NTID Summer Transition Program and Expansion

Recognizing that many students arrive at NTID without equal access to educational opportunities during their secondary years, NTID launched its pilot Summer Transition Program (STP) in summer 2019. The program offered six weeks of intensive educational coursework and support services to students who had been accepted at NTID, but had not yet qualified for admission to a degree-granting program. Sixty-two percent of the incoming SVP 2019 class qualified for a “prep or transition program” designed to help them prepare for success in postsecondary settings, but had not had the opportunity to access such a program.

The program was comprehensive in nature with eight hours a day of English, Math, ASL, counseling, coaching, academic advising, tutoring, accountability, and testing all built into a very structured six-week program. One hundred percent of the students who enrolled in STP completed the program. The NTID National Advisory Group has received a report on this program, which maintained a retention rate of over 90% through the first year. The program was planned to continue and expand in summer 2020.  We have had to merge the 2020 summer program into the fall schedule due to COVID-19 and will offer it to an expanded group of students. In addition, we have an agreement with our NTID Regional STEM Center partner, the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB), to provide additional STEM transitioning programming to students at AIDB and in the Southeast through a summer institute held on the AIDB campus, planned for summer 2021. Two other states have contacted NTID with interest in a similar program. Therefore, it is anticipated that this transition program will be modified to serve students across the country. RIT’s Strategic Plan calls for expansion of these efforts to four regions in the future, and we have agreed with AIDB to focus special attention on the needs of AALANA students in this process.