Dear ACCIS Members,

Registration is now open for two major ACCIS events this summer: our Third Annual Summer Institute in Atlanta (June 20-23) and our first ever Colloquium at Colby College (August 1-4).  We hope that many of you will choose to attend!  Please go to the Institute and Colloquium pages on the website to get the registration forms.

But while these two events are the most visible manifestations of ACCIS, we want to let you know what else is in the works.  We are doing our best to grow thoughtfully and effectively; we want the growth in our program to keep pace with the growth in our membership.

The Summer Institute remains our biggest and highest-profile event, and that will continue into 2011 and beyond.  For those looking ahead, please know that our Fourth Annual Summer Institute will be in Southern California in the early summer of 2011.  Tamar Adegbile of Harvard-Westlake will take the lead as Director of the Institute, and in the early stages she will have help from Maria Morales-Kent, Hector Martinez, and Rhody Davis.  We have a host site in mind, but we’ll hold off announcing specifics until we negotiate the details.  But that’s in the works!

We also hope to expand the Colloquium program next summer.  We are pretty confident that we will fill both the Institute and the Colloquium this summer, but we won’t know for sure until later this spring.  And we’re also aware that we might have even more demand than supply this year.  If that proves to be the case and we need to turn anyone away this summer, we’ll be sure to have more on offer next year.  We hope to have gatherings of about 25 counselors in a series of Colloquia on campuses around the country next summer; we want to offer multiple times and places.

A new initiative that may get more ACCIS members involved during the 2010-2011 school year is the ACCIS Counselor Tour program.  We all appreciate the value of getting onto college campuses, and colleges in turn appreciate having us as guests.  Currently ACCIS is in discussion with an assortment of Counselor Fly-In programs that various colleges run.  The concept is that we would look to build on the infrastructure of existing college tours and have ACCIS members travel together to campuses.  We hope that groups of colleges will extend invitations to their fly-in programs to the ACCIS membership.  And then once we are on their campuses, in addition to the usual close look at the college, we can have our own focused discussions on issues of particular interest to independent schools.  Our summer programs are great for those people who can attend in those months, but the counselor tour program would extend our offerings into the school year.  In the process we hope to serve our membership more fully and more boradly.  Stay tuned for more details – but early conversations suggest that this concept has a lot of appeal to host colleges!

In addition, planning continues for our first ACCIS Training Camp, scheduled for the summer of 2011.  This program for folks new to counseling in independent schools, whether they come from admissions on the college side or from teaching on the school side, will complement the efforts of our “Mentor” or “Buddy” system, in which we look to pair experienced counselors with others to serve as a resource throughout the school year.

Further, we have a team looking to coordinate our efforts to serve students less privileged than those we normally encounter in our schools.  The Community Outreach team is collecting materials and establishing guidelines for us to use if we want to support community organizations in our areas; we hope to help as many kids as possible make it on to college.

Finally, we’re pleased to announce the next iteration of the ACCIS College Office Review Program.  This has evolved from the previous “Audit/Review” concept, but the basic goal remains the same: ACCIS wants to provide a helpful service to schools and counselors that desire a full and informed review of the operation of the College Counseling Office.  We all know that scrutiny of a College Office can come from many directions, and that scrutiny may or may not come from people really familiar with the way that college admissions and college counseling work these days.  The latest planning contemplates at least three levels of possible review or consultation, but all will feature experienced ACCIS members providing a constructive review of a College Office.  Frankly, we think we can offer better feedback than many other outfits that claim to offer a similar service.  Currently we are looking to try a couple of “beta tests” or “pilot programs” to get this up and running, and we hope to roll this out formally within the next year.  Clearly this service is one that a school may use only on an occasional basis, but when it is valuable, we think it could be very, very valuable!

As always, we depend on ACCIS volunteers to make our projects work.  We have teams in place for most programs, but we also welcome more people who want to get involved.  Please look below for the current leadership of our latest programs.  We hope that you will be as excited as we are!

Burke Rogers
Director of Program for ACCIS
St. George’s School

Gavin Bradley
Director of 2010 Summer Institute - Atlanta
Pace Academy

Gretchen Bergill
Director of 2010 Colby Colloquium
Phillips Exeter Academy

Tamar Adegbile
Director of 2011 Summer Institute – Southern California
Harvard-Westlake School

Ari Worthman
Director of Mentor Program/Training Camp
Pine Crest School

Courtney Skerritt
Director of Community Outreach Program
Lawrence Academy

Betsy Dolan
Co-Director of Office Review Program
Phillips Exeter Academy
&
Roland Allen
Co-Director of Office Review Program
St. Margaret’s Episcopal School

Stuart Oremus
Director of Conference Presentations
Wellington School

The Counselor Tour Program actively seeks a volunteer to take the lead.  Contact Burke Rogers if you are interested in taking on this role.