MEDIA, Pa. — Penn State alumnus Kevin Towell, class of 2015, has taken the communications skills he’s developed at Penn State and carried them into his career in education and acting.
Towell began his Penn State journey at Brandywine in 2011. After two years, he transitioned to University Park, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in advertising and public relations. He chose to begin at Brandywine because he was able to reside at home and reduce costs before he went to University Park to complete his major.
“I lived very close to Penn State Brandywine, and I was able to commute when I was a student here. Financially, it made a lot of sense for the first two years to save money before heading up to University Park,” he said. “Going to Brandywine first helped prepare me for my transition to University Park. I was able to make a lot of friends here who went up to University Park with me. I think if I hadn’t gone to Brandywine, it would have been too much of a culture shock for me.”
Towell credited his time at Brandywine for making a lot of his friends that he still has to this day.
“I met one of my best friends in the whole world at Brandywine. She sat behind me in statistics, and I remember turning around to her and saying ‘I have no idea what’s going on. I’m way out of my element.’ From there, we became best friends,” he recalled. “I met so many of my best friends at Brandywine, and we all ended up going to University Park together. When we got up there, we were able to lean on each other a lot. It definitely helped with the transition.”
While at Penn State, Towell was heavily involved with THON and WPSU, Penn State’s radio station. In THON, he was on the dancer relations committee, formerly known as the morale committee, where he helped get the dancers through the 46-hour event. He noted that he helped the dancers keep their energy up as they went through the weekend.
Upon graduating from Penn State in 2015, Towell did community theater in the Philadelphia area while also working as a preschool teacher in Delaware County. While in community theater, someone told him he should consider acting in commercials. He later sent in a photo of himself, despite not having a professional headshot, and landed an audition.
“Being on set was so cool; seeing how everything works and watching different moving parts,” he recalled.
From there, he started looking into doing more on-screen acting, getting his professional headshot done and auditioning for roles. Since then, he has appeared in numerous commercials, films, theater productions and even some PBS Kids shows, which allowed him to tie his love of working with children to his passion for acting.
“I’ve worked with kids for years in different ways, like at camps and elementary schools, so the opportunity to act on PBS Kids shows merged that with acting,” he said. “When you work with kids, you’re performing all the time, whether you’re teaching them or running an assembly. It’s a cool way to strengthen both tools at the same time.”
Currently, in addition to acting, Towell is also a paraprofessional at an elementary school where he helps run different programs and assemblies.
Towell said that the most fulfilling aspect of his jobs, both on PBS Kids and as a paraprofessional, is seeing kids advance.
“Having kids tell you that you’ve made an impact on their lives, whether it’s academically, emotionally or socially, is more fulfilling than any money in the world,” he said. “What I really enjoy about acting too is seeing how far I’ve come. When you take a step back and see how far you’ve come, because you didn’t give up on yourself or your dreams, it is a powerful feeling.”
When asked what advice he would give to Penn State students, regardless of what field they want to go into, he said to go for any opportunity that comes their way.
“Just go for it, and never doubt yourself. Everyone has this imposter syndrome, like they’re not good enough or that someone else is better than them, and I still have that feeling sometimes, but you can’t think like that,” he said. “You have to be your own support system before you start building a support system with others. Believe in yourself, and if there’s something that you really love, there’s a reason it speaks to you.”