GREENEVILLE – High school students will experience college life and lots of fun when they participate in the Summer Academy held by the Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math and Science programs at Tusculum University.
High School students participate in a Summer Academy class in 2023.
A student shows her poster at the 2023 Summer Academy.
About 100 students from East Tennessee will live on campus for five weeks and spend their mornings in classes, their afternoons in special programs and their evenings in fun activities on and off campus. At the conclusion of the five weeks, these students will have an opportunity to travel to Cincinnati for cultural activities.
The good times begin the week of Memorial Day.
“We are delighted to hold the Summer Academy again for our region’s high school students,” said Dr. David Smith, director of TRIO programs at Tusculum. “The days are filled with active and experiential learning provided by Tusculum faculty and staff members and people from the community. These high school students also have a wonderful opportunity to interact with college students, who serve on our academy staff, and gain valuable knowledge about a university education.”
Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math and Science are federal TRIO programs that serve high school students whose parents do not have a bachelor’s degree or who come from low-income families. Tusculum offers these programs, as well as Talent Search for high school and middle school students and Student Support Services and ARCHES for college students.
The goal of the TRIO programs is to encourage students to enroll and graduate with a bachelor’s degree and then potentially pursue a master’s degree or other advanced degree. Tusculum has held the Summer Academy, a hallmark of the Upward Bound program, for decades.
Left to right, TRIO staff members Cory Smith, Erin Frizzell and Stacey McGill train the summer staff.
The 2024 summer student staff members pose outside the Meen Center.
Each week, students will take a different course in the morning that lasts about three hours a day. Among the courses they can take are Pop Culture as History, Rollercoaster Physics, Marine Biology, Cincinnati and the Underground Railroad, Foundations of Professional Writing and Forensics. In the afternoon, the students can participate in specialized programming that lasts the whole five weeks. The subjects are art, theater and dance.
The evenings will consist of activities such as study nights, outdoor and indoor movies, a pool party, bowling, a Greeneville Flyboys game, an Olympics and a visit to Smoky Mountain Murder Mystery Dinner Show. To mark the end of their time on campus, the students will participate in research, theater and dance presentations.
“TRIO programs perform outstanding work to change the trajectory of students’ lives before they attend college,” said Dr. Scott Hummel, Tusculum’s president, who will teach the course Hebrew Language and Culture during the Summer Academy. “Those students who choose to come to Tusculum are then served by our exceptional SSS and ARCHES programs, which help them achieve graduation and potential further studies. The staff members in all of these programs are making a positive difference by altering generational poverty, and we are grateful for their efforts.”
To learn more about Tusculum’s TRIO programs, please visit https://site.tusculum.edu/student-success/academic-affairs/first-gen/. Additional information about the university is available at www.tusculum.edu.