As we’ve increasingly observed our students piling more courses—especially AP courses—onto their plates in what they perceive as the best route to distinguish themselves in the competitive college admissions sweepstakes, a group of Upper School teachers and I have been motivated to create alternative ways for students to pursue interesting, thoughtful, distinctive academic experiences at Menlo. Today, we are excited to unveil a curricular initiative we’ve been working on in the Upper School for the last two years: Menlo Interdisciplinary and Personalized Scholars Program (Menlo IP).

What is Menlo IP?

Menlo IP is designed to allow interested students to shape a deep and personalized approach to their studies, which we believe will help them to create more meaningful learning explorations and chart new paths of distinction. The program will start by offering three broad “Fields of Study,” specifically:

• Global Scholars – fosters global competency and dispositions of global engagement (Note: this program is already established and has served a dozen students well over the past few years. We’ve used it as a template in developing the other Fields of Study.)
• Citizenship & Leadership – helps students become problem solvers of local public policy challenges
• Arts & Letters – teaches students to interpret creative works, grounds them in the history, theory, and context of their chosen genre, and supports them in creating their own original work or producing original scholarly criticism

Students interested in pursuing one of these Fields of Study would select some courses from a curated list. The offerings provide an interdisciplinary approach to learning and the skill development to set them up to complete an immersive academic capstone project in their junior or senior year. We believe this multidisciplinary approach under a broad curricular theme, coupled with the customized and individualized course of study and deep-dive project, are among the most appealing features of the program. We’ve designed the program to be easily accessible to all students and flexible enough so that students can take the IP courses whether they wanted to commit to the capstone project experience, or not, or are still making up their minds.

Who is a Good Fit for Menlo IP?

Menlo IP is a completely opt-in program. We imagine that rising juniors who are intrigued by the program’s course choices and broader perspective and who think they might have a particular interest to pursue deeply would be intrigued to sample the IP classes. And by late junior year, those that know they want to take on a deep-dive project would make the commitment to the program. We think that students who find the prevalent arms-race thinking of signing up for classes largely because they carry the AP label—whether or not the subject matter offers a compelling interest—will be excited to think about the options for immersive and authentic study and distinction that Menlo IP provides.

While this program is completely optional, one worry we have is that already busy students will want to sign on to be an IP Scholar in addition to a full load of classes and extra-curricular activities. To guard against overload, scholars working on their capstones will enroll in the capstone class—which would help keep them on track and build a sense of a cohort for those executing their projects—as well as take a free period or an elective that does not generate homework; our expectations for the capstone projects are high, and students will need to make a significant time commitment to execute them. Additionally, students in the IP program can have certain graduation requirements waived to make space in their schedule for their interests and a sense of balance.

The Capstone Experience

The deep dive or capstone project will be a signature feature of IP. In the culminating project, students will produce a significant piece of original work, which could be scholarly research but could also be creative work or a documentary film or a testimony before a government agency or launching a nonprofit or something else of the student’s design. We are eager to play to the students’ interests.

Because the expectations around the final project will be high, the capstone classes in each Field of Study will be designated with honors status (carrying the same .3 GPA bump that AP classes). We will make a special notation for IP Scholars on transcripts. All IP Scholars will make an oral presentation of their work and “defense” of their thesis before a panel of teachers, an event that will be open to the public, which we imagine will be a wonderful showcase of the excellent work of the scholars.

It is important to note that the capstone experience is different from the senior projects that all 12th graders complete in their last month before graduation. We will keep the senior projects requirement—and it will shift to more of a service project expectation in the coming years—but the Menlo IP capstone experience is substantially more academic and a much greater investment of academic time.

The Timeline for Menlo IP

As our Global Scholars program is already up and running, all students are eligible to participate next year. We will be rolling out the other two Fields of Study for sophomores and freshmen to think about for their future. Each Field of Study highlights an important school value and point of emphasis—global awareness, a commitment to purposes larger than oneself, creativity—some of which may seem less prominent of late, as much of the program growth in recent years has been on the STEM side of the Upper School. We’d also like to see this program grow in the future with additional courses to the IP menu and new Fields of Study.

Promoting the Scholars

We will amply promote Menlo IP and the accomplishments of the scholars both within the school community and to colleges. For example, we imagine that The Roundtable, our publication of exemplary student work, would be devoted to highlighting the capstone work of the IP students; the summer grants we award via the HAND Foundation would be steered to Global IP Scholars; and we would feature IP Scholars speaking about their work at assemblies, in addition to other ways to shine the light on their work.

We’ve already begun to discuss this initiative with college admissions representatives, and they are excited. Colleges consistently tell us they are looking for students who are self directed, intellectually curious, connected to the world around them, and eager to make a deep commitment to an academic interest. We think IP Scholars will attract a lot of attention in the college admissions process. After all, students anywhere can sign up for AP courses, but not all students can create original work of scholarship, advocacy, or art; work closely with teachers to design their course of study and execute their individualized project; or take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Silicon Valley. We think Menlo IP will be quite distinctive.

In Closing

We view this initiative as an important step in providing students with meaningful opportunities to be knowledge creators and autonomous learners who can forge new ways to distinguish themselves in their studies during their high school years. While we’re still working to flesh out program details, we are pleased to offer this outline of the three Fields of Study as we currently envision them.

Hopefully, you share our enthusiasm about this initiative and are intrigued by the opportunities it provides for students to shape their final two years of high school. If you are, I encourage you to talk to your kids about the possibilities before them, about what they truly want to learn in high school, and where they might want to make a deep academic exploration.