As most of the campus clears out at the end of the spring semester, the Office of Extended Studies, and other offices around campus, ramp up into summer mode. Here’s a little peek into what summer at Ithaca College looks like from the Extended Studies perspective.
Summer Pre-College Programs
Beginning in July and lasting three weeks, Extended Studies runs the Summer College for High School Students and Summer Theatre Conservatory for high schoolers across the nation. For summer 2024, we hosted a little under 100 students in these programs. The largest percentage of participants came from New York State and Massachusetts. We did have participants from California, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and some other areas of our country.
Our Summer Theatre Intensive participants studied Musical Theatre throughout the program and the program culminating in an amazing showcase performance for the campus and parents who were picking up their children. Participants in this program also caught the Ragtime musical at the Hangar Theatre as part of their study. One of our Summer Theatre Teaching Assistants also happened to be in the production so participants got some extra learning in hearing from the T.A. how the production was created, rehearsed, etc., from someone on the cast.
Our Summer College for High School Students had four course offerings: Imaginative Writing (our Ithaca Young Writers Institute offering), Foundations of Health, Human Performance, and Wellness (out of HSHP), Environmental Tracking and Nature Observation (Environmental Science), and Introductory Astronomy (STEM). Participants in this program provided an amazing showcase of their final work toward the end of their program. Each class ran their own final presentations for everyone so we learned about Astronomy, Environmental Science, Health and Wellness, and we also heard some powerful creative writing from our Ithaca Young Writers Institute participants.
Both programs shared outings to Taughannock State Park, the Commons, and the Ithaca Farmer's Market.
Summer Sessions
In 2024, we saw consistent participation from our matriculated students in summer courses as we did in 2023. Courses over the summer range from graduate work in The Human Anatomy Lab to sections of courses like Writing for the Workplace out of the Department of Writing. We also have seen an increase in internships over the 2024 summer sessions. Extended Studies encourages these experiential learning opportunities as they provide a stage for our students to apply what they have learned in their fields of study to an outside organization’s work. The 2024 Summer Sessions saw a little under 300 different learning opportunities for our matriculated students.
IC Advantage
Now in it’s fifth year, IC Advantage saw participation from approximately one-quarter of our 2024 incoming class. The IC Advantage program is a joint program between Extended Studies and the Center for Student Success and Retention. This program runs in summer session two and provides our incoming class with 1-credit, pass/fail, online:synchronous classes meant to instill a sense of belonging in our incoming first-years. These courses also help promote successful study habits, problem-solving, as well as a smooth transition from secondary education to college education.
We ran about 13 sections of our two Foundation courses (College: Learning to Learn and Community: The People and Places of IC) and about 13 Deep Dive sections with topics ranging from an exploration of fairy tales and folklore to understanding how playing Dungeons and Dragons can prepare you for success in higher education. There was a little something for everyone who signed up this summer and most participants took more than one course.
Summer Success Academy
2024 saw the inaugural launch of the Center for Student Success and Retention’s (C.S.S.R.) Summer Success Academy. This program was jointly sponsored by C.S.S.R. and Extended Studies and saw about a dozen of our rising sophomores on campus for summer session one to learn and apply study skills. Participants took either an Academic Writing or a Computers and Information Technology (QL) course with our faculty while simultaneously learning about study skills, approaches to test taking, and more, from the excellent staff in the CSSR. The results were amazing, and participants left the program feeling well prepared for success in the fall 2024 semester. The final luncheon was a powerful mix of tears and laughter as participants shared their stories of how much the program meant to them.
