be something that future employers will definitely notice.
    One of the award’s sponsors is Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society. It is the largest honor society in American higher education and has 1,200 chapters.
    “This is surprising that I’ve done as well as I have considering the past,” he said.
    Schell dropped out during his senior year of high school in Florida. His father was in the military and so the family moved around quite a bit.
    “We were getting ready to move again and I didn’t want to because I had wanted to graduate high school there,” Schell said.
    He ended up staying in Florida and working full-time to support himself after his parents moved and ironically never graduated with the class he was so intent on staying with.
    After his time in the military and spending a number of years living in the southern portion of the United States Schell eventually made his way up to Maine and got a job working at Unum Provident.
    “It was a good job but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was probably about the best job I could get being a high school drop out,” he said.
    Even though it was a good job, it didn’t satisfy Schell.
    “My only other alternative was to go back to school,” he said.
    Schell was nervous that he wouldn’t be able to cut it at the college level. “It had been 10 years since I had done anything really challenging,” he said.
    With much support from his wife Kelly, Schell did extremely well and will soon be transferring to the University of Maine at Orono to major in electrical engineering.
    Fairchild Semiconductor would be his ideal job after graduating, he said.
    Schell doesn’t think everyone needs to pursue a college degree. He said it’s still possible for a person to make a good living without one.
    He also recommends community colleges.
    “It provided me with a valuable transition period . . . I feel fully prepared for whatever lies ahead,” he said.