Teachey, North Carolina, native Matthew Thornton ’26 credits the Carolina Covenant for making his college dreams financially achievable. An outstanding student and valedictorian of his high school class, Matthew had his choice of colleges, but he worried about the financial burden. Thanks to the Carolina Covenant, Matthew chose Carolina.

“It really made it so that I could go to college affordably,” he said, acknowledging that without the Covenant, “I would’ve had to take out thousands of dollars worth of loans.”

At Carolina, he pivoted from engineering to a major in computer science and statistics — fields more aligned with his passion for math. Among his extracurricular activities, Matthew is the data analytics director at Carolina Fever, UNC-Chapel Hill’s largest club for sporting events.

Matthew has taken full advantage of the resources the Carolina Covenant offers, participating in its Career Accelerator Program, which provides Covenant students with career-enhancing summer experiences, and meeting routinely with his Covenant mentor, physics professor Duane Deardorff. Through the Career Accelerator Program, he landed a valuable internship as a data analyst with The Rams Club last summer.

As he gets closer to graduation, Matthew is looking toward a career in machine-learning, data science or AI. He recently accepted a 2025 summer internship as a software engineer at Wells Fargo. “The Covenant truly allowed me to go to college and explore what I was interested in,” he concluded.

Photo by Jeyhoun Allebaugh

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