STUDENT-CENTEREDSUPPORT
NCCU School of Law’s Summer Start Initiative: Five Weeks Impact Student Success
BY KIA H. VERNON, Assistant Dean of Academic Success & Associate Professor of Law, DOROTHY D. NACHMAN, Associate Professor of Law and DON CORBETT, Associate Professor of Law
“Increasing diversity in the legal profession is critical and voices from the highest echelon of the profession have joined in the chorus demanding greater diversity. Achieving this goal requires admitting more students of color, students from lower socioeconomic strata and students from other marginalized populations into law schools. Schools admitting such students must do so with the understanding that many will be unprepared or underprepared for the rigors of law school and must adopt targeted programs to acculturate students to the law school experience.”1
44
| NCCU SCHOOL OF LAW • OF COUNSEL MAGAZINE
Thus introduces the motivation for a group of NCCU School of Law faculty to create a new, innovative program to give incoming law students a jump start on their legal educations with the hopes of increasing their overall success in law school, on the bar exam and beyond. The NCCU School of Law is a school of opportunity whose mission is to reach law school candidates who may have historically been denied access to a legal education. Many of our students are first-generation college graduates and most do not come from families of lawyers. Our students come to law school eager to learn the law, serve their communities and act as role models for younger students in their families and hometowns. All the eagerness in the world, however, cannot alone prepare students for the rigors of law school: case briefing, Socrative inquiry, critical thinking, research, legal writing and professionalism. In many cases, their undergraduate educations have also not exposed them to the level of work, dedication and persistence needed
