The Summer Hilltop Immersion Program

Through the diligent work of scores of Georgetown faculty, academic staff, student affairs staff, facilities staff, and workers in our cafeteria, last week saw hundreds of undergraduate students arrive on the Hilltop campus.

Vice Provost Rohan Williamson led the design of the Summer Hilltop Immersion Program (SHIP), to serve students new to Georgetown in fall, 2020, who had never experienced the campus as students. Instead, like most all Georgetown students this academic year, they participated in all their courses remotely. The majority of these students are now rising sophomores of the Class of 2024; others are transfer students into Georgetown. I wrote earlier about the program, in its planning stages, here.

We kicked off this unique session, which runs about one month, with a twilight gathering on Cooper field. The students were in the stands and President DeGioia, Vice Provost Williamson, GUSA President Nile Blass, and I welcomed the students to their new home. It was heartwarming and uplifting. There was applause and shoutouts. It was so obvious that all were happy to be on campus.

In my walks around campus since then, I’ve encountered small clusters of students, working at tables or eating a meal together outside. When I ask how things are going, there is no hint of concerns. Without prompting, they cite the strength of the academics and mention how nice it is to be in a classroom with face-to-face instruction and discussion. They report being happy with the residence halls (which were heavily renovated during the pandemic). No complaints about the food.

The courses they are taking were chosen to be those commonly popular for first-year and second-year students. They include an oversampling of core curriculum courses. Indeed, some Government and History courses were heavily oversubscribed, requiring the opening of new sections. The courses with the largest enrollments, for example, are a Government class on Comparative Political Systems, a Business class on Managerial Accounting, a Theology class on the Jesuits: Mission and Values.

In addition, there are over twenty new 1-credit courses designed especially for SHIP. They have titles like Black Georgetown Rediscovered; Life on The Anacostia River; Washington, DC: Global City; Dialogue and Difference; Experiencing American Art, Global Business Knowledge; Designing Your Georgetown. Many have content that introduce the student to the city, the university, or socialize them to being a part of Georgetown intellectual life. Others are introductions to fields and ways of thinking that they can exploit in their later coursework or cocurricular activities. These special 1-credit courses were popular among SHIP students.

In a real way SHIP is a trial run of many features of the fall design of teaching and residence among undergraduates. Our fall plan is based on full residential occupancy (around 5,100), fully vaccinated students, and largely in-person learning. Despite no requirement for vaccination for the summer, the SHIP students arrived on campus with very high vaccination rates. Those not vaccinated were offered free vaccination on campus. Thus far the testing regimen is showing very, very low positivity rates, much lower than the Spring experience. It’s a hopeful sign of the strong effects of vaccination on control of infection.

When you have a chance, walk across campus; listen to the voices of students. You can see a glimpse of the energy that students bring to a set of buildings that we call a university campus. I am more and more hopeful that much of the psychological distress of isolation and fatigue from Zoom might be ameliorated with being part of that energy.