He started college in prison. Now, he is Rutgers-Camden’s first Truman scholar.

Paul Boyd always had what he called “an insatiable curiosity for learning,” which for decades had gone unfulfilled.

“You know how you get lost?” he said. “And then somehow, some way you find your way back?”

It wasn’t until the Atlantic City native wound up in prison in 2011 on a robbery charge that he began to find his way, he said. He went on to earn his associate’s degree while incarcerated, becoming the first member of his family to get a college degree, and is working toward his bachelor’s at Rutgers-Camden, living at a halfway house near the campus.

And now, the 46-year-old philosophy major has earned a top academic honor as one of 60 college students chosen nationwide last month from more than 700 applicants to be Truman Scholars.

» READ MORE: North Philly to Oxford: College once seemed unlikely for Hazim Hardeman. Here’s how he became CCP and Temple’s first Rhodes scholar.

Started in 1975 in memory of President Harry S. Truman and his dedication to public service, the prestigious graduate awards, worth up to $30,000, go to students who show leadership potential, a desire to pursue a career in government or the nonprofit sector, and academic excellence. Nominated by their colleges, winning students receive funding for graduate studies, leadership training, career counseling and internship and fellowship opportunities in the federal government.

“I went from being in disbelief to ‘this is cool’ to ‘this is overwhelming,’” Boyd, a junior, said during an interview from the Rutgers-Camden campus last week. “It’s hard to accept the praise that comes with this sort of thing. I didn’t grow up being encouraged by people.”

He is the first Rutgers-Camden student to earn the honor.

“Paul has been a living example of intellectual curiosity, scholarly dedication, and perseverance,” Rutgers-Camden Chancellor Antonio D. Tillis said. “He now has a well-deserved place in the Rutgers–Camden history books.”

» READ MORE: A Central High graduate has been named one of this year’s Rhodes scholars

Other winners from local colleges include Lezlie Hilario of Villanova University, Aravind Krishnan and Tej Patel of the University of Pennsylvania, Alyssa Kemp of Drexel, Ella Weber of Princeton, and Ray Epstein of Temple University.

Epstein, 21, a junior from Washington, D.C., who recently was named Temple’s student body president for next year, has become a campus leader in sexual assault prevention, a mission she has been on since middle school when, she said, she was assaulted. She’s the founding president of Temple’s chapter of It’s on Us: Student Activists Against Sexual Assault.

Epstein, who is majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing and communication and social influence, recalled being ostracized after she reported being sexually assaulted. Her mother suggested she turn her pain into something impactful and she began interning for Break the Cycle, a national advocacy group based in Texas dedicated to addressing intimate-partner violence.

“The work was so moving,” she said. “I just wanted to keep doing that forever.”

When she arrived at Temple in 2021, she sought to join a campus group dedicated to sexual assault prevention but found that it had been defunct for five years.

“I felt an obligation to create that safe space for people because I needed one when I was younger and I didn’t have one,” she said.

As part of her group’s work and through a partnership with Uber, she was able to help get $350,000 in free rides for Temple students in vulnerable situations, such as being left alone at a bar or a party.

She’s also vice president of Planned Parenthood Generation Temple University, and her group is advocating to get emergency contraceptive vending machines installed on campus. The group has raised about one-tenth of the $10,000 to fund the initiative, and Epstein said negotiations with the university are continuing.

“Many of our friends have access to machines like this on their campuses,” she said.

She acknowledged that contraception is accessible through student health services but that’s only during certain hours.

“Emergency contraception doesn’t wait for a window,” she said.

Epstein, who plans to go to law school, is focused on getting better legislation approved to protect sexual assault survivors. She hopes to use her Truman scholarship to further that work, which she sees as a lifelong mission.

Boyd grew up in Ocean City, N.J., one of nine children in a single-parent household. He recalled often going hungry and having to care for six of his younger siblings while his mother worked.

“A lot of people in school had no idea the kind of struggles I was having at home,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to focus on a lesson when your stomach is growling.”

He tried college after high school, but that didn’t last long, he said. After a few other run-ins with the law, in 2011, he was sentenced to 15 years in South Woods State Prison for armed robbery. During the assessment process that is part of prison entry, he was tested in reading, writing, English and vocabulary skills.

“I scored ... the highest you could score,” he said.

He was offered a prison job as a teacher’s aide in a class for inmates working toward their general equivalency diplomas.

“That’s where I got introduced to how transformative education could truly be,” he said. “Helping those guys get their GEDs and diplomas, it helped me to see them, seeing those guys stick to it.”

That, along with a year of counseling in prison, made him take a closer look at himself, he said, and “really set me on a good path.”

“I had a mirror moment, really told myself everything that I wasn’t,” he said. “I had built my life on a foundation of lies.”

When the opportunity to pursue an associate’s degree through NJ-STEP — a partnership of colleges, the state corrections department, and the state parole board — opened in 2014, he said he jumped on it.

“This has always been a personal dream to earn a college degree,” said Boyd, a father of three children, ages 14, 17 and 22. “And it helped me to focus on life after prison.”

He earned his associate’s in 2020 and began at Rutgers in 2023. When he heard about the Truman scholarship program, though hesitant at first, he applied with encouragement from Laura Collins, Rutgers-Camden’s director of the Office of Scholar Development and Fellowship Advising.

Boyd already had emerged as a campus leader, helping to start a Hillel chapter, even though he is not Jewish — “I’m a community person,” he explained. He does a campus radio show and podcast, called Beyond Babel, which features Jewish history and his philosophical perspectives about the period being discussed.

He’s on the dining advisory committee and the vice chancellor’s student external affairs committee, among other roles. And he had a summer internship in computational biology at Princeton through the National Science Foundation — all while still serving his sentence, which was eventually reduced to less than 13 years. He’ll be out Aug. 6.

He’s due to graduate from Rutgers in May 2025 and plans to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. He’ll use his Truman scholarship to work toward criminal justice reform, preferably at a think tank, he said.

He hopes to eventually teach and conduct research and help other incarcerated people pursue higher education.

“In a perfect world,” he said, “I want to teach here, or Princeton, or one of those kinds of places.”