For decades, NCSSM's outreach efforts have been a key part of the school's mission.

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NCSSM celebrating a trio of extended learning milestones

For 44 years, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics has been offering motivated students around the state the opportunity to live and learn together at one of the most engaging public high schools in America. 

A surprising fact about NCSSM, however, is that – when looking simply at annual students served – the school’s outreach offerings serve two and a half times as many students as the Residential program, enabling NCSSM to truly be “North Carolina’s high school.” Proving that this has long been the case, this year, three of NCSSM’s Extended Learning offerings are celebrating their 10th, 30th, and 40th years of service that, in total, provide access to STEM courses for more than 2,500 students each year.

“The Extended Learning division of NCSSM is dedicated to collaborating with school systems and communities across North Carolina to strengthen public education and meet the academic needs of our talented students,” says Vice Chancellor Dr. Jamie Lathan. “Over the past 40 years, we’ve upheld this commitment through various programs: beginning with the Summer Ventures in Science and Math program, continuing with the Connect videoconferencing program initiated 30 years ago, and more recently, the Summer Accelerator program launched 10 years ago. I am grateful that all three programs are valuable and accessible to many students throughout North Carolina.”

Unique enrichment opportunities

Now in its 10th year, NCSSM’s Summer Accelerator program offering one- to three-week-long academic summer camp experiences has experienced incredible growth in both the number of students served and the number of STEM enrichment courses offered. Just eight courses were available to slightly more than 100 high school students when Accelerator launched in 2014. This summer, says director Alicia Stokley, the program is now offering 105 courses to more than 1,500 rising fifth- through 12th-grade students through NCSSM’s Durham and Morganton campuses as well as online.

Unlike most other NCSSM programming, Accelerator operates on a tuition-based model and is open to students outside North Carolina and even the United States, with plenty of financial aid available to students in need thanks to an assortment of corporate and private supporters. This makes Accelerator self-sustaining.

Accelerator’s design also allows for a wider variety of courses. While more traditional – though advanced – opportunities are offered in areas such as computer programming, biotechnology, and the humanities, there are also a number of courses like Career Quest or The Science of Monsters that use novel and engaging themes to explore STEM concepts.

Summer Accelerator students at NCSSM-Morganton work to create an electrical circuit.

The core of Accelerator’s success is matching the right instructors with the right content. In fact, the curriculum development process takes up a significant portion of the year prior to the summer courses.

“During our course proposal process, we ask instructors from all across North Carolina and beyond to submit their course ideas,” Stokley says. “We rely on them to put on their creative thinking hats and come up with ideas outside the box. From there, we take feedback we have received from student surveys and then work with instructors to construct courses based off what we know that students want to take and what the instructors have proposed. It takes a lot of time to tweak content. We want our courses to remain academically rigorous, while still meeting the students where they’re at.” 

Accelerator at NCSSM is already one of NCSSM’s most successful summer outreach programs, but plans are in place to grow even further. Program administrators are considering how planned and ongoing construction projects on the Durham and Morganton campuses might facilitate Accelerator’s expansion. Some off-site locations are being considered, too. It’s all part of NCSSM’s mission to serve. “We want,” Stokley says, “to make sure we are eliminating barriers for students.”

University-based research

Of the three programs celebrating anniversaries this year, Summer Ventures is the elder statesperson. This year marks the 40th year of partnering with the UNC System to offer the program to 11th- and 12th-grade students from throughout North Carolina. Summer Ventures provides students with hands-on, real-world research opportunities already underway at UNC System universities. The program runs four weeks and, just like in college, students live on university campuses throughout. 

“Summer Ventures is a very impactful program for students who may not want a full, two-year residential experience like at NCSSM-Durham or NCSM-Morganton,” says Chris Thomas, an NCSSM-Durham based co-director of Summer Ventures. “It’s also a great way to introduce students to our science and math researchers at the UNC System campuses.”

Though research is the core of the program, Thomas is consistently impressed by the relationships students in the program build with each other. “When I visit these campuses, I’m always struck by how important the social and residential aspects of the program are. What I’ve learned is that the community building that happens at night and on the weekends, working in teams and collaborating on stuff, or just hanging out, develops a lot of their professional and soft skills. That, in turn, has an impact on the quality of the research experience. The better they know their peers, the better experience they’re having in their research.”

