Help create the logo and website to help the 34 million college drop-outs graduate.

Emerson Academy

Yes, but I'm deciding between two: "Rise Up" and "Advance Confidently"

Emerson Academy provides training, education and support services to help working students complete a bachelor’s degree quickly and economically. We are focused on working with students who have stopped their studies before graduating. We guide and support students to use three little-known tools: 1) tests that, if passed, will give students credits at most colleges, 2) an online service that quickly prepares students to pass the tests and 3) three accredited colleges that will accept an unusually high number of credits from these tests. These tools can help average students get a bachelor’s degree, while working full-time, for less than $180 per month over 4 years, with no college debt. Overall, Emerson Academy is designed to save students 2400 hours of study time, over $100,000 in tuition and debt repayments and give students an extra $1,000,000 in lifetime earnings.

We hold meetings every other week, led by trained advisers, to guide students through using the three tools. These meetings will help students work together with advisers to understand specific concepts that students are struggling with and to solve common problems, such as how best to study, how to manage time, how to manage finances and how to balance work, school and family responsibilities.

Emerson Academy is a not-for-profit institution headquartered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is inspired by the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of America’s greatest thinkers and writers whose work was read by Abraham Lincoln and millions of others in the mid-1800’s. Emerson believed strongly that people needed to live a life true to what they believed, to do what they feared the most and to always get back up after being knocked down. Some of his most famous sayings are:

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

We are just in the beginning stages of this project, so at this point we are using the website to get students to attend our workshop, held in Lancaster PA (currently at the Manheim Township Public Library). We will want to use the content to also set up a facebook page, which I will set up, as a way for people to share it more easily with others. I will want to post videos to the website, shot with my iphone and hosted on youtube, to explain the steps involved in the process for those who cannot attend the workshops. I am meeting with an attorney this friday (August 18) to sign the papers establishing the non-profit. The content on this website will be similar to the first website I created to hold this information (http://www.Flashgrad.com). It includes a few short videos which would be useful to review (they are short) to get a sense of what I'm working on. This project essentially migrates Flashgrad to another URL and name that is more consistent with what it should represent in the mind of the student. Working with 99 designs will help the service to appear more professional and in keeping with a traditional education-based offering (e.g., Khan Academy or other tool). We will not, however, provide online course content as Khan Academy does or Udacity, Edx, etc. Any content we will provide will be focused on enhancing the use of the three existing tools - described above- and possibly for study skills or content that a college adviser would provide (e.g., creating a degree completion plan laying out which courses will be taken when). I am open to any and all suggestions, including re-naming, re-branding, whatever. I am not an expert in education, I am a medical doctor, so I have no preconceived notions of what's needed. Also, at the present time, we do not have a physical building that would be nice to include in a photograph.

It should convey that this is possible, using pictures of finish lines, cap and gowns, but should be professional looking, which is why I specifically called it an academy. I’m a fan of keeping things very simple and focusing people in learning more from short videos. Straighterline, for example, is text heavy and video is the preferred medium. College seems complicated, so this needs to convey respectability BUT with simplicity.

An explanation of the three tools, an explanation of the service we provide (in-person), an explanation of the college drop-out crisis (to convince students that they are not alone nor is it entirely their fault), some background information about me, a list of the courses available through the two testing services. The explanations would be in brief text but mainly point to short videos which I would make. Because this service is new, it will take a bit of explaining.