By Jennifer Nibley
High school students at the Summer Scholar Academy are attending college preparation courses and other activities by the BYU Honors Program this week.
“I think [this program] is fairly unique,” said J. Scott Miller, undergraduate education and honors program coordinator. “I don”t know that there are many other [universities] that offer a summer intensive program for college-bound, high school sophomores and juniors.”
Summer Scholar Academy is a weeklong university experience, which includes courses taught by BYU faculty, devotionals, dances and fieldtrips. The participants visited Seven Peaks Tuesday evening and will visit Temple Square Wednesday afternoon.
“I came because it sounded like a lot of fun,” said Shelly Lucas, 17, from Rexburg, Idaho. “I have never been to EFY or away from home for very long.”
For this summer experience the BYU honors program recruited high school students who indicated interest for attending BYU on their ACT or SAT, Miller said. The Summer Scholar Academy accepts about 100 participants each summer.
“I think the primary goal is just to offer an intensive learning experience with BYU faculty for students who are thinking of coming here,” Miller said. “I think a subsidiary goal is we want them to feel comfortable with the campus.”
This year, the courses offered at the academy come from six subject areas. The subjects are writing, science, religion, biology, technology and art.
The courses at the academy are similar to honor courses taught at BYU, but they have smaller class sizes with only 15 students and a one-week time frame.
One of these courses is the science course known as The Daedalus Experience. It is taught by Paul Eastman, mechanical engineering professor and will be offered this Fall Semester as Honors 241.
The first day of class, students were told to imagine they are stranded on a mythical resource-rich island 100 miles off the Washington coast. By the end of the week, the students must be able to get off the island using the island”s resources, the BYU library and anything in their pockets, Eastman said.
“The students need to be organized,” Eastman said. “Deciding on this can be just as difficult as learning how to get off the island.”
The participants are provided a BYU experience – complete with the long treks across campus.
“[The academy] is fun, except there is a lot of walking,” said Alex Rytting, 15, from Salt Lake City. “It takes us half an hour to walk from our dorms to Maeser hall.”
