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The Paul McGhee Division

Marc Gustafson

B.A. in Social Sciences, concentration  in International Studies, 2007

Marc Gustafson was a 19-year-old college freshman when he and a friend decided to set off and sail around the world.  More than the lure of travel, theirs became a mission to create a floating classroom that used online and satellite technology to beam back images of local cultures and give low-income students true-to-life geography lessons. 

Gustafson left college in 1997 to run the non-profit venture—Reach the World (RTW)—that grew out of that fateful first voyage.  Today, RTW serves over 3,000 students and is running multiple online journeys.

Leaving college changed Gustafson’s life, giving him an opportunity to travel the globe, help run what has become a successful non-profit, and educate thousands of young people.  As successful as he was, he never earned his college degree. 

So several years later in 2004, while still running RTW, he returned to school at NYU-SCPS’s Paul McGhee Division.  He earned his B.A. in Social Sciences, with a concentration in International Studies, in May 2007.

Gustafson was awarded a prestigious Marshall Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford to pursue a graduate degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies.  He is the first NYU-SCPS student and the first known “nontraditional” adult student to ever have received this honor in the program’s 50-year history.