Summer Scholars program grows, students reap rewards

High school athletes know the transition to the college level is intense. Although they may be standouts in high school, college is significantly more challenging. For an incoming freshman engineer at Illinois, the feeling is no different. Only there's no summer training camp to get acclimated for academics. At least there hadn't been, before the College of Engineering instituted the Summer Scholars program in 2012.

The program takes a cue from the University's Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, offering incoming students the opportunity to come in and take two classes for credit — including ENG 198, an IEFX projects class — and live on campus for the University's second summer session. This allows for students to get a feel for the campus and the rigors of Illinois academics without taking on the brunt of a full semester's worth of schoolwork.

“We saw that other transition programs worked, but a lot of them were only a week long or targeted a certain demographic, but none invited all the students,” said Michelle Adeoye, director of the Summer Scholars program. “We wanted to create a transition program in which many students could come on campus early and get acclimated to the college experience. That's where Summer Scholars really stems from.”

A total of 22 students took part in last year’s inaugural program. Because of the its success, that number nearly tripled for this summer, rising to 58 enrolled students.

“I anticipated that the students would enjoy the program, but I didn't expect them to enjoy the program as much as they did,” Adeoye said.

The students moved in June 7 and began classes the following Monday. Summer Scholars stay in the Illinois Street Residence Hall, on a floor with several Resident Project Advisors (RPAs), who oversee the work the students do for their projects course and act as a Resident Advisor in the dormitory.

One of the original 22 enrollees, electrical engineering major Caleb Perkinson, so enjoyed his experience as a Summer Scholars student that he decided to come back and work for the program as an RPA.

“I loved my experience that I had, and I just wanted to facilitate that with other students,” Perkinson said.

Perkinson is one of nine RPAs that will be living and working with the Summer Scholars in the coming months, up from six last year, helping them conceptualize and create a project for their first Illinois engineering course.

Adeoye said the College is very selective about who it chooses for the RPA positions. She said they look for a diverse breadth of activities, so students get exposed to the opportunities that go beyond academics.

In addition to classroom related activities, Summer Scholars will be exposed to professional firms and given a chance to build relationships those working in their field before their college tenure even begins. Ndu Egekeze, IEFX corporate liaison, said the opportunity to meet with professionals is excellent and one that's becoming more useful as corporations start recruiting employees at an earlier age.

“I think that companies years back would bypass the freshmen students,” Egekeze said. “Now they know more than ever they have to start early in order to get the highest caliber students.”

Every Thursday, students meet with representatives from such companies as Caterpillar, Yahoo!, and Rolls-Royce.

“It’s nice for students to actually get practice in researching prospective employers,” Egekeze said. “The more they see these companies, the more familiarity they'll build and the more confident they will be in  speaking to them.”

Unlike last year's Summer Scholars program, this year's rendition has taken on a theme, that of innovation leadership, to inspire creative thinking in the students that attend.

This theme was stressed at a workshop held for the students the Saturday before classes began, asking them to come up with problems they want to work on and wrestle with as engineers. Once students find specific areas in which they are interested, they can think about new ways to approach the problems presented in those fields.

IEFX director Bruce Litchfield agrees with Adeoye  in not knowing how big the program could get and where it would be capped if it continued to grow. He said he could see it easily growing to enroll 100 students.

With the academic boost, the early acclimation to the campus, the camaraderie built with students and faculty, Litchfield said he felt the biggest benefit the Summer Scholars provides transitioning students is the development of relationships they will experience in their two months while  the benefit to the College is more satisfied students.

Litchfield adds, “I think there's something that happens during that first year that is both really exciting but also scary, and hopefully this amplifies the excitement and sort of constrains the scary part, and prolongs that first year to make it all the better.”

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Writer: Eliot Sill

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Mike Koon, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-1256.