NCCU School of Law’s Summer Start Initiative: Five Weeks Impact Student Success - Professors Kia H. Vernon, Dorothy D. Nachman, & Donald W. Corbett

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 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

for success. Additionally, our students often find the transition to graduate level programming in a new city with attendant financial responsibilities an obstacle to their legal studies.

In order to combat these numerous challenges experienced by students, Summer Start Initiative (SSI) was created and offered for the first time in the summer of 2016. The Summer Start Initiative brings incoming 1L’s to campus for five weeks, beginning in late June, and allows them to begin their legal studies. The traditional fall semester of 14 weeks is expanded to 19 weeks, but no new coverage is added. The extra time allows for a slower rollout of the material and the introduction of additional skills-based workshops on exam taking, essay writing, time management and critical thinking. At the end of the five-week summer session, students take exams in all their courses and receive grades and feedback upon their return in mid-August to continue their matriculation with the other entering 1L’s. Students earn 4.5 course credits during the summer session consisting of Contracts, Civil Procedure, Property, Legal Writing and Critical Thinking, all of which are taught by full-time faculty members. When students return in August, Criminal Procedure is added. SSI participants are admitted, tuitionpaying students who have access to financial aid and other student resources on campus. The early commencement of their legal studies also allows students to move to the Durham area, find housing and other essentials and build community during the summer when their law school efforts are part-time instead of the traditional student who may move to Durham the first of August and begin a full course of legal studies two weeks later. By the spring semester of their 1L year, SSI students take the same course load as other 1Ls and end their 1L year with the same number of credit hours.

Initially, participation in Summer Start was purely voluntary, but over time some participants have been strongly encouraged or required to attend SSI if the admissions staff believes they would be more successful with an early start. The credentials of SSI students are substantially similar to those of August matriculants in terms of LSAT scores and undergraduate grade point average. Since the program was created five years ago, 149 students have started their legal studies through SSI. The typical SSI section has approximately 35 students enrolled. Four cohorts of our SSI students have also taken the bar exam. The 2020 SSI class was, for the first time, fully remote as a result of the pandemic.

The results of SSI are promising: both in terms of reducing 1L attrition at NCCU School of Law and bar passage rates. In some years, attrition among SSI participants is half of that of a traditional matriculating student. A more robust discussion of diversity in the legal profession, pre-matriculation programs at other schools, SSI and its results to date may be found in an upcoming publication in the Rutgers Race and Law Review in an article co-authored by Professors Kia H. Vernon, Dorothy D. Nachman and Don Corbett from which the introductory quotation was excerpted. They, who, in addition to Professor Susan Hauser, envisioned the program and have taught in the program along with Professors Shelly DeAdder, Krishnee Coley, Lisa Kamarchik, Lydia Lavelle, Ansel Brown, Todd Clark and Angela Gilmore. The faculty at NCCU School of Law has authorized the continuation of this program and, in addition to our long-established Performance-based Admissions Program, it enhances the opportunities for under-represented law students to attend law school and to do so successfully.

1Kia H. Vernon, Dorothy D. Nachman, and Don Corbett. Bridging the Gap: Developing Pedagogical Solutions for Underrepresented Law Students, Rutgers Race & L. Rev. (Fall, 2020).

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