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Freshman likes to think big.

"I expect to be a multi-millionaire by the time I'm twenty-one," said Max Anthony Knowles, a nineteen-year old freshman who plans to major in international business in the College.

He has decided that doing business worldwide will help ensure his financial stability because if the economic climate turns troubling in one country, he'll have the security of investments in other places that are enjoying prosperity.

But seeing himself as a man of global business success is not all.

"I'll also get a law degree and may consider a career in politics," he said.

For now, Knowles is concentrating on a number of activities. In addition to taking twelve credits this semester, he currently serves as an executive team trainer for a global utility company, traveling the country (and in the next months, he hopes to visit Europe and Australia ) supporting the enterprise's business partners. He finds the travel for work to be a great experience.

"It gets you out of your comfort zone, which is very important for a business person," he said. "You have to grow and adapt."

Closer to home, he and three partners have a music school, attended by 25 paying students who come for weekly lessons. He teaches guitar, piano, drums, and bass.

These positive results of his energy were not a given, however. Knowles had many serious problems in middle school-including drugs, expulsion in the eighth grade, and a difficult re-entry as an older student in the ninth grade-that could have resulted in a very different present and future.

His involvement in ASPIRA, a nonprofit organization that helps at-risk minority youths through education and counseling, turned him around. In fact, he was named one of two ASPIRANTE of the Year winners-a designation that recognized him as a leader and role model. Currently, he serves as president of the ASPIRA Club Federation of Florida, and by virtue of that position, also sits on the board of directors of ASPIRA Florida as a student representative.

"There's a part of me from the past that I can still connect with, and a part that I look at and can't see myself ever having been," said Knowles. "I decided that I won't let my past determine my future, but I will use it as a way to open my heart and mind to others, letting them know how I took my life into my own hands. If you share what you've been through, it might be just enough to make someone change his or her life."