Barbara Hodne, Ph.D., Senior Teaching Specialist is actively involved with Entry Point Project, a new initiative of College in the Schools, a national program in which the University of Minnesota participates. This program allows high school students to receive high school and university credit concurrently for the classes they take.
For seven years, Hodne, whose background is in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and American Literature, has coached high school instructors as they teach a college-level writing class through the College in the Schools program. Recently, she has been involved in the initiative Entry Point Project, launched in fall 2009 to expand College in the Schools’ offerings to high school students in the academic middle, or in the 50%-80% range of their classes.

The idea for Entry Point began with Susan Henderson, director of the College in the Schools program at the University. She and Hodne had both noted the gap in college preparation classes provided to high school English language learners and other prospective first generation university students in the schools. The Entry Point Project courses now include Writing Studio, Speech, Physics by Inquiry, and Mathematical Modeling and Prediction.