Dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt and a dark sweater, carrying a briefcase, face obscured by a beard, Alex Peppe resembles a normal neo-hippie 20-something grad student about to teach a lab. He was once a lab instructor, but Peppe is not anywhere near normal. And he is not a grad student. Nor is he in his 20s.
Peppe is 17. He started taking college classes at the age of 11, and is one of the youngest students ever to attend USM.
His mother, Helen, started teaching Peppe at home when he was four, and his education was extremely varied. He learned everything from foreign languages to guitar and banjo; literature, fencing, martial arts and skiing.
As a professional writer, his mother oversaw his literature and English education, but as she reached the end of her knowledge in other subjects, the family hired tutors.
It was around the age of nine that Peppe became intrigued with computers, and by the time he hit 11, the high school teacher they hired had taught Peppe all he could and recommended that he take classes at SMCC or USM.
Peppe was too young to start the early studies program at USM, so his parents have footed the tuition bill themselves. Including all the early tutor costs, “it’s a lot of money,” Mrs. Peppe says, “but it’s been absolutely worth it.”
Home schooling and tutoring can lead to social awkwardness, but this wasn’t the case for Peppe.
He was instrumental in restarting the Computing Club and holds weekly events in the computer science lab. He is currently a tutor for computer science (COS) classes and once was a lab instructor.
When Charles Welty, COS chair and Peppe’s mentor, was looking to hire a lab instructor, Peppe was the obvious choice because of his talent and dedication-he once turned in exceptional work that had taken hours for an extra-credit assignment worth less than one percent of the total grade. Welty still has the project.
Welty says it is a shame that after just one semester, Peppe was forced by the dean and then-provost Joe Wood to resign because of his age and lack of a degree.
None of Welty’s students expressed any problems with having a lab instructor younger than they were, and in fact, Welty has received only positive feedback from the students that Peppe taught and those he tutors now.
Peppe counts his short experience teaching as a positive one; it has solidified his desire to teach at the college level. Welty says that “there’s no question that he’d still be teaching if it was possible.”
Peppe has plans to enter MIT this fall, and though he refuses to say that he will get in, his friends kid him that there’s no way he won’t be accepted.
As preparation for eventually moving out of state, Peppe moved out of his parents’ house at the beginning of the year. Most parents might be worried about their 17-year-old living on his or her own, but his mother concedes that it is just part of his experience.
Peppe is, after all, not a normal 17-year-old.