2026 Early College Summit

Early Colleges offer both a powerful opportunity and a complex challenge: ensuring every student is truly known, supported, and monitored across four years and multiple college pathways. At Challenger, we meet this challenge through a cohesive support system that intentionally aligns our Connections seminar course, MTSS, and Personal Adult Advocate (PAA) model. Connections is a credit-bearing course taken every semester, designed with a tiered curriculum that builds college-ready and life-ready skills while monitoring academic and social-emotional growth. Each student is paired with a Personal Adult Advocate from before ninth grade through graduation, creating continuity, mentorship, and proactive intervention. This session explores how this integrated model strengthens equity, reduces fragmentation, and ensures no student slips through the cracks.

Early college programs expand access to higher education, but what happens after students graduate or go to a higher education institution? This interactive session invites educators and leaders to explore the academic, social, and institutional challenges early college graduates encounter during the transition to four-year institutions and career pathways. Through collaborative mapping, case analysis, and design-thinking activities, participants will identify gaps in current support structures and develop actionable strategies to strengthen postsecondary persistence. Attendees will leave with practical tools and a concrete next step to ensure early college success extends beyond graduation and truly prepares students to be future-ready.

The power of any network lies in building strong connections among members. During this role-alike networking session, join peers and colleagues to connect around role-alike discussion of topics important to your work in the early college ecosystem through a facilitated networking conversation.

Do you work with students who are driven to do good things in the world, help people, and who want to be guided in their work by a sense of passion? They could be a good fit for NC's newly-launched NC Public Service Leadership Program (PSLP). In this session, learners will gain a robust knowledge about NC’s Public Service Leadership Program’s pre-BSW certificate, including its origins, its curriculum, its benefits for early college students, how to connect interested students to the program, and how interested early college staff and leaders can get involved with the program’s development and stewardship.

This session introduces P.A.C.K. Skills—Presence, Academics, Conduct, and Knowledge, a college-readiness framework developed by New Heights Charter School of Brockton (NHCSB) and used as a college-readiness measure to guide student preparation for early college pathways. Participants will explore how everyday high school choices directly impact high school diploma completion and future college outcomes.

High school can be stressful—academics, activities, relationships, and future plans can all feel overwhelming at times. A Health & Wellness Day provides a proactive, preventive approach to supporting the whole student—addressing mental, emotional, and physical health as essential components of academic success.This session explores the rationale behind implementing a Health & Wellness Day for your school and leave with a clearer understanding of why prioritizing student wellness is not an “extra,” but a necessary investment in student success.