Summer Academy at Jefferson
Jefferson Career Discovery
Explore career opportunities this summer with our pre-college experiences at Jefferson. Our Summer Academy programs offer hands-on courses taught by faculty and experts in the industry, with opportunities to connect with our current students and alumni.
Summer Academy Programs
- Architecture & Design Summer Academy - Architecture & Design Summer Academy is an immersive pre-college program for high school students exploring careers in the built environment and creative professions. Students begin with a virtual Career Discovery Week before diving into hands-on studio experiences on Jefferson’s East Falls campus, choosing from architecture or design-focused tracks. Working alongside faculty, industry professionals and current students, participants develop real projects, build portfolio-ready work and gain a clear understanding of design education and career pathways.
- Fashion & Textile Summer Academy - Explore the design process from concept research to designing a collection. Through this program, you will complete a week-long project involving aspects of textile design, fashion design and fashion merchandising. You will engage with the many different facets of fashion and be introduced to the collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach throughout fashion and textile industries. Members of the Thomas Jefferson University faculty will guide students through an immersive, career-focused curriculum that prepares students to contribute to aspects of the fashion value chain.
- Readiness, Exploration & Application for Careers in Health (REACH) Program - The Jefferson College of Rehabilitation Sciences High School REACH program is a five-day summer program designed for rising high school juniors and seniors interested in health careers, such as athletic training, exercise science, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology. Gain insight into theses rehabilitation sciences professions and the critical role they play in the patient care team, guidance on traditional and accelerated academic pathways, tips for standing out on college applications and strategies for success in undergraduate education.
- STEM Summer Camp Experience - The STEM Summer Camp Experience exposes students through hands-on experiments to how engineers apply math, science, and engineering principles to improve people’s lives. Students will be introduced to emerging technologies in data analytics, 3D-printing, logical programming, engineering design process and logistics through hands-on experiments. Using projects that are appealing to their interest, the campers will experience how engineering is applied in our everyday lives.
- SummerScience@Jefferson - High school sophomores, juniors and seniors seeking a future in science can explore this 4-week virtual program offered by Jefferson's College of Life Sciences, which fosters an appreciation for the role of science in everyday life. Students will learn from science faculty through this program and engage with them in interactive lectures, discussions, research projects and experiments conducted in an online environment. Working with faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars and current Jefferson students helps build an understanding and proficiency in real-world research questions, methods and applications. To cap off the experience, students will present a topic explored throughout the program during the Virtual Summer Science Symposium.