LYNN — Endicott College has opened its doors again to 48 middle school students from Lynn for its 12th Learning and Leadership Program (LLP).
Each summer, a group of seventh-grade students, recommended by their teachers from each middle school in the city, spend three weeks living in the dorms at Endicott and participating in programs from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to visual and performing arts.
Typically, the program has 36 students, who stay in the dorms during the week and return home for the weekends, but this summer’s program looks a little different.
LLP was canceled last year due to COVID-19, so this year’s program includes 24 eighth graders — the group that was supposed to go last summer -— and 24 seventh graders. To minimize large class sizes and to err on the side of safety — since not all participants are fully vaccinated — the program has been divided into two sessions and all participating students are required to wear masks.
The eighth-grade students are attending the program for the first two weeks, which began this past Monday, and the seventh-grade students will participate in the following two weeks.
There is also no overnight aspect to the program this year. Instead, students arrive at 8 a.m., either via parent drop-off or a bus picking them up at one of the middle schools, and they get dropped back off at the middle schools by 8 p.m.
The loss of the overnight dorming experience is unfortunate, said Program Director Helena Diamond Carritte, but Endicott is happy to have students back on campus for the day programs.
“A part of this program that really stands out from other programs across the district is that we are representing students from each middle school and giving them an opportunity to explore college at a younger age,” Carritte said.
The variety of classes at LLP are taught by Endicott professors and include computer science, scratch programing, technology courses, theater and — exclusively this year — a curriculum based around COVID-19.
“Most students don’t really start thinking of college until you enter high school, but this at least allows them to experience the STEM-based classes and courses, so they get to experience college on a firsthand basis,” Carritte said.
Students who participate in LLP are also eligible for a scholarship to Endicott College for undergraduate studies.
Usually, LLP students can apply to Endicott during their senior year of high school and go through a series of interviews to be chosen for LLP’s full-tuition, room-and-board scholarship to Endicott. The scholarship covers four years in an undergraduate program.
Last year’s participants, however, were the last group eligible for the full room-and-board scholarship. Due to a decrease in funding and changes brought on by the pandemic, students in this summer’s program and onward will still be eligible for a full-tuition scholarship — but their housing would not be covered.
Although this year brought some changes to LLP, the focus and goals for the program have remained the same.
“Exposing the students to how they can connect to everyday life in potential careers really helps them to start thinking about their futures,” Carritte said. “It helps create that pathway so that by the time they hit high school, they already sort of have that trajectory for themselves.”
Carritte said that after 10 successful years, she hopes to continue to see LLP positively impact students’ lives. She added that she loves hearing from former LLP participants about where they are and how the program has helped them in their careers.
