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Health & Fitness

On Campus: Spending Summer Break at Harper a Popular Pastime

Every summer, we see a large number of students taking classes on our campus while home on summer break from four-year colleges and univerities. Here's why.

The first one I noticed was an Arizona State University t-shirt, worn by a ponytailed student seated at a café table over the lunch hour in our Avanté Center for Science, Health Careers and Emerging Technologies. Afterward, I spotted someone in a U of I sweatshirt, a student in an Indiana University hoodie, and several people in comfy sweatpants with campus sorority logos.

The clothes could mean nothing at all.

But I’m guessing at least some of them are illustrations of a growing trend: college and university students taking classes at Harper College while home on summer break.

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It’s an increasingly popular strategy, and Tamara McClain of our Admissions Outreach
Department
notes it can really pay off for those who want to efficiently tackle their education.

Take Illinois State University student Matt Steckling.

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Like a lot of students, he has a full plate: He held down a job in ISU’s Office of Administrative Technology, interned with the Athletics Marketing Department and served on the social board of his American Marketing Association chapter – all while juggling a full plate of classes. But he still hopes to graduate early, and Harper is helping.

Steckling used his 2010 summer break to take two classes on our campus, effectively knocking them off his fall-semester to-do list and putting him on target to finish at ISU ahead of his peers.

“Without those courses, I would be significantly behind the pace I’m at,” the Wheeling resident said in an interview this spring. “It put me on track to graduate in three and a half years.”

That get-ahead plan was a common theme in Steckling’s Harper summer calculus course; he says many classmates also were looking to get a leg up on college requirements while home on break.

“Ultimately, it’s a cost-effective, convenient option,” McClain tells me. Among the reasons: Harper offers classes students need, taught by high-quality instructors close to home.

And at $102.50 a credit hour in-district, our tuition is about a third of what a student would pay at a state college or university, and about one-sixth the rate of a private university. 

Marketing pitch: That affordability can make Harper an ideal place for completing general education requirements and exploring interests outside a given major over the summer; one of our 2010 summer students told us she took a wide variety of classes, from mythology to film.

For Roosevelt University student Laurie Buyer, the main draw was speeding up the process of getting her bachelor’s. She came to Harper last summer to chip away at a long list of courses required for her Roosevelt psych major, and is back again for summer session 2011. She loves the accelerated pace of Harper’s summer classes – “Those few weeks equal an entire semester of coursework,” she says – and the more intimate class sizes she’s experienced on campus.

Her summer theater class even held a reunion over winter break, which is pretty cool.

The small class size also was a plus for Marina Hayes, a UIC student who took chemistry – a class she applied to her UIC neuroscience (yikes) major – on our campus last summer. It enabled her to move on to the next course in her chemistry series once she got back to UIC in the fall.

(Hayes also notes, by the way, that our chemistry labs were especially impressive to her; she called them “amazing” and state-of-the-art. I couldn’t say it better myself.)

She and others former and current students can list a host of other benefits that come with attending Harper as a home-on-break university student over the summer: the opportunity to focus on just one or two classes; the accessibility of instructors; the variety of courses whose credits will easily transfer; and flexible class schedules that accommodate a busy life.

Mariellen Benway had her eye on efficiency when she came to Harper last summer to knock out a stats course required for her psychology major at Northern Illinois. She ended up in a class full of students who impressed her with their overall willingness to learn; they were, she says, “kind, helpful, and equally set on concentrating on the course.” She sums it up as a “great experience.”

If you're interested in enrolling – for summer term or any term – call 847.925.6700, or visit www.harpercollege.edu.

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