As the summer draws to a close, school-agers face the transition back to the books. But for one Sheboygan area student, the learning never quits and instead of vacation, summer has been filled with forging a path to the future. For Mackenzie Villarreal, or “Kenzie”, learning is a way of life.
“Yes, I have always been interested in learning since I was in elementary school, and I have always been a bit of an over-performer.” Kenzie was attending Sheboygan South in her freshman year when her mother suggested earning college credits before graduation. “She’s the one who found the program. So I brought it up to my school counselor at South, and talked about what the requirements were for the Rising Phoenix program and, unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be old enough to start that program until my junior year of high school. But I learned of a separate program called the Early College Credit program. It sounds similar but it’s a different program, and for that program high school students can earn up to 18 credits in high school, so I earned those 18 credits in my sophomore year and then, after that, I transitioned into the Rising Phoenix program in my junior year.”
By then, Kenzie was attending the George D. Warriner High School in Sheboygan, a personalized learning school that worked well with Kenzie’s ambitions. Remaining in the Rising Phoenix program means staying in high school, so even though Kenzie will have enough credits to graduate this fall, she will stay in high school into next year, first attending her Associate’s Degree classes on the UWGB-Sheboygan Campus through the fall semester, and then transitioning to the Green Bay Campus for her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing beginning this spring, all while finishing her high school obligations remotely. “The staff at Warriner has been very supportive…my school counselor, Jenny Maramonte, has been working very closely with me to sign up for all my classes and schedule me with my success coach (from UWGB) and all that.”
And it took some work convincing her success coach to go along with the plan, since Mackenzie was to be the first-ever high school student in Wisconsin to be accepted during her senior year into UWGB’s Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing program. The go-ahead was achieved only after numerous communications behind the scenes between the Nursing Department and her success coach, but she did eventually end up receiving approval to apply to the program. And with that approval, Kenzie applied, was accepted, and is on-track to receive her Bachelor’s Degree in May of 2029.
Should any others of a similar age be motivated to try a similar path, Kenzie wholeheartedly encourages taking the chance. “I would say that you can do anything that you set your mind to, and don’t ever let anyone discourage you because I did have a bit of that along the way. I did have some people who didn’t believe that that was going to be possible for me to be able to start the nursing program in high school. Look where we are – I set my mind to it and I accomplished it, and I think that anyone who works hard enough can do it, too.”
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