During the Summer Academy, Elon Academy scholars take academic, life skills and college-prep courses. An important aspect of the program includes Evening Sessions, which have historically served as the scholars' extracurricular programming
During Elon Academy’s three-week residential college prep program, Elon Academy Scholars engage in Evening Sessions that model health and wellness anchored by Elon’s HealthEU initiative.
The Elon Academy Summer Academy program is a three-week residential program, that models day-to-day life on a college campus. Scholars attend classes taught by various Elon faculty and staff, eat in a dining hall and build connections amongst cohorts.
Elon Academy fosters a supportive culture rooted in the mentorship that EA staff, student leaders and Elon University faculty/staff provide to scholars. The holistic support Elon Academy has cultivated has been further strengthened through the incorporation of Elon University’s health and well-being initiative, HealthEU.
During the Summer Academy, scholars take academic, life skills and college-prep courses. An important aspect of the program includes Evening Sessions, which have historically served as the scholars’ extracurricular programming ranging from cooking and art to physical activity like soccer, yoga and martial arts. This summer, Elon Academy committed to a new approach, intentionally infusing the HealthEU framework into Evening Session planning and development. This was executed through the collaboration of Elon Academy’s Faculty Scholar Evan Small and Coordinator for Well-Being, Melissa Chacon Villalobos.
All Summer Academy instructors participated in a four-part instructor development series in the spring facilitated by Small. During the first session, instructors received an overview of the Elon Academy, as well as insights into Alamance County and Alamance-Burlington School System. During the remaining sessions, instructors received information related to Elon Academy’s new learning framework, course development and assessment resources. Evening Session instructors, which include Elon University faculty, staff and connected community members, received an additional piece of training that gave them an overview of HealthEU, its six dimensions of well-being, and insight into how to enact the HealthEU and Wellness-Centered Pedagogy Frameworks.
The goal of this training was to give evening instructors additional resources to support them in infusing well-being into their sessions. Instructors’ reflections from their overall experience of teaching evening sessions and how it influenced their own professional growth or perspective as an educator included feeling prepared to embrace new challenges like teaching new subjects, working with new student populations and stepping beyond their comfort zones.
“(The training) helped me step outside of my comfort zone and learn how to teach a new subject to ages that I have never taught before,” said one Evening Session instructor.
In addition, they shared having a deepened understanding of diverse student populations and strengthening their commitment to outreach, particularly in supporting first-generation and low-income (FGLI) students.
“It is a humbling experience, and provides a more diverse lens of Alamance County,” said an Evening Session instructor.
“Well-being isn’t something we teach in a single session. It’s something we intentionally weave throughout the Elon Academy experience,” said Emily Wiersma, director of the Elon Academy. “Dr. Evan Small and Melissa Chacon Villalobos played a key role in translating that commitment into meaningful learning experiences by equipping and supporting our Evening Session instructors. Together, our faculty, staff, and community partners created opportunities for scholars to explore their purpose, build community and develop habits that will support them in college and beyond.”
Through several weeks of diverse sessions, scholars were empowered to align their values, skills and goals to their holistic well-being. Evening Sessions allowed scholars to connect career and personal interests such as entrepreneurship, health professions, and culinary arts, while learning how to infuse well-being into their day-to-day life. For example, one Evening Session encompassing the connection between career and personal interests was Introduction to Esports. In this session, Scholars were able to play games and expand the styles of games they play, while also learning about different career paths they can take with Esports. In another course, Introduction to Sports Medicine, scholars were able to blend their interest in sports and or/ medicine with the potential career routes of being an athletic trainer in the Elon University Athletic Training Room.
The intentional instructor development and integration of the HealthEU framework have further deepened the experiences and takeaways of the Summer Academy for scholars. The Summer Academy fosters independence within scholars to take ownership of their learning and goals for college, while fostering a sense of community and belonging.
When asked to describe the most important takeaways from their evening sessions as it relates to the specific dimension of well-being, scholars shared:
- “It’s important to work together as a team and find something that makes you happy.”
- “I learned about myself, what I value, and how I can help others.”
- “The evening sessions taught me that everyday physical activity, even if it’s just an hour or thirty minutes, can help a lot.”
- “Knowing how to grow and make my own food, and how to use that as a way to escape to focus on my own well-being.”
Evening Sessions in particular, model the multidimensional aspect of well-being and convey to scholars the importance of taking initiative of their well-being. Scholars experienced firsthand how career interests can intersect with personal interests and purpose. The culminating outcome of Evening Sessions is that scholars feel empowered to actively explore and make intentional decisions about how they use their time that support their values, goals and well-being.