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player ready...Queen Thigpen says she knew from an early age that she had a talent for troubleshooting, always being someone who members of her family could turn to with questions about or struggles with technology.
“I like being able to fix computers, the hardware, software,” Thigpen said. “I was always good at — if anybody had issues with their TV or their phone or their computer, they kind of came to me and my cousin about it.”
With the help of Rich Township District 227’s career development programming, Thigpen was able to develop those skills not only at home, but in the classroom, working as early as middle school to accelerate her learning so she could receive an associate’s degree in computer science from Prairie State College the same month she graduated high school.
“It’s the future,” the recent graduate said about the field she landed on after switching her focus from engineering.
Thigpen, who is from Park Forest, plans to attend Chicago’s Roosevelt University in the fall, working for two years to receive her bachelor’s degree before working toward a master’s. She also works for Amazon, and sees potential to work her way up the corporate ladder as she continues her education, aiming for an information technology adjacent role.
The recent graduate said Rich Township District 227 Superintendent Johnnie Thomas spoke with her mom early on in high school about her potential to excel through the district’s Early College Initiative and personally worked to remove barriers to the accomplishment.
“I wanted to do it, and my mom really hyped me up to do it even more,” she said. “Rich Township, they never excluded me from anything, so I really had the same experience as everybody else, with all the senior activities and playing sports and everything. So I can’t say I missed out on anything that I wanted to do, because they made sure they kept me in the loop even though I wasn’t there most of the day.”
Thomas said encouraging other driven students to aim high even as the costs of achieving post-secondary education climb, both personally and through structural changes, is a major priority for the south suburban district. He has worked to strengthen the district’s partnerships with Prairie State and other institutions over the past several years, with Thigpen being the first student he knows of within the district to receive her associate’s degree while still in high school.
“Graduating with an associate’s degree, two years free of college debt and now two years away from getting her bachelor’s degree, allows her to really dream about those advanced degrees a little bit easier now,” Thomas said. “I think a student can be exposed to tremendous opportunities while they’re in high school to determine what it is that they want to do.”
Rich Township District 227 includes a Fine Arts and Communications campus in Richton Park and a STEM campus, which expanded late last year to prepare students for careers in horticulture, construction, aviation and automotive technology, in Olympia Fields.
Starting during the 2026-2027 school year, the district will launch a new program to help students interested in becoming certified medical assistants to do so while still in high school, as they complete a 40-hour externship that can lead to several National Healthcareer Association certifications and in turn, translate to multiple career opportunities upon graduation.
“I think this is in total alignment with what the rest of the high school districts across our region are wanting for our kids, in terms of creating opportunities for them to really be the best they can be in any field, in any path they want to achieve that in,” Thomas said.
“We’re really committed to that, and some of that is removing some of the fear that our kids sometimes have about not being good enough or strong enough to accomplish this kind of thing.”
Prairie State College President Michael Anthony also emphasized the continued importance of higher education, and students believing in themselves enough to enroll in a college or university.
While higher education remains the strongest pathway toward economic mobility, those from low-income backgrounds and minority groups are still significantly less likely to pursue or complete a college degree, according to a 2025 report from the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative, which studies the education-to-workforce pipeline.
“(Thigpen) is exceptional, but she’s not an exception, right?” Anthony said. “There are people who can do this … They won’t see sometimes themselves as college-going material — all of that is so played out and it’s so old and it’s so dangerous, because there’s no college-going person.”
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