By Jeremy Craig, Communications Manager for the Office of the Provost

Students of the Veritas School of Social Sciences came together at Georgia State University on Wednesday (June 28, 2023) to learn more by tackling challenges that corporate and institutional leaders face — including at the university itself.

The Veritas Corporate Immersion Day brought more than 35 students ages 14 through 17 to Georgia State, where they heard from university leaders and were tasked with forming potential solutions to issues ranging from cybersecurity training, student engagement and operational matters to student involvement, enrollment and course success.

The Veritas School provides access to academic and professional skills training that places students on pathways to excellence at colleges and universities, and toward high-earning careers. The aim is to close academic opportunity and economic inequality gaps for Black and brown students through programs like Veritas Corporate Immersion, a debate institute, a global travel program and programs in career readiness along with K-12 teacher training.

An emphasis of the Veritas School is heuristic learning — a term meaning that someone does not truly understand a concept until it is applied, said Brandon Fleming, founder and CEO of Veritas.

“Academic skills don’t always translate to professional skills, and if the outcome of our teaching and our learning experience is for them to be able to do something with that information, we like to put them in positions where they have to create, where they have to problem-solve, where they have to think critically and where they have to communicate,” Fleming explained.

“We want our students to not only be able to intellectually solve problems, but we also want them to be persuasive in communicating those solutions to the people who need to hear them,” he said.

Beyond problem-solving for an organization, the students — with their sights set on college after graduation from high school — had an opportunity to learn about how colleges and universities work behind the scenes and all the complexity involved.

“The students were able to see the challenges that we as administrators have to be able to navigate to make their college experience as valuable as possible,” said Nicolle Parsons-Pollard, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Georgia State. “They’re getting to see a broader picture of what it takes to run an entire institution.

“It’s also an opportunity for us to engage with some extremely bright students who are working to figure out what their next steps are,” she continued. “Even if they don’t attend Georgia State, they have had an opportunity to better understand the experience that they’re about to embark upon when they do go to college.”

Yasmin Diallo, 16, found the experience of learning more about Georgia State and being tasked with problem-solving valuable.

“I really like how the situations they’ve given to us are unique,” said Diallo, a student at Roswell High School. “I enjoy the complexities of them because they’re not just simply problems that can be solved — they require critical thinking, and it’s something I really like.”

More about Veritas is available at https://veritasgeorgia.com/about/. More about Georgia State’s offerings in learning by tackling challenges and problem-solving is available at https://myexperience.gsu.edu/.

Originally posted to the Georgia State University News Hub at https://news.gsu.edu/2023/06/28/veritas-corporate-immersion-program/.

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