The Skyline College Promise Scholars Summer Institute (PSSI) successfully finished its inaugural year of the Promise Scholars Program’s preparatory summer program with 98 entering freshmen completing either a 3-week or a 6-week accelerated program. Both modules were designed to accelerate student learning and placement into transfer level math and English as a central component of the Skyline College Promise for students to “Get In, Get Through and Graduate…On Time.”
The PSSI continued to recognize each student’s humanity and culture by developing relevant curriculum that would enable students to explore their own College Success Story. At the same time, the PSSI provided credit-bearing courses in math, English and Counseling to enable students to earn units, as well as prepare to move into transfer level courses. The 6-week program served 19 students who enrolled in an English workshop series, math workshop series or math 120 courses and Counseling 101 class. The 3-week program began midway through its counterpart and served 79 students who enrolled in either Math 110 or Math 120 and a Counseling 101 or Math 190 course. Students were immersed in classes from 9:00-5:00, Monday through Thursday, yet still found time to take part in social and community building events. To ease the academic immersion, PSSI sponsored a program bowling trip, as well as an evening at the San Francisco Giants where students could either apply their learned math or temporarily forget about it and have fun.
In addition to accelerating student placement and preparation into transfer level math and/or English, the 2018 PSSI enabled students to:
Develop their critical consciousness and thinking skills
Increase their comfort and confidence engaging the collegiate experience
Increase their academic skills and efficacy
An examination of early PSSI outcomes proved very promising. In the math component, which all students participated in, PSSI used ALEKS as a pre-and-post assessment. In a review of the ALEKS outcomes, we found:
6 Week Module:
Math 120 – 108% growth in math concepts learned
Math 811 – 203% growth in math concepts learned
3 Week Module:
Math 110 – 134% growth in math concepts learned
Math 120 – 37% growth in math concepts learned
Math 190 – 50% growth in math concepts learned
Additionally, the majority of participants passed their classes and moved into transfer level math and/or English.
The Program concluded on Thursday, August 2, 2018 with a PSSI Closing Ceremony with over 200 students, family members and guests celebrating the success of SSI students and launching them into the 2018-19 academic year.
Article by Michael Stokes
