Summer academies
Residential and day programs explore engineering, design, computing, health, education and entrepreneurship.
School partnerships
Faculty and student mentors provide classroom visits, laboratory experiences and project-based curriculum support.
Youth safety
Programs use trained staff, controlled pickup, emergency planning and university requirements for work involving minors.
Who comes, and from where
Most participants are from Porter, Cedar Bluff and Redgranite school districts, with residential sessions drawing students from across the Valley and the Cities. Faculty and paid student mentors lead the labs; every program clears the university’s requirements for work with minors.
The pipeline is the point
Precollege is one of the ways Porter recruits its own future students: a middle-schooler who builds a robot in Founders Hall in July is measurably more likely to apply four years later. Alumni of the summer academies get a fee waiver when they apply.
In and around Porter Falls
Porter Falls is a town of about 17,000 that has always shared its workforce with the university, and the outreach office is the front door for that exchange — summer academies for county middle-schoolers, contract training on the floor at Valley manufacturers, and the small-business clinic run out of Foundry Coworking downtown. Projects are scoped to the Valley first: Porter, Cedar Bluff and Redgranite before anywhere else.
The practical details
Age range: Grades 6–12. Summer academies: One and two-week sessions, June and July. Cost: Sliding scale; full aid for Porter County families. These specifics can shift from term to term, so confirm anything time-sensitive — a deadline, an appointment, an eligibility rule — before you count on it.
If you have a question
This is handled by Office of Outreach & Engagement (Millwright Hall, Room 120). Call (715) 555-0235 or email engage@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or use MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If another office turns out to own the question, they will pass it along rather than send you back to the beginning.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.