Indiana Tech, StraighterLine collaborate to make sure students are prepared for the academic environment

Indiana Tech’s Office for Student Success and the online education company StraighterLine, Inc. have collaborated to create the Indiana Tech Readiness Academy, a program that will help adult and online students within the university’s College of Professional Studies (CPS) be more academically prepared for the college environment. The program launched July 26, the first day of Session One CPS classes.

The Indiana Tech Readiness Academy will provide two basic classes—in English and mathematics—to all new CPS students with less than 30 earned transfer credits who have not previously tested out of the courses. Students will have 12 weeks to complete both courses at no cost to them.

For Indiana Tech, the Readiness Academy is just a good investment in its students. Getting students up to speed with the fundamentals of English and mathematics is going to equip them with necessary foundational skills and help them approach future coursework with confidence.

“One of the main reasons that we wanted to add the Readiness Academy to our student success initiatives is the fact that we are continuing to see a greater growing population of underprepared students,” said Nicole Scott, Ed.D., associate vice president of student success at Indiana Tech.

“Much like we saw with the recession in 2008, the global pandemic is creating job losses and making people decide to go back to school. As a result, we have students that maybe never even thought of going to college or haven’t been to college in 15 or 20 years coming in and feeling a little overwhelmed,” she added. “At Indiana Tech, we’re giving students within that population a great advantage over a student who would not have a readiness program to help prepare them with those critical foundational skills like writing and math.”

The two preparatory courses are offered online through StraighterLine, which has been delivering low-cost affordable college classes online for the past 12 years. Over the past year, the company has sought to partner with schools to create specialized pathway programs, much like the Readiness Academy.

“We recently launched a program for Community College of Denver, the CCD Academy, for students who have stopped out,” said Burck Smith, StraighterLine co-founder and CEO. “They are directing those students towards the CCD Academy program as an inexpensive way to get them back in school and back on track.”

“I think this program has great potential and I think we’ll see significant increases in retention and student success relatively quickly,” Scott said. “It just makes sense—you’re filling in the gaps for those things that are going to be absolutely imperative for people to be successful in their first year of college and beyond.

Learn more about this new opportunity by contacting the Office of Student Success at studentsupport@indianatech.edu, or 800.288.1766, ext. 2209.