Uncategorized

Registration Reflections: Holly Saad and Maureen Steinhoff Stonington High School

Posted on by

 

Registration for the 2020-2021 academic year created many new challenges for high schools and their students to navigate. At various points in the year, schools made the decision to move to remote learning and could only communicate with students through e-mail and video calls. This means that each school had to adjust how they helped students register for their UConn Early College Experience (ECE) classes. The article below highlights some of the creative ways that Site Representatives found success in helping students register for classes this year.

 

HOLLY SAAD – Site Representative (LEFT)
MAUREEN STEINHOFF – Site Representative (RIGHT)

We are honored to be featured in the Early College Experience Winter Magazine as the site representatives for Stonington High School. We are both school counselors and have been Site Representatives together for three years. Just when we felt we had the ECE registration process down, COVID-19 forced us into distance learning mid-March. This school year, we’ve been operating in a hybrid instructional model, splitting our student body into two cohorts. With little to no in person contact with students, we were forced to create new ways to communicate and follow through with our UConn ECE Students and families.

 

One procedural practice that we’ve always had in place that helped us tremendously during distance learning and the hybrid model is making deadlines for students about a week earlier than UConn’s deadline. This allowed us time to cross check rosters with applications and enrollment status reports then track down students that had yet to complete the process. “Tracking down” students looks different these days. We can’t always pull students from study hall (or class when we are desperate) if they are not in the building so we’ve been proactive with our frequent email reminders. We created email groups for UConn ECE Students and their Parents/guaridans. This was a time-consuming task, but well worth it with all of the deadline reminders, instructions and links to resources we’ve been sending. When email hasn’t been an effective way to communicate, we divide and conquer and call home. We’ve also utilized our daily morning announcements to remind students of deadlines and resources for assistance. The resources on the UConn ECE website have been super helpful! We share them with students often.

 

It’d be remiss of us not to thank Todd Blodgett for his help and accessibility throughout the registration process. In a typical school year, we would hold workshops to assist students with the process and Todd would join us to answer questions and expedite the process. During full remote learning in the Spring, we advertised and held a couple Q&A Google Meets to assist students. The Google Meet link was sent out to all of our UConn ECE Students and families encouraging them to join and Todd was there as well to assist. Communicating with our UConn ECE Instructors has been helpful as well. We’ve asked them to relay information to their students and we have even joined their classes to assist students with the process.

Thank you to all our Site Representatives who are working so hard to make sure our students are successful and have the support they need during these unprecedented times. We are all in this together. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to our office if you need anything, and know that we are here for you year round.

Change is Good: UConn Pre-College Summer’s Most Successful Summer

Posted on by

 
By Erin Donohue, Pre-College Summer Graduate Assistant
 

In the summer of 2017, UConn’s Pre-College Summer (PCS) program for rising high school juniors and seniors expanded in more ways than just increasing numbers. This past summer, the program has also extended its reach both nationally and globally! Thirty-five percent (35%) of program students out of the 383 total registrations came from states outside of New England, including Puerto Rico. The program also had a total of 8 international students from countries such as Canada, France, Romania, Luxembourg, China, and Taiwan! This is the largest and most diverse group of students that have ever attended Pre-College Summer, which prepares students for college life through a non-credit, academic enrichment environment.

 

One of the main goals of UConn’s Pre-College Summer program is to allow students to “test out” an academic area that they may be interested in pursuing in college before they attend college. This year, to accommodate the growing number of students, PCS ramped up its course selection. This past summer’s course spread included new courses in the Arts with Animation and Photography, as well as a range of Pre-Med courses on topics such as Anatomy and Physiology, Kinesiology, and Human Pathology. These new Pre-Med courses provided the students with an opportunity to aid in the dissection of a human cadaver right on campus! We additionally added a Pre-Law course to the line-up, and as part of the course students were able to visit the UConn School of Law and a local courthouse! The hands-on experiences provided by these courses allowed students to really get a feel for whether this academic focus is something that they would want to further pursue in college, or not. As Sarah from Ohio put it, “UConn has given me an incredible experience that reassured my desire to pursue medicine.” Other students learned based on their class experience during Pre-College Summer that perhaps the subject they chose was not the best fit for them. Ina from Massachusetts who studied Statistics while at Pre-College Summer remarked, “The UConn Pre-College Summer Program was a good experience in that I left the program with many new friends and a glimpse into what college life will be life. The academic course itself, however, was one that I would definitely not repeat.”
 

Another goal of the Pre-College Summer Program is to make sure that students gain the full experience of what college life is like before actually attending college. Students who attend our program live in residence halls on the Storrs campus where they attend interactive classes for 19 hours a week for up to four weeks and participate in engaging afternoon workshops of their choice. New workshops popular with students this past summer included Creating a Vision Board where students were able to highlight their future goals using pictures, participating in a Hands on Drumming circle, and DJ Session 101, an introduction to disc jockeying. While all of this is daunting to high school students at first, by the end of their time in the program they begin to understand the importance of their experience on campus and get, according to Christina from Connecticut, an “eye-opening experience of what life at UConn could possibly be.” Justin from Connecticut remarked, “It was even better than I imagined it would be. I felt like a college student and got more information about college life out of the program than any other experience.” And Michele from California added, “This program provided me with a good balance of college lifestyle, subject based learning, and workshop learning.The summer staff members were very sweet and welcoming and we were able to do a lot of evening activities that were really fun.”

