Summer Collegiate Experience 2000 kicks off

Several new elements will highlight the university’s Summer Collegiate Experience (SCE) this year.

A campus tradition since 1985, the program offers academic challenge to freshmen of color from around the country who want an early start on their college careers. For the first time this summer, three peer counselors actually will live with the SCE students in a UW–Madison residence hall. All three are former SCE participants and will lead study sessions in sociology, as well as critical thinking and writing. Other former SCE students will talk with current participants informally about academics and leadership.

According to Consuelo Lopez Springfield, assistant dean in the College of Letters and Science and SCE organizer, each program participant has been matched with a mentor who may be a UW–Madison student, faculty or staff member.

“We are enormously proud of our SCE students and their achievements,” Springfield says. “They pay UW–Madison back five-fold for what we give them, becoming mentor themselves, showing other students where and how to study, how to get along with roommates, where to go for help and information and more. They are ambassadors essential to the university’s community-building efforts, and I and am delighted to welcome them to campus.”

Forty students will take part in SCE this year. The opening reception is June 10, at 2 p.m. at Carson Gulley Commons in the Lakeshore residence hall complex. SCE students and their parents will be moving into the residence halls that day. Between June 12-Aug. 3, SCE students will take two regular UW–Madison summer session courses. Program participants also will meet with representatives of campus offices and student organizations, and will have an opportunity to engage in community service.

To find out more about the SCE program, contact Svetlana Karpe at (608) 262-5884/stkarpe@lssaa.wisc.edu.