The student-powered TA or cohort model in college is an integral part of many STEM departments. It builds community, invests all constituents in department's cohesiveness and success, and creates natural spaces for group work.

However, we often hear from students, largely from traditionally under-represented groups, who drop classes early in the semester, or those who withdraw from participation, because they just did not feel like they belonged at their TA sessions. The stories are remarkably similar across classes, and can be catalyzed by good intentions and enthusiastic peers.

Our targeted multi-day TA training workshops help students build collaborative spaces and become leaders, allies, & advocates in the learning process. We focus on how to treat the student as a whole person, how to model problem solving, how to overcome setbacks and deal with frustrations, and how to create buy-in from diverse groups.

The workshops are run virtually. They can include students from the same department, multiple departments in the same school, or multiple schools. We focus on generating practical approaches that reflect the group's goals and values, and that the TAs can take back to their cohorts.

The semester/trimester structure of most colleges is convenient, even necessary, but it offers a one-size solution to students from a wide range of backgrounds, paths, and circumstances.

There are parallel opportunities for orienting students towards developing useful & productive academic habits, meeting them where they are, and helping them become more involved academic citizens invested in their own as well as their peers' success.

During the first week of their first college semester, incoming students have to pick the right classes, form learning communities, get used to the accelerated pace and rigor of college academics, find out which resources they are expected to use, organize schedules, meet faculty... By the end of that first semester, they will have gathered the information and skills needed to have been ready four months earlier. Our 4-6 week online summer program offers a time machine: an opportunity for a low-stakes but rigorous academic dry run, information from the college itself instead of inline resources, a harnessing of the nervous energy that accumulates between acceptance and matriculation, all customized to your institution's details.

The first year of college can be as paradigm-altering as it is disorienting. Plans and timelines often change, students get a better sense of their true passions, their strengths, and what they need to (re)learn in order to be better positioned to start their major coursework. Students who identify these needs often fulfill them at other institutions' summer programs (assuming they have the resources); those who don't (or those who don't) fall behind and become part of the current demographic patterns. We can help you build (or rethink) a pre-sophomore summer program for your institution that addresses your students and curriculum's specific needs for a better-educated, more involved citizenry.

Our programs can be operated at the scale of the student population with major advantages over in-person analogues. While the cost per student is significantly lower, the main savings happen on the human front: faculty, administration, residence halls, and custodial staff can be better allocated. In-person programs also restrict their audience to a specific time and place, and require that students have the full time and resources to dedicate to another school term when they might need to take care of their family or work a job or live in a different location. Online academic programs offer flexibility in cost, time, and scale, and can even be a source of income when they are made available to students from other institutions.

In partnership with faculty, students, and the administration, and by drawing on our track record of successful and purposeful academic programs, we help Mathematics and Statistics departments rethink individual courses, majors and minors, and paths through the curriculum.

It is often difficult for the faculty to find the time and resources to take a step back, and to consider whether the changing student body, new pedagogies, and advances in new fields warrant an overhaul or a tweaking of their whole curriculum or their individual courses.

Through an extensive interview process, we use feedback from students, faculty, and the institution to produce a customized, implementable, collaborative curriculum that reflects and answers the department's values and priorities.

Drawing on our extensive, decades-long experience with a wide range of innovative projects (including peer mentoring programs, learning communities, and outreach initiatives), and using our collaborative planning process, we guide faculty and students to create and maintain community-building structures.

For student-centered projects, we believe in changing the narrative focus from "individual weakness" to the functional importance of collaboration, academic rigor, and the creation of community.

For faculty-centered processes, including hiring, mentoring, and other program-review matters, our workshops aim to identify and build concensus among the department members, and implement measures that are both sustainable and help bring about the department's shared vision.