Indiana State University

Indiana State University aims to help unlock accessibility to higher education by offering high school students micro-scholarships that reward taking small steps to college readiness.
​
Earn an A in biology or another core course? That’s worth $100.

Perfect attendance during the school year? Score another $100.

Passionate about community service? Earn $10 an hour toward your tuition bill.

All of these steps — and many more — are small, achievable goals with measurable results that will help them be better students when they start college. 

“We believe offering small financial rewards that can be accumulated over four years of high school will serve to encourage and incentivize more high school students who might otherwise not be able to attend college,” said John Beacon, vice president for Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications. “Participating students can actually watch their cumulative total of college scholarships grow as they progress toward high school graduation.”

The program is administered by Raise.Me, which was launched with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Facebook.

Any U.S. high school student with an unweighted 3.00 GPA is eligible to create a profile at www.raise.me.

The maximum award a student can accumulate over four years of high school is $11,200, which is disbursed over four years of college. To keep scholarships once enrolled, students must maintain good academic standing while completing 30 credit hours each academic year.

Raise.me is a social enterprise focused on expanding access to higher education, especially among low-income and first-generation students. Raise.me was developed in response to the fact most scholarships and grants today are awarded by colleges at the very end of high school — after a student has already done well or not, applied to a college or not and been accepted or not — which is often too late to impact a student’s college ambitions or choices. 

For more information, including how to sign up, go to www.indstate.edu/raiseme.

Indiana State University

Indiana State University’s Community School of the Arts’ summer program has classes for all ages taught by qualified instructors in all areas of the arts — all summer long.

Programs offered include preschoolers, youngsters, teens and adults and feature both single-day and overnight camps.

School of the Arts instructor Suzanne Finn, who has been with the organization for about four years, is a ceramics instructor for summer camp and teaches “Squiggles and Doodles and Messy Hands.”

“I come up with creative lesson plans and ways in which to make my classes unique,” said Finn, who earned her a degree in art education in 2013.

While she was a stay-at-home mom, Finn said she noticed there were not any visual art programs for preschoolers, so she and the School of the Arts worked together to create one.

“The class exposes children to various mediums, from paint to clay to soft sculpture. The reason I think children this age should take this camp is that preschool age and younger is the perfect age to experiment with visual arts,” Finn said. “This leads the children to explore the world around them too.”

Aside from “Squiggles and Doodles and Messy Hands,” the School of the Arts also offers another class for children ages 4 and younger called “Tiny Tunes.”

“It’s also fun to squish clay! Children have lots of success with ceramics, and this will encourage more exploration into the arts,” Finn said.