Door to college readiness opens with technology academy

Every other Saturday during the school year, about 75 technology-savvy Madison High School students become immersed in an environment of possibilities.

The possibilities include learning Web-based and graphic design skills, using multimedia equipment, rebuilding computer hardware and understanding technology project management. Throughout their high school lives, this work is preparing them for college success, technology careers and another enticing possibility: a full-ride scholarship to the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The UW–Madison Information Technology Academy (ITA), now in its sixth year, has been one of the university’s more novel — and successful — approaches to improving undergraduate diversity and providing greater opportunity to students who are underserved throughout higher education, and especially in the sciences.

“It has been my pleasure to watch 37 students graduate from the ITA program over the past three years,” says Erica Laughlin, director of the Information Technology Academy. “Of those students, over half have enrolled at the UW–Madison, and we have been fortunate to welcome many of those students back to ITA as employees.”

More than half of ITA graduates attend UW–Madison, and more than 90 percent are enrolled in college somewhere.

This fall, the ITA chose to double its incoming enrollment of freshmen, from 15 to 30, to accommodate the growing student and parent interest. The UW Foundation, UW–Madison’s Plan 2008 initiative and the Division of Information Technology increased funding this year to make this enrollment adjustment possible.

The academy is another tool to help UW–Madison achieve the goals of the Plan 2008 initiative, which is aimed at boosting the overall number of students and staff members of color, closing the gap in educational achievement, offering more scholarships and encouraging partnerships between crucial organizations.

About 75 students between the ages of 14 and 18 are enrolled in the academy. Low-income and minority applicants from the Madison Metropolitan School District are identified in eighth grade and participate throughout their high school years. As they progress, students have the opportunity to do summer internships in university departments or local businesses.

Each age group has its own class schedule every Saturday. Although there is a certain amount of material to cover in a given section, the lead technology instructor, AJ Krill, allows the class to go at the pace of the students. The environment in the ITA classes facilitates learning for all of the students equally, allowing something for each type of learning style.

A recent visit to a Saturday class revealed a closely-knit group: The 11th-graders, for example, constantly embarked on tangents, but most tended to relate to some aspect of technology. In the middle of a lesson on how to format dates in Microsoft Excel data cells, Tenzin Choedak, who attends Madison West High School, asked if it was illegal to upload the same version of an operating system to more than one computer. During work time, several junior students occasionally break into song, reciting a few lines from “Copacabana,” followed by peals of laughter.

At the same time, the freshmen are working in two different classrooms, split into groups of 15. Programming is the topic of the hour for them, and each group learns how to make a Web site using HTML (hypertext markup language) before joining as a full 30-student class to begin work on an online newspaper, guided by two instructors.

ITA is different from other UW–Madison diversity initiatives, says Laughlin, because of its low student-to-teacher ratio. With close to 75 students, ITA employs more than nine teachers and specialists to guide the students in different aspects of their technological discovery.

In addition, the program supplies one college-aged mentor for every two children, creating an additional resource for the students that continues through their four years of involvement in ITA and sometimes extends into the students’ college years.

ITA not only supplies the students with an advanced technology background, it also provides them with computers donated by Dell, plus software and Internet access at home so they can practice the skills they learn in class. If the students successfully complete the program and make the competitive cut in admissions, they can take advantage of the offered full-tuition scholarship to UW–Madison for study in a scientific field. They also are allowed to keep the computer until they complete their undergraduate degree.

“We are incredibly proud of all of our students, and I am continually amazed and inspired by their talents, enthusiasm and perseverance,” says Laughlin.