IMC@SLC

IMC@SLC (Integrated Marketing Communications at St. Lawrence College) is a focus program in the Limestone District School Board. Students in this focus program come to St. Lawrence College and, with their classroom as a MacLab room, get team-taught by both college professors and a high school teacher to gain 4 high school credits (one is a co-op) at the same time as gaining 3 college credits. Students in this course take part in a co-op the entire month of May where they go to a business in the community and become their official marketing person during that month.

So far I am really enjoying this course. Learning about marketing is much more interesting than I thought it would, and may actually use this in the future as a job to make money – not necessarily a career, though.

As far as the experience in this course for getting to know how college is; I think that is by far the most valuable lessons we can learn here.  Being in the actual college, being taught by real professors, and having the college expectations applied to your work, deadlines, etc, is a great way to get prepared for college. And the best part, I think, about it, is that because students ARE technically still high school students while in this course (but also officially part-time students at SLC and have full access to everything but the gym membership) if you have extreme issues with work, or meeting deadlines; their is a high school teacher to buffer a little bit and help mediate any issues you may have and advocate for you. So you are not completely overwhelmed by being thrown into college because you do not have to move from classroom to classroom and get lost, or have all the expectations with absolutely no room to move those; you get to “safely” have a backup, but are still being “baptized by fire”.

I think IMC@SLC should almost be a mandatory part of high school, or a course similar to it should be made; because high school just does NOT prepare students enough for post secondary.