WTHS Senior Earns Associate's Degree Prior to High School Graduation
Perhaps when he is working professionally in radio, television or film production, Washington Township High School senior Tom Copsetta will have an opportunity to profile someone like himself - a hard-working student who is driven, goal-oriented and destined for success.
On May 10, 2018, Copsetta graduated from Rowan College at Gloucester County with an associate’s degree in radio, television and film and a cumulative grade point average of 3.9. On June 19, 2018, he will graduate from WTHS as the only member of the Class of 2018 to have completed the High School Option Program (HSOP) through RCGC. The program was designed to provide high school students with the opportunity to start taking college courses at RCGC at a discounted rate. In completing the program, Copsetta spent five periods a day at WTHS during his senior year, serving as producer for the school’s video magazine “Monthly Rewind Season 22,” before traveling to RCGC to pursue college-level coursework.
“Tom’s hard work and dedication served him well as he pursued his degree,” WTHS principal Ann Moore said, “and I’m sure it will continue to serve him well in the future. We are proud of his accomplishments both at WTHS and RCGC.”
"Tom is a great person and one of my all-time favorite students,” WTHS television production teacher Marty Bouchard said. “He is hard-working, creative, and focused. It was these qualities that led me to name him Rewind's season 22 producer. It is also those qualities that I know will make him successful in any career that he chooses."
Copsetta’s parents, Tom and Candace, discovered the program and encouraged their adventurous son to give it a go. After enrolling online and knocking out all of his undergraduate, general education requirements, he found himself in a face-to-face film class in January of his senior year of high school and immediately realized that his decision to pursue the program was his destiny. In fact, he bought into the HSOP program so completely that he even created a video that RCGC now uses to draw students to the program.
“You’re bound to get recognition, like I have, for earning your associate’s degree before your high school diploma,” he said, “but when I created a video promoting the HSOP program, at the request of my high school counselor (Mrs. Linda Salkowski), things really took off. Mrs. Salkowski sent my video to my advisor at RCGC and then she shared it with the whole college campus. Next thing you know, I am on the cover of the RCGC magazine that was mailed to 250,000 homes in South Jersey. I am on the front page of the RCGC website. I am on a billboard on Route 55. It opened up so many opportunities for me.”
Now enrolled in the newly created RCGC “3+1” program, Copsetta will complete his third year of college at the school before finishing his senior year at Rowan University.
“I have moved on from promoting the HSOP program to promoting the 3+1 program,” Copsetta said. “Now, you can see me on the back of New Jersey Transit buses. I get text messages all the time, ‘I saw you on the back of a bus’!”
Copsetta has no hesitation in recommending the program since, admittedly, his enrollment has saved him a lot of time and money and allowed him to forge bonds with professors who will be instrumental in developing him into the filmmaker he ultimately aspires to be.
“This is where I am meant to be,” said Copsetta, who readily credits Mr. Bouchard with giving him the foundation that set him on his path. “I am way ahead of the game and have already completed college courses in journalism, applied media aesthetics, television industry, and film history and communication. I have never not known what I wanted to do with my life. It could be heartbreaking and pretty scary to leave high school without a plan.
“My goal is to be making movies when I am 30 years old,” he said. “I hope to start my career in television production and try to do freelance film work on the side. I also really want to make electronic music videos. Those are some of my favorite things to do, maybe even more than storytelling. My dream is to be my own boss in the film industry, and I realize that’s a really hard place to get to. You have to make good stuff and have connections, but there is a lot of luck involved. I have worked really hard, but I also have had a lot of luck.”
WTHS senior Tom Copsetta posed with the school television production teacher Marty Bouchard, who started
the WTHS television production course some 34 years ago and who will be retiring at year’s end.