NCSSM doesn’t actually host or provide any instruction to Summer Ventures students even though it is charged with overseeing the program. Rather, its main responsibility is leveraging the decades of relationships it has fostered with both universities and public schools to recruit and select students for Summer Ventures. NCSSM is also charged with evaluating the program’s effectiveness. Responsibility for coordinating research projects and housing students falls to the four (of an original six) participating universities; UNC Wilmington, UNC Charlotte, East Carolina University, and Appalachian State University. 

Students in the Appalachian State-based Summer Ventures program collect biological samples from the waters of Western North Carolina.

More than 16,000 students have participated in Summer Ventures since its creation. Still, Summer Ventures is something of an under-the-radar program due to funding that’s been diluted by inflation. When it began 40 years ago, Summer Ventures served more than 600 students a year and was offered at six UNC System schools. Today, the program’s state-allocated operating budget remains incredibly close to its original dollar amount. Thanks to four decades of inflation, the program now serves some 165 students a year.

Still, says Thomas, what remains constant is the quality of the research the students are engaging in. In fact – with 40 years of advances in technology as the catalyst – Summer Ventures is now providing participants with the most advanced research opportunities ever. This type of programming has become so popular that many private and public universities across the country now offer similar, but fee-based, programs. With increased funding, Thomas says, Summer Ventures could return to – or even exceed – previous levels of enrollment at no cost to more aspiring STEM students.

NCSSM in your home community 

Situated right in the middle of Accelerator and Summer Ventures is NCSSM Connect, which is now in its 30th year of providing credit-bearing NCSSM-branded-and-taught AP and Honors courses in STEM and humanities disciplines to students in partnering local schools all over North Carolina. The program has managed a few name changes in those years – from Interactive Videoconferencing to Open Enrollment to Connect, as it’s now called – and a shift in delivery method from broadcasting via cable channels to live video conferencing utilizing a Zoom-based platform. Through all the adaptations, however, the program has remained an anchor of NCSSM’s outreach activities and just won a 2024 United States Distance Learning Association Excellence in Distance Learning Teaching/Training Award, the only K-12 school to do so.

It’s easy for any high school student in the state to enroll in Connect. There is no tuition, nor any kind of application process. All that’s needed is a Memorandum of Understanding with participating schools stipulating a few administrative requirements. More than 500 students from 107 schools in 58 North Carolina counties enrolled in Connect classes in the most recent academic year, an increase of about 200 students since 2015-2016.

Forensic Science instructor Nina Kornegay reaches students throughout North Carolina from NCSSM-Durham’s Connect studios.

Financially, Connect also “closes an opportunity gap” that often exists in school districts due to funding issues at the local level, says Camilla Brothers, NCSSM’s Director of Instructional Leadership and a key part of Connect’s administration. “Schools everywhere struggle with funding,” Brothers says, “and a lot of times our schools simply aren’t able to afford a teacher to teach anatomy and physiology if that class was only going to have four students in it. With Connect, we can serve four students from one school, and then four students from another school and four students from another school until we have a whole virtual classroom of students from the mountains to the coast participating and learning together when those options may not be available for them otherwise.”

In the 2023-2024 academic year, students could choose from 24 courses, with options seldom available in public schools, including AP Psychology, Honors Aerospace Engineering, Honors Cryptography: Computer Programming and Secret Messages, and Honors Forensic Science. And as long as they have the capacity for it, students can take as many of these courses as they’d like.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm out there for Connect,” Brothers says. “Our returning partner schools always want to know, almost as soon as the new year comes, when the new course catalog is going to be available. They really want to support the program and factor in registering for these classes within the registration process that they have at their school.”

So much more

NCSSM has never been just about its residential brick-and-mortar reputation, even though its achievements there bring the school high-profile accolades. NCSSM was created to serve the entire state, using every tool at its disposal. Extended Learning has built these innovative tools among many others and continues innovating.

“I am incredibly proud that NCSSM has lived up to its legislated mandate to serve talented students from across North Carolina through our Residential program and to advance public education across our state,” says NCSSM Chancellor Dr. Todd Roberts. “With regard to the latter of these responsibilities, I am especially proud of programs such as Accelerator, Connect, and Summer Ventures, and the faculty and staff who run them. Thanks in large part to them, and to the schools and educators who have partnered with us, we have been able to reach far beyond our core Residential program to advance educational opportunities for tens of thousands of North Carolinians throughout the state.”