While most high school juniors are spending their summers working at McDonald’s or lifeguarding at the community pool, a select group of students will have the opportunity to spend three weeks studying at Millikin University Summer Academy.

From June 22 to July 12, 20 to 30 select, high-achieving high school juniors, based on nominations from high school principals, counselors, and AP course teachers, will be allowed to take two college-level courses taught by Millikin’s own professors: Dr. James Rauff, Dr. Randy Brooks, Dr. Dan Miller, Dr. Judy Parish and Dr. Brian Mullgardt.

“[This program] provides high school students with a chance to experience Millikin University’s performance learning approach to undergraduate studies,” Dr. Randy Brooks, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said. “With courses designed to immerse students for an entire morning or afternoon in an intensive study, the goal is to engage students in learning how to be creative learners.”

For the residential students, who will live in student housing, the cost of this experience will be $3,250. This cost includes tuition for the classes, three meals a day and the cost of living in student housing. The commuter students will cost $2,600, which includes tuition and one meal a day.

Instead of offering classes that are offered at any community college, Millikin decided to focus on subjects that enhanced performance learning while allowing the students more creative freedom. These courses include Graphics in Culture, Global Haiku Tradition, Observational Astronomy and Astro-Photography, From Flasks to the Field and Back and Doing History: The 1960s.

Being a new program, MU Summer Academy staff members are working on getting the word out to parents and students that these courses are different from the normal courses offered through summer school programs or dual-credit classes. It allows students the opportunity to not only get the college experience, but also take a break from their mundane high school courses and experience the benefits of performance learning.

This program isn’t only beneficial for the students, but for the school as well.

“These students will be searching for a university during their senior year of high school, and they will be telling their friends about Millikin University, where students not only take classes, they get to do performance learning,” Brooks said.

Staff are hoping that this Summer Academy will help raise admission numbers along with adding a new revue to help with the budget.

Although this is the first year the MU Summer Academy will be in session, if all goes well, Millikin may have an annual summer program on their hands.