Perkiomen’s cutting-edge Institutes truly embody the school’s motto Solvitur Vivendo: It is solved by living. Students explore their passions by digging into projects, engaging with real-world problems, and pushing through unforeseen barriers as they investigate future career paths.
Starting in middle school and gaining momentum in upper school, the Institutes at Perkiomen encourage students to generate novel ideas based on their interests and then put them into action. Through introductory coursework, cross-listed classes, field trips, and a culminating capstone project, students weave together knowledge and practice as they confidently discover new things. Working with on-campus mentors and real-world professionals, students are guided through their experiences but have ultimate agency over the process. The Institute diploma distinction option gives participants a potential differentiation in the college admissions process.
Entrepreneur Institute
DIRECTOR: ERIC FREY
Aspiring innovators can become actual innovators in the Entrepreneur Institute. With the guidance and support of faculty and successful entrepreneurs, students are empowered to create value for a better world. As they develop a product, service, and/or business, students learn the necessary risks and failures that line the path to success as they build, evaluate, and adjust to find what suits them best.
Medical Institute
DIRECTOR: JEFFREY RODGERS
Middle and high school students are uncovering who they want to be and what they want to do. The Medical Institute provides them with a place to experience the medical field from a variety of perspectives and dynamic intersections, depending on their interests. The Institute has a spectrum of possibilities from clinical procedures to research, from physiology to psychology, and the learning environment extends beyond the classroom into the hospitals and laboratories of our industry partners.
Artificial Intelligence Institute
DIRECTOR: ALLISON RODGERS
The Artificial Intelligence Institute is full of experiences and projects that spark students’ natural curiosities and allow them to tinker, investigate, and invest in ideas that will prepare them for careers that have not yet been invented. As students explore and interact with emerging technologies, they learn how technology can enhance the future while also considering its ethical implications.
Design Institute
DIRECTOR: LOUISY ROEST
In the broadest sense, design is what moves the world forward. The term “design thinking,” as it has come to be taught at top institutions, describes deliberate and user-focused strategies to solve real-world problems. The Design Institute will guide students in developing organizational and creative skillsets that can be employed anywhere, through a methodology often summarized as empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement. Design is the foundation for progress across all sectors of the economy. Advances in science, art, society, humanity, don’t just happen, they happen by design.
