Brag-Fall2020

By Sarah Greenwood
BA ‘08
Helping first-year
COVID
students in the age of
The transition from high school to university is never easy. The University of
Regina is a big place, the classes are harder, and students have to take a lot
of responsibility for their own learning. Even before COVID-19 hit, Campion
had already started planning a new first-year transition program for Fall 2020.
When classes turned virtual, we knew we needed to do even more and differently
than we had originally planned.
Campion Connect
For those who were really motivated to work toward a smooth transition between high
school and university, Campion partnered with Luther College to offer the new Connect
program. It was a six-week summer program for developed for incoming first-year students
to help them prepare for the fall term.
The centerpiece of the Connect program was the opportunity to take a non-credit virtual class
in one of two streams: literacy or numeracy. In the literacy stream, they beefed up their skills
in critical reading and writing and in the numeracy stream, they got ready to take a first-year
calculus course. The teacher for the literacy stream was Leah Quick, known around Campion for
her many years of involvement with the Kovacs exchange program for Hungarian students. Her
colleague at Luther College High School, Dr. Gregory Akulov, taught the numeracy stream. Both
Leah and Gregory were enthusiastic and managed to engage the students, which quickly made
the two of them a highlight of the program.
For the Campion students who participated in Connect, they were also given the opportunity to
meet with experienced senior student mentors, who could give them some perspective on how
university looks from a students’ point of view. Even though the meetings took place over Zoom,
they still gave students a chance to get to know some friendly faces on campus.
Fall 2020 Page 26