Dear SHECP Community,
We are entering the final week of the summer internship, and I think it is accurate to say we have learned nearly as much as the students have!
As you’ve likely anticipated, everything about this summer has looked different, and the Closing Conference is no exception. I encourage you to review the schedule to see what we have designed for this unique summer. We DO want you to attend! Our summer scholar, Dr. Scott W. Allard, will be providing our final keynote address, and there will be two “main room” sessions where staff/faculty/friends will be able to catch up on how things went and what we’ve learned as we look ahead. You will need to register and that link is at the top of the Conference schedule or you can access it here. Below are some brief notes on what to expect during this year’s event on Friday, July 31.
We will not be hosting live intern presentations during the conference as we have in previous years. The time and logistical needs of having each student present in a virtual format were not practical. Instead, as you will see in the guidelines I have attached, the students have been placed in research groups and will be posting their final presentations on Flipgrid, prior to the conference. These videos can be easily shared to our wider community to ensure that you’re able to review what they did this summer, so no worries on that end.
If you are an internship director/academic director, you WILL have time with your interns at the beginning of the conference, per usual, to head over to a Zoom breakout room and catch up with them. So please note that session in the schedule. We will send you off, after some opening remarks, and bring you back into the main room in time for Dr. Allard’s presentation.
In order to preserve the sanctity of student reflection after such a challenging summer, we are making Breakout Sessions #2 and #3 exclusive to the interns and – for Breakout #3 – practitioners. The students have been meeting weekly with their cohort groups and mentors and doing a lot of work, so we want to give them some space to begin to make sense of their summer without framing their time together too intentionally.
We do want you to join us! The good news is that we (faculty/staff/friends) will be meeting in our main room, doing some catching up of our own, while the interns are in their breakout rooms. Several of our SHECP mentors will be hosting a conversation on what we did this summer, what worked, and what they learned. This is a great space for community reflection about SHECP’s future direction. We hope you will sit in, listen, and offer some reflections of your own.
I cannot express to you how gratifying it has been to share this extraordinary summer with so many SHECP colleagues and alumni who have faithfully mentored, supported, and learned from your students. I hope you will be able to join us on July 31 to learn more and to hear our final keynote.
Best wishes with hopes to see you soon,
Stephanie R. Rolph, PhD, Academic Director – SHECP
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