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Dawn
Gallagher High School: Steel Valley
Dawn enrolled at MercyHurst College near Erie, Pennsylvania because it has an undergraduate degree for persons wishing to be intelligence analysts and Dawn wants to work for the FBI or CIA in that area. In addition to her studies, Dawn had a special work study position at the College where she did work in intelligence research. Her work study position came about, in large part, because of skills she gained from the InfoLink program, specifically, her geographic information skills. |
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Home > Curriculum Overview  |
We wanted InfoLink students to learn how to be successful in problem-solving projects, on teams, and using information technology tools. The tools needed to be both those that would help land good jobs as well as be valuable for a good start in higher education. We wanted our students to be comfortable with learning new computer skills and packages, and thus adopted a broad, computer literacy based curriculum. Students learned how to continuously learn new software, while deveoping a good degree of confidence and comfort. So the approach was to quickly ground students with a kind of computing and package, solve some problems, and quickly move on to the next package. If a student did not like working with tabular data and relational databases, no problem. In another week or two, the class would move on to computer graphics or some other very different area. We used short lectures, on a just-in-time basis, followed by self-paced, step-by-step tutorials in the computer lab. Most of the instructor's time was spent one-on-one as problems or advanced questions arose. The only requirements for enrolling in InfoLink were that the student had to 1) meet low income criteria, 2) be recommended by a high school teacher affiliated with InfoLink, and 3) have an expressed interest in information technology. We started InfoLink with after- and at-school classes in the spring. By the end of that phase, we had on the order of 50% attrition. Those that stuck with it and entered the summer, on-campus program at Carnegie Mellon tended to finsh the program. Instead of hanging out or flipping burgers, these youths got up early every morning for a half day of demanding classes followed by professional seminars, site visits, or internships. These were students who were both smart and motivated. While not going as deep as in our regular college classes and providing more one-on-one help than usual, we just taught master degree material, especially the problem solving and project work. At the end of the program, the students looked, acted, and functioned much like college students. Student project presentations, with clients, faculty, family, and community members present, were always college-level quality. We did not to judge success by grades, but by willingness of students to participate fully (students who missed more then three classes without extenuating circumstances "flunked out"), ability to complete assigned lab work, and ability to perform as valuable team members in projects and on internships.
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A major
goal of InfoLink is to give under-privileged high school students
an interesting and successful college experience - something they
might never have entertained nor thought possible - and a taste
of the fruits of professional employment. This included college-level
education on campus with lots of help available, exposure to several
information technology career possibilities, 