9th Annual GTP Summer Program Prepares Students for Rigor of AP Classes
The Global Teaching Project’s Advanced STEM Summer Preparatory Program, now in its ninth year, provides immersive instruction in a residential, university-based setting to help promising high school students get ready for the rigor of the Advanced Placement science courses they will take through GTP in the upcoming school year. The Summer Program is provided free of charge to students, and uses no state or local funds.
This year’s Summer Program, once again held at Mississippi State’s main Starkville campus, was a major success, drawing approximately 100 students from across the state to study AP Biology, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Physics 1, and AP Statistics with faculty and tutors from Yale, Dartmouth, Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and the Universities of Mississippi, and Virginia.
The purpose of the Summer Program is to help prospective AP students succeed in a rigorous AP STEM curriculum in the upcoming school year.
Promising rural students are selected by their schools to take AP courses offered through GTP based on the students’ exceptional aptitude and work ethic. Yet those students often have significant gaps in their substantive foundations. The Summer Program helps prospective AP students close those gaps, and develop the study skills needed to excel.
Summer Program students completed pre- and post-surveys that provided information about their backgrounds and assessed multiple factors, such as their interest in STEM, their perceptions of the value of school, and their sense of connectedness to GTP and the STEM community.
Almost exactly half the attending students were rising juniors, with the rest divided among rising seniors and sophomores, along with a single rising 9th grader. Students reported a variety of demographic backgrounds—including Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, and multi-racial—with the overwhelming majority identifying as Black. The female:male ratio was precisely 2:1, a remarkably consistent ratio over the years in view of the fact that no effort is made to manage Summer Program enrollment based on demographics.
Survey results indicate that the Summer Program substantially boosted students’ interest in pursuing STEM majors. The survey given at the beginning of the Summer Program indicated that 24 percent of students planned to major in a STEM subject in college. By the end of the Summer Program, that number rose sharply—48 percent of students stated that they planned to major in STEM.
The great majority of students also reported high levels of connection to GTP and the STEM community by the end of the Summer Program. In an open-response question about their thoughts about the camp, many students described that positive experience, and expressed a desire to return for future GTP events.
The summer camp made me feel confident and important.”
– Cleveland Central High School, 11th grade
The summer camp empowers me mentally
because I feel more included.”
– Greenville High School, 11th grade
My two-year experience with the AP STEM program was very good. The lessons were easy to understand and if you needed help, there would always be a tutor around the corner to help. The people were nice and everyone got along. I wish I could’ve stayed longer.”
– Leland High School, 12th grade
GTP assesses progress in many ways, but having a teenager express the desire to spend a greater portion of her summer vacation studying STEM is surely among the most meaningful.
The Summer Program is part of GTP Advanced STEM Access Program, which last year offered Advanced Placement science courses throughout the academic year in four subjects at 33 high schools concentrated in the state’s most impoverished communities, many of which previously offered no APs in any subject. GTP continues to add schools, students, and classes to expand educational opportunities throughout the state.
