The Dartmouth Summer Scholars program kicked off last week, bringing together motivated, intellectually curious high school students for rigorous academic exploration and the best of summer recreational activities on campus and beyond.
“There are a lot of happy faces,” says program leader Christine Parker.
Organized into three two-week sessions, the pilot cross-campus collaboration led by the Transformation Office consists of intensive non-credit courses designed especially for pre-college students. Participants applied for admission to specific courses designed and taught by Dartmouth instructors. Summer 2024 offerings included business, entrepreneurship, data science, medicine, creative writing, design thinking, and the politics of memory and museums, depending on the session.
Parker, who has managed summer sessions and pre-college programs at academic institutions across the country, including Stanford and the University of Chicago, says students are having to make “more and more decisions” about their futures at younger and younger ages.
Taking a class at a selective university or college and exploring their academic interests offers a “real experience to base those future decisions on.”
And the program is a great way to support the call by President Sian Leah Beilock to broaden Dartmouth’s impact, Parker says. This summer, 165 scholars from 24 states and 17 countries will take part. The students stay in a residence hall on campus.
Jack Cole, a rising senior from Boca Raton, Fla., is taking the Art of Entrepreneurship, led by the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship.
Hearing from people who have started their own companies has been eye-opening, says Cole, who will also do an internship in environmental science this summer, through his school, and hopes to develop creative solutions to global problems. “This is kind of looking further down the line in the future and seeing how I can combine what I know with the science research that I’m doing with this entrepreneurship side.”
In addition to five hours of instruction and study time, the daily schedule includes shared mealtimes and a full slate of fun—the Summer Scholars have seen the Fisher Cats play baseball in Manchester, N.H., trekked part of the Appalachian Trail, and gathered in the evenings for games, karaoke, and movies.
Madeleine Pham, who is taking New Essentials of Medicine, a co-production of Arts and Sciences and Geisel School of Medicine, says she’s found herself being more extroverted than usual, and making lots of new friends in the process.
“I think it’s the activities they have us do and the fact that we’re learning in close proximity to each other,” says Pham, a rising sophomore from Chicago whose family summers in Vermont. “It’s a very close-knit community.”
As the first session nears its close—the last day is July 12, organizers say they are happy with the launch.
“We have learners coming from all over the world” to engage in a wide range of subjects from across the institution, says Ryan McCallum, vice president of the Transformation Office. “We’re really quite excited about how this summer has started.”
The instructors have been impressed with the students, who are focused, enthusiastic, and “asking great questions,” Parker says.
And looking ahead, the plan is to offer an even broader range of classes, she says. “That’s the way you grow, by offering more courses that meet the needs and interests of current students.”