Introduction to the Analysis of Public Policy was one of Lauren Ottaviano’s favorite college classes. But while most students take that class in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as Syracuse University freshmen, Ottaviano took it in the comfort of her hometown – right outside of Albany – as a high school senior at Shenendehowa High School through SU Project Advance.

‘Taking PAF in high school was by far one the best decisions I have ever made,’ said Ottaviano, a freshman earth science and policy studies major, in an e-mail.

SUPA is an enrollment program that offers classes for SU credit in high schools and costs $110 to participate. In many high schools, university-specific credit programs like SUPA are beginning to compete in popularity with other college preparation classes like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate.

There are 35 SU classes available through SUPA, and enrollment has doubled in the past decade. There were about 3,500 more enrollments for the 2008 school year than in 2007, said Jerry Edmonds, director of SUPA.

The credit can also be applied at universities other than SU and has a 90 percent recognition rate at other schools, Edmonds said. If students do not receive credit for a class, they are usually placed higher in a sequence or place out of a class.

There are numerous factors for the increased enrollment, including more recognition at the national level and a long track record of preparing students for college. Many of the students that participated in SUPA are now high school teachers and administrators who encourage their schools to use the program, Edmonds said.

SUPA began in 1972 with six area high schools. It is now offered in 124 high schools in five different states. There are more than 750 high school teachers that participate and about 13,500 students enrolled.

Individual schools offer anywhere from one to nine SU classes. The average number offered at schools is two or three, Edmonds said.

Most of the classes offered come from the College of Arts and Sciences, but there are also classes from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and the School of Education.

‘We’re not offering the program solely for the credits,’ Edmonds said. ‘We focus on student readiness and being successful in the first year.’

The biggest competitors for SUPA are AP courses and other schools’ concurrent enrollment programs, Edmonds said.

‘Because they’re our major competition, there are instances where they push us out and we’ll push them out,’ Edmonds said. ‘It’s part of the marketplace where we’re competing with each other.’

Don Dutkowsky, an economics professor at SU who is involved in a study comparing the effectiveness of SUPA and AP, said he has seen the numbers go up for both programs at SU. He attributes the increase with the lower cost of the college credits and helpfulness in college preparation.

The increase is not isolated to Syracuse but is a national trend, he said.

‘College is viewed more and more as a necessity, but it’s also getting more expensive,’ Dutkowsky said. ‘The thought is there that these courses better prepare students for college, and the better the student does in college, the better the investment for students and parents.’

At SU, about 5 percent of students receive SUPA credit, and the percentage of students with AP credit is a lot higher, Dutkowsky said.

‘AP is just more popular,’ Dutkowsky said. ‘It’s a national program, is better known and (it) attracts students from all 50 states.’

Ottaviano, the freshman earth science and policy studies major, said she saw a difference between the AP and SUPA classes she took in high school. She said she preferred the real-world experience aspect of the SUPA courses to the structure of AP classes that focus on testing.

‘The class overall helped me to do things necessary in the real world, things that AP classes did not teach,’ she said. ‘For me at least, I learned more with my SUPA courses than I did with AP. The advantages with the SUPA classes were that they were designed by professors at SU who really know how to teach their specific subject.’

krkoerti@syr.edu

Published on February 10, 2010 at 12:00 pm