Make School Institutional Plan

Staff project owner: Ashu Desai (Founder)

The December 2020 update is v1.0 of our Institutional Plan github. Our intention with this github is to create transparent documentation of Make School's "feature set" and future plans. We will use this repository in conjunction with our release cycle process (see "Institutional Planning Process") to provide regular updates to students and prospective students about how Make School is iterating and adapting.

We hope this creates more transparency and better information communication primarily with the student body and secondarily with the broader community. We also hope the github repository serves as a forum - alongside town-halls and feedback surveys - for students to contribute to the vision and development of our institution, an open-source, collaboratively built university.

It is an experiment for a college to provide documentation and allow for discussion in the format of a software project. We will learn along the way what works, what doesn't, and how to communicate more clearly and more efficiently. We hope by doing this we can hold ourselves to a higher standard of transparency, communication, and collaboration with our students, staff, prospective students, and broader community.

Our next update will be released in March. Stay tuned!

December 2020 General Update:

Dear Make School community - 2020 is almost over. As we look hopefully to a new year, we are excited to share important updates to Make School to close out the year.

1. Make School has applied for independent accreditation to be a non-profit college and brought on a new board of directors to oversee the next chapter in Make School's journey. We are humbled that they have chosen to join Make School - you can read the full announcement on our Medium.

2. Make School has grown our talented team of instructors and staff over the last few months. We welcome Joseph, Joy, Gina, and Jay to the instructor team, Justine to lead Science and Letters, Valdine as our new JEDI coordinator, Kaleena as our Registrar, Matt to lead finance, Emily to lead admissions, Isabelle to lead Financial Aid, Casey to lead Outcomes, and Alyssa in operations. A full directory can be found here.

3. Make School will be offering the option to study fully online even after we re-open campus. More details can be found in the academics section of this repository. We look forward to serving learners who can't commit to 2+ years in San Francisco. Note: we are awaiting final accreditor approval for this plan which we expect to receive in March.

4. Make School will continue with online-only course delivery until at least the end of May. We all miss in-person connections, but we will only return to campus when it is safe to do so. We are exploring whether a combination of low case rates in San Francisco, rapid tests, ventilation, air filters, mask wearing, and social distancing could allow us to begin limited and optional on campus activities in the spring. No promises, but we will continue to study our options over the coming months.

Best, The Make School Team