Louisiana Tech University offers Explorer Clubs positively Impacting the Academic, Personal/Social, and Career Development of LA GEAR UP Students Through Effective Guidance Counseling and  Continued Institutionalization of the Explore Clubs Concept as a professional development project for guidance counselors in LA GEAR UP schools.

Mr. Glenn Beer will be the Project Director with Drs. Mary Livingston, Jerry Tobacyk, and Mark Miller serving as Co-Directors.

The mission of the Explorer Club project is, ultimately, to promote the postsecondary educational aspirations of the students in LA GEAR UP schools and to assist these students in making a successful transition to post secondary education. This project seeks to accomplish that mission by providing intensive professional development for the guidance counselors in those schools that is designed to strengthen the competencies necessary to guide and support students in their educational/vocational decision-making processes.

The strategic plan of this project calls for the institutionalization and integration in participating schools of the Explorer Clubs which will engage in activities that that positively impact three spheres of student activity: academic development, personal/social development, and career development, and provide continued reinforcement of gains many of these students have made during the summer learning camps. Explorers Clubs were established in all 43 of the LA GEAR UP schools during the first year of this project.

 A primary focus for this year will be to ensure that the clubs are actively engaged at the school level and that the clubs are becoming an integral component of the school culture. A major long-term goal of the Explorer Clubs is to provide a bridge facilitating students’ transition from high school to college, and, to a lesser extent, the critical transition from middle school to high school. High school guidance counselors will be teamed with feeder school counselors throughout the project to promote continuing collaboration and communication that will support those bridges. Every aspect of the proposed project is organized around the connecting themes noted in the RFP. This mission will be accomplished through the following program goals:

1)      Provide participants with intensive professional development providing skills, knowledge and competencies to aid in impacting student academic, personal/social, and vocational development. The conceptual framework for the professional development will emphasize the four major components of a school counseling system; Guidance Curriculum, Individual Planning, Responsive Services via Intervention, and System Support. In addition, a particular emphasis will be placed on the institutionalization of EPAS and the Secondary to Postsecondary Education Portal in LA GEAR UP schools;

2)      Establish Explorer Clubs in each of the participating middle and high schools in collaboration with the Louisiana Tech University/LA GEAR UP Explorers Camp Project and the State Wide Management Project. The clubs will provide a vehicle for students to practice and develop the skills they learn through the camps while, at the same time, provide counselors with a forum to implement the strategies they acquire through this project. The Explorer Clubs will also increase parental involvement as club members will be responsible for organizing/hosting college connection nights, and other workshops/events that support the guidance and counseling objectives.

3)      Project participants will learn to interpret data from numerous sources (LEAP, EPAS, SDS, MBTI, MMTIC, etc.) to develop a more complete assessment of student needs and to impact academic, personal/social, and career development of students. A special emphasis will be placed on providing training necessary to ensure the most effective utilization of EPAS data at the school level to aid in the academic and career planning for individual students through the Education Portal.

4)      Participants will attend a two-day Explorer Club state conference to be held in the spring 2006. One purpose of this conference will be to allow student officers of the Explorer Clubs, as emerging student leaders, to present the activities/projects completed at their school. This serves the additional goal of demonstrating the results of the action plans developed by project participants.

5)      Participants will work with project staff in conducting continuing needs assessments in an effort to inform and guide the ongoing revision of this project and the development of future professional development projects.