Local community college students tell their stories in “The College Tour”
WVIK, Quad Cities NPR | By Rachel Duckett
Published April 26, 2024 at 3:19 PM CDT
![](https://www.thecollegetour.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-01-at-7.13.15 PM-1024x809.png)
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Local community college students tell their stories in “The College Tour”
WVIK, Quad Cities NPR | By Rachel Duckett
Published April 26, 2024 at 3:19 PM CDT
![](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e30671a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/768x606+0+0/resize/880x694!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F69%2F95%2Fdd5f0a574f1aa0e425693b3c7f30%2Fcollege-tour-2.jpeg)
The latest season of the Amazon Prime series, “The College Tour,” will shine a spotlight on some local community college students.
The series focuses on a different college in each episode.
This season, one episode will center around ten students from Eastern Iowa Community Colleges.
One of them is Bradley Thiessen-Cooper. He studied communications at Scott Community College in Bettendorf.
“They ended up coming in with these really big cameras and these lighting crews,” he said. “We kind of thought they were going to be filming on iPhones and things like that, and like I said, they came in with these auto-stabilizing cameras that were connected to their waistbands and boom mics and it was a very kind of fun process.”
Thiessen-Cooper went back to school at 30-years old. He hopes that by telling his story in the show, he’ll show viewers that “learning is a lifelong journey.”
“I wanted people to realize that they can do anything that they put their mind to,” he said. “Hard work pays off and if you work hard at it, you can be anywhere you want to be.”
“I also wanted to share my story of being an LGBTQIA member, with a husband and now a baby.”
Thiessen-Cooper will graduate this year and plans to transfer to St. Ambrose University to continue his education.
![Bradley Thiessen-Cooper with his husband and son, both featured in the episode.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e71479d/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1419x2048+0+0/resize/880x1270!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F20%2F20%2F69df52f5480097331a1f40f3e890%2Fcollege-tour-1.jpeg)
The series is available online and will stream on Amazon Prime May 1.