Vincennes University will once again host X-Mester, a college residential experience designed to give a wide range of rising high school student populations, including urban, suburban, and rural students, a taste of college. This year’s student session will begin June 17 and conclude on June 29 on the campus of Indiana’s first college, Vincennes. X-Mester is the only program in the state of Indiana where students are able to have access to the innovative and accelerated format that allows a semester-long college course to be completed in just two weeks.
The initiative began in 2009 with a class of students from Ben Davis University High School, the state of Indiana’s “A” rated and most mature Early College program. Last summer X-Mester expanded to welcome students from VU’s early colleges at Arsenal Tech and Center Grove. The X-Mester Fellowship program, for two years running, has brought some of the best college seniors and recent graduates as teachers, advisors and mentors to the program’s high school scholars.
“Our first two cohorts of Fellows were outstanding,” said X-Mester Director Patricia Melton. “We had students from some of the world’s most elite schools such as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, Virginia, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell and Georgetown, as well as true in-state campus leaders from IUPUI, Indiana State and Vincennes. Our third year should be even better and just as dynamic as we are casting a wider net for applicants. Collegians looking for the extraordinary choose us and subsequently go on to be top achievers in their chosen career endeavor”
This summer will continue with the proven format of self-contained courses in several high-interest disciplines — combining traditional lecture with project-based learning. The courses featured are broadcasting, business, journalism, mobile apps, music, psychology, sociology, sports medicine, theater and web design.
“In the past we had used a hybrid model, a combination of distance learning and face-to-face,” said Melton. “Last year the X-Mester course schedule began and ended on campus within a deeply supportive environment. Between the X-Mester staff, Fellows and professors, the adult-to-student ratio will be about six-to-one. The result was a dramatic improvement in the average grade-point.”
The self-contained nature of the coursework will open X-Mester to all high school juniors and a select number of seniors, including those taking classes through Project EXCEL, a dual-credit program at VU, as well as others not previously affiliated with the University. X-Mester is also expecting students from Vincennes’ early colleges in Evansville and Lawrenceburg for the first time.
The students will live in the dorms, eat in the newly renovated Tecumseh Dining Center, learn in the labs, lecture halls and classrooms, study in the Shake Learning Center, swim in the state-of-the-art new Aquatics Center, perform in the Red Skelton Theater and have a range of extra-curricular options. Last year’s enrichment opportunities included a cappella, art, basketball, football, photography, tennis, spoken word, web design and yoga.
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