Student Spotlight
Anthony Marshall, behind the lens
Anthony Marshall found his passion at SMCC behind the lens of a camera.
A Communications and New Media Studies major, he is particularly focused on video production and photography.
Outside of class, he’s directed four music videos for local hip-hop and rap performers that now appear on their YouTube channels. He’s also had his still photographs published in the Portland Phoenix and Maine Women’s Magazine.
For the Maine Mayhem student film festival this spring, he’s producing a film called “The Broken Loop of Micah Westbrook,” about a man who relives the same day over and over for years on end — until one day the loop is finally broken.
Anthony took off a few years after high school, not sure which path he wanted to follow. But he says he found his calling after taking his first Communications & New Media class in audio/video production.
“After that first class, I decided I wanted to be a film maker, that was what I want to do. I was hooked.”
Alumni Spotlight
Kola Brown, accounting to marine science
Kola Brown has changed careers from tax accounting to fisheries research after earning her degree in Marine Science. She now works at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
Kola worked as an auditor and then as a tax accountant for 19 years after earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Thomas College years ago.
But she always knew she wanted to work in marine science, and in 2012 she took the leap and entered our Marine Science program. For four years, she commuted two hours from her home in Newport to earn her degree.
As a top-notch student, she earned an internship as a research technician at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. After the internship ended last summer, the institute hired her full-time.
For her job, she catches fish at sea, from shore and in rivers and then analyzes them in a research lab. It’s quite a contrast to accounting, she says, and she loves what she’s doing.
Kola still has ties to SMCC; her 19-year-old son is enrolled in the Precision Machining program.
“Marine science was something I wanted to do when I was in high school. But I happened to be good in accounting and went that route. It’s been wonderful and I enjoy it, but marine science has always been my dream, so I decided to go back to school and do what I wanted to do.”