Lauren Diehl

Project Portfolio Description

The Summer Academy to Inspire Learning (SAIL) is a pre-college program through the University of Oregon that inspires middle and high school students from low socioeconomic, first-generation and underrepresented backgrounds from across the state of Oregon to pursue, enroll, and succeed in higher education by providing first-hand experiences with faculty, volunteers, college student mentors, and university campus resources. The objective of the project is to help first-generation students know what to expect when going to college by creating interview-like videos of college students on various topics that make up the college experience. First-generation students may not have people to talk to that can speak on what college is like, so these videos will be very beneficial in explaining aspects of college a high school student may not have thought about before along with debunk some of the college stereotypes portrayed in film. By having the videos posted to YouTube, high school students will be able to learn about various college experiences from students currently in college, feel more confident about going to college knowing that there is a place for everyone, and have questions answered that they would not even know to ask. While this project is very sustainable for the future as the videos are timeless, SAIL can create more videos like these on more topics related to the college experience in the future. SAIL can have a whole section of their YouTube page and website dedicated to the college experience videos.