The Wabash Liberal Arts Immersion Program Summer Institute will be held from July 6 to July 31. The special program is a select group of 30 students from all over the country. Most qualify as students of color, a Pell Grant recipients or as first-generation students going to college. The program helps them adjust to campus life before officially starting their first semester in August.
Students complete their first college credit either English 101 “College Writing” or Rhetoric 101 “Public Speaking” as part of the program. They attend class for about five hours, four days a week. A 16-week course is condensed into three and a half weeks.
“We decided to teach those classes because we think of them as fundamental skills for liberal arts success,” said Robert Horton, co-director of the program. “Written and oral communication are at the heart of everything we do.”
As part of the program, students also will participate in many activities such as games, sightseeing in Crawfordsville and visiting alumni. They will deepen their friendship with each other while living on campus during the summer.
“Living in a dormitory together for a month and having a group of people that they know when they walk back on campus in August is beneficial,” Horton said. “They will know 29 guys that were in the program with them, so they are not complete strangers on campus.”
There also will be some upperclassmen serving as mentors or tutors.
Another main component of WLAIP is taking “modules,” which is a special class that helps one become familiar with a particular subject. In the past, one of the Classic Department professors taught a module on Athenian life. He brought fake light shields and spears and showed them how combat works.
Zachery Koppelmann, WLAIP co-director, said this approach helps broaden a student’s mind.
“It is designed to demonstrate liberal arts, a wide range of things,” he said.
Overall, WLAIP consists of three parts — the summer program, support during their freshman year and a paid internship the following summer.
WLAIP was envisioned as a way of trying to close the gaps between the students from high-income families and the students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. Before the program started, the graduation rate for low-income students was about 60%, which is higher than the national average. However, there was still a gap.
“What the program is trying to do is give them enough of the support network and a group of people, they know they can trust you can work with,” Koppelmann said. “So that when they struggle, they can talk to somebody, they get the encouragement they need.”
The program started in 2015 when Wabash College President Dr. Scott Feller, who was Dean of the College at that time, wrote a grant proposal to and was funded by the Mellon Foundation. The program is currently funded by Lilly Endowment.
“I think the part I will take credit for is bringing and finding the financial resources and bringing those to the college to make it happen,” Feller said. “I think the program really has developed from the work of my colleagues, faculty and staff here who have designed the courses and the activities and from many faculty and staff who have played a role over the last six years.”
Last year, the program was conducted remotely because of the pandemic. However, it will be held on campus this year.
“I hope they will have a good time, I hope they form some friendships, I do hope they start feeling comfortable at Wabash,” Horton said. “All of those little life lessons about education that we want the students to get, hopefully they start getting those things during the summer.”
For more information about the WLAIP, visit online at https://www.wabash.edu/wlap/home.