 

Students also experience social opportunities similar to that of incoming college freshman. While spending time in the program, students are able to hurdle social obstacles and make friends, which can be difficult when in a new environment. Our summer staff, including mostly current UConn undergraduate and graduate students, are as inclusive as possible of all students and convey the message that students are in a safe space where they can express themselves and feel comfortable in their own skin. On the first day of student check-in and drop off, students are usually anxious about meeting new people and may be shy to get to know one another, so making friends can be difficult. Once students realize that they are all in the same boat, however, friends are made quickly. Emelyn from Connecticut could relate, saying, “Even people who are shy like me can find people to hang out with.” The Pre-College Summer program provides many fun and exciting experiences and activities through which students can bond, such as unorganized sporting events, game and movie nights, visiting downtown Storrs, taking walks on Horsebarn Hill, and even a talent show! This past summer we also included horseback riding lessons provided by the Department of Animal Sciences for students who are passionate about riding. It’s clear by the end of the week that after all of these amazing experiences, students are sad to leave campus and their newly made friends to return home. Meira from Massachusetts remarked, “I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about coming to UConn, but everyone is friendly and it only took a day for me to get comfortable. I definitely wish I stayed longer, it’s an unforgettable experience! It may be scary at first, but you’ll have a 50+ person family to back you up!” Yazmin from Massachusetts also reflected on her total experience in the program, saying, “It was a truly unforgettable experience. I had the opportunity to create bonds with different people and experience the ACTUAL college life while sleeping in the dorms, eating in the dining halls, and being taught by an actual college professor. We were also given a bit of freedom just like real college students. This program has a lot of variety and it’s a must.”
 

The impact that Pre-College Summer has on students is truly remarkable. While the experience is new and intimidating at first, students learn so much about themselves and who they would like to become in college. It’s amazing to think that UConn’s Pre-College Summer Program will host its 5th summer beginning in July of 2018. The 4-week program will run from July 8th through August 4th 2018, and program registration will open in December of 2017. For more information, please visit pcs.uconn.edu or contact our office at 860-486-0149.

 

DJ Workshop PCS Dairy Bar Trip PCS

The Development Plan

Posted on by
By Brian Boecherer
The audience was riveted. Our guest speaker for the October Political Science workshop, Professor Akhil Reed Amar, lit-up the room with his conversation on the election. The last time the country was in a similar position was 1864, he said, when the election had the chance of pulling all four levers of government in the same political direction. Prof. Amar clarified that in this election, just like in Lincoln’s second campaign, it is completely possible to have a result where the president, the House, and the Senate could all shift to either completely Democratic or Republican controlled. If this were to happen, the nominee for Justice Antonin Scalia’s position would also be from the party in power. The next justice, who will be nominated and elected under the new government, will shift the balance of power. As we now know, all four levers of power did/will move in one direction. Professional development workshops should always be so engaging and so informative.
Prof. Akhil Reed Amar is the preeminent scholar on Constitutional law in the country. His expert analysis has been cited in a score of Supreme Court decisions and his name has been mentioned as a possible nomination for Scalia’s seat on the bench (not by the Trump administration though). We were
honored and quite fortunate to have him as our guest speaker, the result of UConn ECE Instructor Aaron Hull (Greenwich High School) who was previously acquainted with him.
The Political Science workshop is an example of a larger UConn ECE effort to deepen our academic impact on the ECE community. A year ago UConn ECE examined budgets and reapportioned funds to deepen our academic investment in faculty and students. We have always been very proud to receive feedback that our workshops are the best PD faculty attend all year. But these comments spurred us to reach even higher. Departments like Biology forged the path already a few years ago, when Dr. Tom Abbott, faculty coordinator, designed his workshops to get ECE faculty back into the labs, the greenhouses, and using equipment that is generally inaccessible to high school faculty.
Departments have been using these new financial resources in unique ways. U.S. History hosted experts from the Pequot Museum in November to lead a discussion on indigenous approaches to teaching U.S. History. Last spring Statistics purchased specialized software called R and organized an online Summer Institute to learn proficiency. Maritime Studies hosted their annual workshop offsite at the Connecticut River Museum. In December, UConn ECE Chinese (pilot program) will host a leading scholar on the teaching and learning of Chinese, where workshop attendees will receive a complementary copy of her
textbook.
The development plan for UConn ECE has always been built around rigorous academic standards. NACEP standards were a guiding light for our development, just over 10 years ago. Now that NACEP
standards are institutionalized, our new endeavors are the deepening of academic resources. Additionally, UConn ECE is hosting a number of small grant opportunities to develop the classroom and the community. There are also student scholarships and opportunities for increased student participation, like the hugely popular UConn ECE Ambassador program. This edition of the newsletter will highlight many of the new development initiatives. We hope you enjoy reading about them, we hope you enjoy participating in them, and we welcome your input always.
Maritime Studies Workshop