The Academic Accelerator Program (AAP) is a balanced first-year program for international students with good English-language skills. It supplements immersive classes taught in English with just the right amount of support.

Students in the Academic Accelerator receive:

• The right amount of support for their academic and English-speaking needs
• A full year’s worth of college credits
• Access to courses exclusively for international students
• English-language help with words they need to know for their classes
• A mix of classes with international and U.S. students

Rhetoric is the study of effective speaking and writing: it is the art of argument and persuasion. Through the Writing and Rhetoric Studies program, students will become strong analytical thinkers and proficient writers. Students of this program learn rhetorical analysis and the ways that culture and society shape what is defined as “literacy,” giving them critical thinking skills and social awareness that can be applied to a number of pursuits. Students in the program choose courses from topics such as under-represented rhetorics, rhetorics of gender, writing popular non-fiction, professional discourse, grammar and stylistics, digital storytelling, writing as a social practice, and others. The culminating experience of the program is a senior seminar, synthesizing all of the student's undergraduate work into a portfolio piece. Employers consistently rank written communication skills as among the most desired abilities in job candidates, and strong writing and argumentation abilities are excellent assets for graduate-level coursework.