From High School to Ball State
Dr. Joshua Gruver, associate professor of natural resources and environmental management, shares the history of the Juanita Hults Environmental Education Center (JHELC) with CSH’s Jump Start students.
Jump Start program helps students transition to college life
Kennedi Morgan looked forward to starting her college career at Ball State University. But, like many freshmen nationwide, she found the thought of transitioning from high school to college life a bit daunting.
“I thought college was going to be pretty lonely,” Ms. Morgan said. “I knew there would be other students coming in from their high schools, but the University is a bigger space than a high school. I thought it would be hard to make connections with other people.”
Ms. Morgan’s concerns were quickly eased, thanks largely to her participation in Jump Start, Ball State’s first-year transition program. Each of Ball State’s seven academic colleges plans a unique Jump Start experience that focuses on aspects of their areas of study. The goal is to help students achieve a successful start to their first year at Ball State. Jump Start, which began in 2022, is held in the Summer prior to the start of the students’ first year. There are usually 30 students in each cohort.
Majoring in Geology—a discipline within Ball State’s College of Sciences and Humanities (CSH)—Ms. Morgan attended CSH’s Jump Start held in the Summer of 2023.
“With Jump Start, it was very easy for students to talk to each other and share this common experience. Everyone was probably scared, or nervous about finding classes, and things like that. This program gave us an outlet to connect to one another and move past the fear or nervousness,” Ms. Morgan said.
Jump Start is part of Ball State’s Summer Bridge, a series of co-curricular programs and services meant to support and engage the University’s incoming first-year students in their transition to college. Funding from the Our Call to Beneficence campaign will further strengthen these programs.
Kennedi Morgan and other students at the Jump Start program
How CSH’s Jump Start Helps Students
CSH’s Jump Start is primarily an academic experience, with students living on campus, eating in the dining halls, attending classes taught by CSH faculty, and having the opportunity for some out-of-classroom educational experiences—plus opportunities for a few social activities, said CSH Associate Dean Dr. Patrick Collier.
“The idea is to give our students an immersive three-day kind of dry run at being a college student,” he added.
Toward the end of the program, there’s a meeting at which faculty help students synthesize what they’ve learned in the classes. Students are provided with thinking prompts to work on together in groups, followed by a debriefing period for the entire group. Also during this meeting, the students are invited to discuss what they learned in the program about being a college student.
“Our Jump Start’s components and structure are important because they immerse students into college life—specifically in the ways in which it’s different from high school life,” Dr. Collier explained. “The students have to wake up each day and get themselves to class. They have to be able to navigate campus. They have to figure out all these little sorts of ‘everyday life’ aspects of being a college student. Another important point: the emphasis in the classes we teach is on college-style, active learning.”
Offering Lessons Outside the Classroom
CSH’s Jump Start is strong on out-of-the-classroom learning. For example, the Summer 2023 cohort spent time at Hults Farm in Delaware County, where the students learned about wetlands, ecosystems, food production, food insecurity, and food deserts.
“And the students helped load the truck with food for delivery to the low-cost farmers market (Ball State) Professor Josh Gruver runs in downtown Muncie,” Dr. Collier said.
In addition to making valuable connections with faculty and other Ball State students during the CSH’s Summer 2023 Jump Start program, freshman Josie Pressnall—who’s majoring in Political Science and English—said she especially enjoyed learning with her peers at the farm.
“Through this program, I was exposed to lectures on STEM-related (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) matters,” Ms. Pressnall said. “CSH’s Jump Start program broadened my perspective of college as not just a means to the end of getting a degree, but something to be enjoyed … as I learn things I wasn’t expecting to learn.”
CSH is interested in expanding its Jump Start program in numerous ways in the future, extending the experience to more students and potentially making it even more robust academically, Dr. Collier said.
Six CSH faculty members participated in the first two CSH Jump Start sessions. The 2023 group included Dr. Petra Zimmermann, associate professor of geography; Dr. Jessi Haeft, associate professor of natural resources and director of the Ball State Student Farm; Dr. Ellen Whitehead, assistant professor of sociology; and Dr. Sreyoshi Sarkar, assistant professor of English. The 2022 group was Dr. Kevin Harrelson, professor of philosophy; Dr. Gen Mager, assistant teaching professor of biology; Dr. Zimmermann; and Dr. Whitehead.
