When Donta Thornton ’26 first came to UDC, he arrived on campus expecting a job. What he found was a community that would eventually change the trajectory of his life. More than a decade later, after years of encouraging other students to keep going while quietly pursuing an education of his own, Thornton walked across the commencement stage this May, earning a bachelor’s degree in architecture with honors. His journey to becoming a college graduate was anything but direct, and as he emphasizes, his UDC story is about opportunity.
A Prince George’s County, Maryland, native, Thornton experienced significant disruption as a teenager and spent much of his early adulthood incarcerated. But during that time, he considered himself lucky to be surrounded by “angels” — older mentors who knew they might not get a second chance to return home themselves and who encouraged him to stay productive and focused on his potential future. He took their lessons to heart and started “entrenching myself in as much education as possible.” Thornton read everything he could, and books on psychology and African history were two of the early intellectual sparks that allowed him “to begin to build myself. … It became my point of transition and understanding that there was something greater within me to achieve.”
Technical training provided the next turning point. Thornton discovered he had an aptitude for translating ideas into technical drawings and soon became proficient enough to become certified to help the instructor teach other students. When Thornton finally returned home in May 2014, he was determined to put all of his preparation into action. Within weeks, he enrolled in classes at the former ITT Technical Institute and in DC’s Project Empowerment workforce program. His long days stretched from workforce training that began at 9 a.m. in the District through train rides to evening classes in Springfield, Virginia, as he started rebuilding his life around education and employment.
That determination and dedication eventually brought him to UDC. Thornton met former UDC administrator Elgloria Harrison at his Project Empowerment graduation, and out of the 30 graduates ready to move on to job opportunities, she selected Thornton for a placement at the university. As he put it, before that moment, he had hardly even set foot on a college campus: “Why me? I don’t know. But I’m forever indebted to her, because she saw something at that point in time which I didn’t even know.” After seeing his technical abilities and commitment, his supervisors quickly worked to make his placement permanent, and Thornton joined UDC as a CAUSES logistics assistant in 2015. His responsibilities grew as he helped faculty navigate technology, set up classrooms and assisted students with the everyday challenges of university life.
Along the way, he became a mentor. Thornton remembered talking with students who were overwhelmed as they approached the end of their degree programs, encouraging them to remain focused when graduation seemed far away: “Continue to push forward. Don’t give up. See it through. Stay steadfast.” At the end of his first year at UDC, Thornton served as a stage marshal at commencement and watched the first group of students he had encouraged cross the stage even though he still struggled to imagine himself doing the same. But the faculty and staff around him at UDC always could, and Harrison and other colleagues began helping Thornton envision a pathway that could build on his previous college credits from ITT. Their message to him was simple: He was going to earn a degree. It was up to him to decide when. The initial plans were delayed during the pandemic, but they were never discarded. Eventually, Thornton decided the time had come.
Returning to the familiar UDC classrooms as a student brought another set of challenges. Thornton was older than most of his classmates and balancing a full-time job, coursework and fatherhood. He remembered, “It was like, how do I even begin to do this? Am I scared? Am I nervous? I’m all of these things all in one. But I never had the position of thinking that I couldn’t do it.” As the semesters passed, uncertainty gave way to momentum, and he watched his degree requirements steadily disappear and saw A’s and B’s accumulating on his academic record.
His daughter was watching, too. On days when childcare and class schedules collided, Thornton sometimes brought her to campus with the support of his professors. She watched her father study, complete assignments and ask questions — not simply to earn grades, he told her, but to understand what he was learning. Then it became his turn to watch with pride as she went to elementary school and did the same. “The most important thing was for her to be able to see me walk across the stage and receive my diploma,” Thornton said.
When Thornton did finally cross that stage in May, he did so as a cum laude graduate, and the full accomplishment remains emotional for him. “Now I can say I’m a college graduate,” he said. “Despite everything else, I can say I’m a college graduate.”
Today, Thornton remains a valued member of the campus community as a CAUSES staff assistant. As CAUSES Dean Dwane Jones says, he is “an absolute pleasure to work with. He is friendly, kind, professional, a learner, has a can-do attitude and is respected and revered by his peers.” But his student days may not be finished yet because Thornton’s UDC education has also changed how he thinks about his future. His studies in urban architecture introduced him to questions about design, communities and the built environment that connected with subjects he had explored independently for years. Now he is considering graduate school so he can fulfill his long-term goal of teaching.
His experience has given that ambition special purpose. Thornton wants young people — especially those who may believe a mistake or difficult circumstance has determined their future — to see him and understand that another path remains possible. “I want to be a beacon of light,” he said. “I want to get that message to as many young males as possible, and females as well — to understand that with life comes struggle, and that you can make it through regardless.”
It’s a message grounded in his own experience of receiving another opportunity when he needed one. “UDC was a part of something, understanding that individuals need a second chance,” Thornton said. “And that second chance is where things start.”
His story also illustrates what can happen when access to education is accompanied by a university community willing to help a student persist. The employees and faculty members who saw potential in Thornton helped him envision himself as a college student, and throughout his time at UDC, he has continued to provide that same encouragement to other Firebirds. For him, that cycle of opportunity, education and service is what makes his story a UDC story.
“I don’t feel like this is just a success story,” he said. “I think this is a bigger thing as a UDC story of opportunity. Without that word ‘opportunity,’ none of this is relevant.”
Graduation may have fulfilled a vision Thornton once struggled to imagine, but he does not see it as the conclusion.
“This is only the beginning,” he said. “The journey is nowhere near over.”
Discover the academic programs and opportunities that help UDC students build their own paths forward: Explore UDC academic programs.