An Eye-opening Summer Experience
By Jennifer Warfel Juszkiewicz ’09 M.A., NDAA Staff Writer

Prospective students often say they fall in love with Notre Dame at first sight. But for some students it isn’t a campus tour that draws them in, it’s the opportunity to participate in the University’s Summer Scholars program, a two-week intensive course for rising high school seniors. This is precisely the experience that a group of Notre Dame alumni in Pennsylvania—with assistance from a group called the Connelly Foundation—are making possible for students in Philadelphia.

The Connelly Foundation, a Philadelphia-based community foundation begun by local entrepreneur John Connelly, supports local non-profit organizations in its metropolitan and surrounding area. Part of its mission includes funding the Neumann Scholars program, a nationally recognized and highly competitive scholarship program that affords deserving students four years of tuition at a local parochial high school.

Nearly 700 students meet the high academic qualifications (learn more about the qualifications on the Connelly Foundation website).  Since the program’s inception in 1995, 495 students have graduated high school as Neumann Scholars.

ND alum Jerry O’Grady ’63 was familiar with the Neumann Scholars Program and the Connelly Foundation. A friend of the Connelly Foundation’s president, Josephine Mandeville, he was disappointed to learn that, even though there were between 150-200 Neumann Scholars by 2003, only two of them had chosen to attend Notre Dame after graduation. “It was truly unfortunate since these were some of the best and brightest students in Philadelphia,” O’Grady says.

O’Grady and his classmate, Jim Nolen ’63, sought to make Notre Dame more accessible to the students, who often worried that the University was too far from home to be an option. O’Grady and Nolen convinced other alumni in the Philadelphia area to help sponsor Neumann Scholars to participate in ND’s Summer Scholar program.

Summer Scholars is a unique opportunity for high school students to explore one of Notre Dame’s 14 fields of study for two weeks, while having the concurrent experience of being a Notre Dame student. Participating students live in residence halls, engage in rigorous classes in their chosen topic, partake in service and religious opportunities, and get the chance to explore nearly all the aspects of the campus. (Learn more about the Notre Dame Summer Scholars program).

In the first year, the Philadelphia alumni group was able to send three students to the Summer Scholars experience, but O’Grady says the program has steadily grown. It had 22 applications this year, and nine were accepted. Thus far, O’Grady and the alumni group have sponsored 49 Neumann Scholars at the Summer Scholar program and 15 have enrolled for regular admission to Notre Dame after high school graduation.

Nolen and O’Grady lists their goals for the sponsorship program as three-fold: to encourage bright students to attend Notre Dame, to have those returning from the summer program spread their enthusiasm for the University to their classmates, and to give students from parochial schools in Philadelphia an additional asset on their transcript when they apply to college.

He is proud of the fact that the Summer Scholars experience has convinced more than a dozen Neumann Scholars to attend Notre Dame since the program’s inception. According to participant Christina Kuklinski ’12, spending two weeks on campus—feeling like a real student—was an invaluable experience. “After that, no other college I visited seemed quite right,” she says.

As Stephen Meehan ’10, explains, “Notre Dame was not even on my list of possible schools until the opportunity for Summer Scholars came along. Being a Neumann Scholar literally changed the course of my life.”

For more information on the Neumann Scholars and the joint program with the ND Summer Scholars program, visit the website, send an e-mail, or call Josephine C. Mandeville, Connelly Foundation president, at 610-834-3222.