A New Chapter Begins: WKU Program Celebrates First Student

Posted on | by Patti Singleton

A New Chapter Begins: WKU Program Celebrates First Student

We are thrilled to announce that our WKU SAV-Y program has officially started with its first student!

Group of people eating at an outdoor cafe
Group of people standing with the WKU Hilltopper
Student standing outside on the WKU campus
Student standing beside WKU statue
  • This is the first semester of our CTP program, SAV-Y, at Western Kentucky University! We are so excited to join the list of Kentucky CTP programs!
  • WKU recently played the University of Alabama in football. Before the game Alabama’s CTP program, CrossingPoints Program (CPP), made a hype video in which they highlighted our program and theirs! It was so awesome to have CTPs at other universities across state lines to reach out and make connections while also helping spread awareness of CTP programs and helping us further our reach to communities that can benefit from our program.

Highlights

  • Our SAV-Y student has many peer mentors who have been spending time with him outside of class to help him acclimate to campus! They have tried new restaurants on campus, explored the campus, and listened to music together (one of his favorite activities)!
  • We have embedded peer mentor hours into a graduate level School Psychology course that currently requires each student to get a minimum of 15 hours of peer mentorship assistance for the semester. This has boosted our outreach for the program and for the peer mentors and led to other students inquiring and applying to become peer mentors. The School Psych graduate program and their leaders have been a huge asset to the SAV-Y program in getting off the ground for our first semester and we can’t thank them enough!
  • We are in the process of forming partnerships with other WKU organizations to provide our SAV-Y student access to opportunities to grow his job knowledge, learning, and work-skills in multiple settings that are of interest to him. 

About WKU SAV-Y

  • Our SAV-Y program is a three-year program in which students will focus on Social development, Academics, and Vocational integration (hence the SAV-Y title). The program aims to help these students acquire workplace skills and competencies while gaining academic knowledge in an inclusive environment with an end goal of transitioning into a career in an area they have selected and worked towards throughout the program. Our SAV-Y program has now become the sixth CTP program of its kind in Kentucky, and we are so proud that we now have one available in our geographical area!