Indiana Early College Summit 2026

Join the presenters as they share a multi-layered approach to Indiana's College GO! Week, highlighting a month-long series of advisory lessons for students in grades 9–12. Discover strategies to foster staff-student relationships and build school-wide engagement through activities like "Find the Alum" and "A-Z College Terms" scavenger hunts. Develop and walk away with a theme for your school’s 2026 College GO! week programming.

Campus libraries are key elements of the collegiate experience, and high school libraries should be the same for Early College high schools. This session explores what role a school librarian can offer to the college-going culture of a dual credit program. College librarians provide a lot of resources for curriculum planning for instructors and research assistance to students. High school librarians can provide these same services and others. This session familiarizes dual credit staff with how school librarians can help support research and writing skills, online LMS and registration, curriculum and syllabi development, and connection with partner universities. The presenters will provide examples of student and teaching success from an endorsed, learning-focused Early College high school.

Early College coursework can provide students with several opportunities. However, for many of the overachieving and perfectionist students, it can also be a source of anxiety and stress. Many of these students are taking the same amount of college credits as a full time college student, but without the flexibility of a college schedule. The goal of a successful Early College course is to help the students achieve both academic and personal growth. Early College educators are in a unique position to mentor these students through some of their first academic struggles and challenges. The goal of this presentation is to recognize the differences between high school and college environments and identify the impact that those differences have on the students. Reflections on strategies, techniques, and methods to support student well-being will be presented.

After almost a decade of our Early College Academy, we wanted to do more. We wanted, more than anything, for students within the academy to feel they genuinely had autonomy in the visioning and decision-making. Enter the Early College Leadership Council. In it's second year, sophomores through seniors apply for these positions to be the face and voice of Penn's Early College, and they've already made it better than ever before, organizing everything from service projects to better social media presence, to middle school meet-ups with the incoming Early College class. Here from the sponsor and select students to find out how you could do the same - and it would be more than worth it!