Dallas Examiner, 7/15/10 - “TSU Academy gives students second chance”

“These young people need an opportunity to become educated and earn their degrees,” says Dr. Betty Cox, tenured professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas Southern University, reflecting upon her inaugural year as director of TSU’s newly-launched Summer Academy program for high school students.

The program is one university’s answer to the challenge presented by underprepared yet eager students, and it’s also one veteran teacher’s platform for putting into practice everything she’s learned about getting through to young minds.

 “As I told [the students] this morning, ‘We don’t want you to stay here for six years. We want you to get your work and get out of school in four years, not longer than five years’,” said Dr. Cox.

Divided into two sessions, Academy I and Academy II, students are immersed in a rigorous five weeks of academic and social preparation for life at TSU. Academy I was completed last week. Academy II has just begun and will run to mid-August.

 “It is an excellent program for students who need that jumpstart into college and it has proved successful for many students. I would encourage any students who are interested to contact TSU,” Cox said with unconcealed pride.

Dr. Cox was a natural choice to lead the fledging program, with her 35 years of experience at the university and fondness for close interaction with students. She knows exactly what success (or just keeping one’s head above water) at TSU requires and combines that with her wealth of experience mentoring young learners.

By all accounts, the program has gotten off to a strong start. Designed specifically for students who fall just short of TSU’s admission standards, all but one of Summer Academy I’s 112 students were present to receive their certificates of completion last Friday. Preliminary data shows more than 50 percent of the students who completed Summer Academy I will not need to take any remedial classes in the fall. The second Academy will run through August 13 and will include more students from outside Houston.

Examiner: What can you tell us about your academic background, and your current scholarly interests?

Cox:  I have a master’s degree in sociology, and a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies. It’s actually in intercultural studies and educational leadership.

Examiner: What has been the focus of your teaching and academic work recently?

Cox: I have been very much involved in environmental issues, environmental sociology, and I work with graduate intern students. I also work with programs in multicultural studies.

Examiner: What aspect of your work do you consider the most enjoyable or rewarding?

Cox: The enjoyable aspect of my work is working directly with the students. I like a lot of direct interaction with students. As the interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences, I do a lot of interacting with students, and now added to that, as director of the summer academy, I am completely surrounded by students.

Examiner: Is it safe to say that you’ve mostly had small classes that allow for a lot of direct interaction with students?

Cox:  No it’s not quite fair to say that, because I have had a number of large classes too. I have been able to work with students ‒ I basically teach graduate courses and those courses are small ‒ but I do occasionally pick up an undergraduate class of about 60 students or so.

Examiner: So how does your summer academy for high school student’s work?

Cox: The summer academy is a program designed to provide students with an academic foundation and social adjustment skills for successful matriculation at Texas Southern University. Participants are high school graduates with at least a 1.8 GPA but they did not meet the Texas state College Readiness Test or the SAT or ACT requirements.

Students must meet all these requirements to come into Texas Southern University. When they come in the fall, they must have a 2.0 on a 4.0 GPA scale. They must have at least an 820 on the SAT or a 17 on the ACT. They must also have had placement testing unless their SAT score is at least 1070 or their ACT is 23 or higher.

All students with the 1.8 or 1.9 GPA, in order to come to TSU in the fall, are required to come to our summer academy. The summer academy helps to prepare them, because we believe that many of these students are just a little short of being ready to enter, and so we work with them for five straight weeks. They take English, reading, mathematics, and they have counseling classes each day. They are with us from 8 to 4 everyday, Monday through Friday. We accept only two absences. We ask that they come on time, and that they not leave until classes are over. We had a parents’ orientation for Academy I, and we explained all of this to the parents. The students know it’s not a free program—they paid $250.00; we supplied books and all that they would need.

We changed our admission standards at Texas Southern. We had to do that in order to upgrade the total university. As much as we may have liked to have kept all students, we needed to send some students to the community college because we can’t do all of the remediation that’s needed. So they go to community college and become well prepared, and then we encourage them to return through our counselors that are on community college campuses in Houston and surrounding areas.

We are very pleased with this program; it’s working. We want to improve retention, and with the methods we are using I believe we will be able to do that.

Examiner: So would you say that the program is something of a compromise, a way that TSU would not have to completely get out of the business of remediation?

Cox: Of course, because you can’t totally get out of doing that. We have an advisement staff that can help them at any time with anything they need. We also have an excellent group of faculty that will work with students. It’s very important to get students through the first two years. If we do that, they have an excellent chance of making it through four years. They understand what’s required, and they need to just do it.

Examiner: Was TSU the first choice for the majority of the students in the program?

Cox: For many of the students, TSU was the choice because many of the students can’t afford to go away from home. And the majority of students in Summer Academy I were from Houston.

Examiner: What would you say are the most common problems that students bring with them to the Summer Academy?

Cox: Some of the students just did not have discipline coming out of high school. Some did not have  parental involvement that I consider to be very important. Another thing is finances are a problem for many of these students. They are accustomed to going out working. We ask them to set some priorities. They may have to work, but we make them understand that they can’t take 18 hours of classes while working 40 hours a week.

Examiner: It would seem that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a student’s own parents who might serve as effective role models.

Cox: It can be the parents, the guardian, just a person in the community who cares and can serve as the role model for students.

Examiner: What is the most important pedagogical lesson you’ve taken from your experience running the program?

Cox: If students have the basic skills for college-level work with consistency in using the best practices in education, the students can succeed. They must have the background, they must have good teaching and they 
must have the willingness to make the sacrifices to be successful in a college environment.


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