When Jeremy Cornwell graduated from Liberty High School in 2000, he earned a full-ride scholarship to Central State University in Dayton for his vocal ability, but he didn’t head to college just to sing in the choir.

“I was pre-med,” Cornwell said during a telephone interview. “Music wasn’t even a thing. I was going there to become a doctor. Singing was just a way to pay for all that.”

He was through his junior year as a triple science major when he decided to join some friends who were heading to Las Vegas to pursue careers in entertainment.”

“I gave up my scholarship and going to med school and jumped on a plane with a duffel bag and a guitar,” he said.

That was nearly 15 years ago, and Cornwell had carved a niche as a singer and entertainer, headlining clubs and casinos and opening for national acts in some of Sin City’s biggest venues.

He admitted that wasn’t an easy decision to share with his family.

“Calling your mom, telling her your giving up a full scholarship and dropping out of college and moving to Las Vegas to be a musician, that’s not a conversation a lot of us would look forward to,” he said.

His mother, Ellen Cornwell, ultimately told him, “You always can go back to school. You have to follow your heart and your passion.”

Cornwell’s mother teaches math at Chalker High School and is the adviser for its class of 2020, and the singer is coming home to perform Wednesday at the high school as a fundraiser for the junior class.

He performed with his mother at the school’s Veterans Day program, but Wednesday’s concert will be his first local gig since going to Las Vegas. His mom will join him for a couple songs, and he also will perform with the school’s concert band and a student pianist

“It’s cool to get the kids involved,” he said.

Vegas isn’t the usual destination for those with dreams of musical stardom. Places like Los Angeles, New York and Nashville come to mind first. But Cornwell said Vegas offered plenty of opportunities without the the over-saturation of undiscovered talent that fills those other markets.

“Vegas is one of the only places in the country where you can make an absolute living playing music while you’re figuring out what you want to do,” he said.

Cornwell’s big break came when he was working at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville on the strip, and he was seen by Sonny Barton, co-founder of Rock ‘n’ Roll Wine, a company that pairs wine tastings with live music to appeal to millennials. Barton said he’d bring his partner to see Cornwell the next night.

“That night, I got food poisoning,” he said. “I was as sick as I think I’ve ever been.”

However, he didn’t want to miss the opportunity, so he showed up the next night, even though he could only sing for about 25 minutes before he had to run off stage and throw up and then try to rehydrate before going back on stage.

Whatever he did, it must have been good enough, because the duo started using him regularly.

“Everything I’ve done from that moment forward has been because of them or people I met at their events,” Cornwell said. “You have to use those networking opportunities. My thought process is, you don’t know who will be in the audience. You have to rock out every time.”

Cornwell released an album of his own songs in 2009, and he’s about 70 percent finished with a follow-up album he hopes to release in 2019.

Most of what he plays in Vegas is cover songs.

“When I got here, I realized I have to play covers, but in my heart, I’m still an artist. If I have to sit down and learn someone’s music note for note exactly as it is on the album, I’d rather go back home. I made it a point to make the cover tunes as much my own as I can.

“That being said, I’ve built a rapport and freedom with the venues that almost every night I put original stuff in my set. It might sound odd, but one of the best compliments I get when I put originals in the set is it’s like a just played some song from the radio that they haven’t heard yet … I can go from Guns ‘N Roses to one of my songs to Stevie Wonder and there’s no difference in the reaction to the music. I see them just continue to enjoy the songs the way they enjoyed the song before or after it.”