SUMTER, S.C. — The University of South Carolina at Sumter is hosting a free two-week program called Knowledge For College.
The concept came from Dr. James Munford, who wants to help motivate high school students.
The first week, the program hosted 16 girls. This week is hosting 18 boys from five different high schools across Sumter, Lee and Clarendon counties.
Munford explained how the program works.
"I contact the school district, and they provide students for the program, and once they select them, the students are involved in activities such as team building, decision making, test-taking strategies, college preparation, financial aid planning, and so we kinda work with them to make them better at what they do."
Munford's goal is to help expose the students to different college studies and career paths. "We've been working with USC Sumter, where they've been conducting forensic experiments, where they extract their own DNA, have robotics experiments, E Games sports lab, earlier today we went over to Central Carolina to the Mechatronics labs."
Students like Arnez Dasby, who is attending the event, said the experience was worthwhile. "I actually now know I want to be a design engineer, I want to be able to create things and use my artistic talents to be able to make things for people to use."
As the program is wrapping up this week the students will receive a certificate of completion on Friday, then will come together for a college tour on Monday.
"We're headed up to Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, and then we're coming back home it gets the students out of the Sumter, Clarendon, and Lee County areas to see something most of our students have never seen and to hopefully broaden their horizons.
As the program is wrapping up Friday they will be working towards creating a Fall Session, also for those wanting to apply to attend click here.