It has been some time since my last post, and I must say that this fact quite saddens me. However, I can tell you that I have been working recently on a relatively large project at my institution that has kept me quite busy. Needless to say, I am very excited about this project, and it has been quite intensive working through all the fine details. What I would like to do is share with others in the field who are looking to create their school’s first summer program or would like to augment what they already do.
To give you some idea of who we are and what we do, we are a community college and our target population for this summer program was newly graduated high school seniors who would be receiving a scholarship and attending here in the fall semester. It seemed initially that this would be easier to implement than it was. Particularly in Ohio where we have recently had some significant shifts in the way we manage our College Credit Plus or Post Secondary Enrollment Options students. Many students coming here in the summer/fall have taken some level of college credit in the past, which produced a challenge of having to create significantly different schedules for the students. Oh, and I also forgot to mention that we managed to create this program and initiate it all within the span of about three months or less!
The program is off to a great start, but I am definitely walking away with some learned best practices for the next time around. Of these best practices, I would like to share three considerations to observe when you are looking to begin or improve upon your institution’s summer program:
1.) Start the Conversation Early
As I mentioned previously, we got this program off the ground in less than three months. This includes advertising, outreach, program development, awarding of summer aid, application, etc – the whole kit-and-kaboodle! While impressive, I would love to see us have these things in place for the next year in August or September. We begin scholarship information nights for our next round of seniors around October, so that’s a significant amount of people we can advertise to for the program.
2.) Create the Plan and Stick to the Plan
Perhaps one of the largest challenges of all was having the program initially created and then sticking to the outline of that program. There was a lot of changing around that happened as we learned new information and were rushing to complete our objectives. If we know what we want to achieve and who the target population is, then we should go with that from start to finish rather than indicating one thing and possibly changing our mind later.
3.) All Hands on Deck!
What that means is, this isn’t something that can nor should be housed solely in one department or division. More connections to more resources and more individuals on campus are critical to not only give diversity to your program but also help students become more familiar with resources and other persons on campus.
That being said, we are in week ONE of our program and have a few more to go. I’m sure there will be more take-aways for me at the end of this initiative. However, I think that these three things are perhaps the most immediate and essential for a successful program with minimal stress.
Has your school ever been through the process of creating a summer program like this? What did you do to help implement it? Comment below!
