Ithaca College

(posted on behalf of Dr. Jennifer Wofford and Dr. Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson)

It is with appreciation and pleasure that we announce a transition in the leadership of our Summer College for High School Students program effective May 15, 2021.

Dr. Joslyn Brenton, Associate Professor of Sociology, has accepted the position of Faculty Director of the Summer College for High School Students Program and will be working directly with Summer College faculty as well as joining the leadership team that includes Jennifer Wofford (Director of the Office of Extended Studies), Mimi Wright (Assistant Director, OIPES), and a program advisory committee. Dr. Brenton is an experienced Summer College faculty member who brings enthusiasm to her work with high schoolers, to her engagement with first-year students transitioning to college, and in her work with student-led summer research opportunities. Her commitment to anti-racism goals at the College will help to assure a legacy of equity work associated with the Summer College program.

Her appointment marks an important milestone for the Summer College for High School Students program, as it comes in response to the retirement of our longtime colleague, Professor Warren Schlessinger, the program’s founder.

IC’s Summer College for High School Students is a flourishing and innovative precollege program that offers, every summer, 150 to 200 high school students their first sense of college life. Warren has been at the helm of Summer College since its inception nearly thirty years ago, and over those years has sought to bring the program’s student demographic into alignment with racial equity. Warren is to thank for his early outreach to numerous community organizations across the country that subsidize access to college bridge programs as he committed to making our Summer College program more inclusive and accessible to all. His establishment and sustenance of these relationships, over two decades, has benefited many students each year—some of whom later decided to select Ithaca College as their home for undergraduate study—and has, by broadening the pool of students who participate in the program, enhanced the experiences of faculty fortunate enough to teach each summer. Years of Summer College teams have been privileged to witness Warren remain calm –  true professional chill –  in the most anxiety-inducing situations, and with sixteen and seventeen year-olds living on campus away from their families for the first time, there were many such demonstrations available. For his Summer College team, he’s been an advocate, a confidante, and a generous and irreplaceable partner.

Thank you to both Dr. Brenton, for your upcoming leadership of the program, and to Professor Schlessinger for the program you have developed and are now entrusting to the team.