“Once a Scholar, Always a Scholar”: The Rising Scholars Program

In 2012, former Math Teacher Darnel Barnes and current Math Teacher Sheryl Koyama took a group of Deerfield seniors out to dinner. The math teachers had been observing for years how these different students adapted to Deerfield. During this dinner, they posed a question: What could we have done better? The students proposed a pre-orientation program for Deerfield, and that idea has since become the Rising Scholars Program, colloquially known as RSP.

Initially established to help students from diverse backgrounds grow accustomed to the academic rigour of boarding schools, RSP has since become a program aimed at helping students navigate both the social and academic landscapes of Deerfield. “RSP gave me leverage above other students who came later … I was able to know the campus more than other students who just arrived,” said Precious Ewuzie ’28, an RSP alum and proctor the summer of 2025 

All new 9th and 10th grade students receive an email inviting them to apply, and about 36 students get accepted each year. RSP is specifically focused on serving students with limited experience in a boarding school environment. 

Ms. Koyama, the former director of RSP, believes it is important to point out what RSP is not: “It's not academic recovery. It's not a program for students on financial aid. It's not a program for students of color. It's a program for kids for whom the transition to Deerfield might be a pretty big change,” she said. 

Head Proctor Tashvi Reddy ’27 said, in her view, that “the purpose of RSP is to bring students not accustomed to the boarding school… way of life here, to help them dip their toes into the water.” She added that the most important part of the program is to make the scholars “feel at home.”  

During the program, students attend core classes such as science, history, and English to get used to the feeling of discussion-based learning. They have study hall, sit-down meals, and also must turn in their phones for the night.

RSP also includes icebreaker sessions, a campus-wide scavenger hunt to locate and remember the people and places of Deerfield, a day for community service exploring the local community around Deerfield, and bonding activities through games and watching movies together. 

RSP student proctors are chosen in the spring through an application process and head proctors are chosen by Director of Academic Support Jaclyn DeLuca. “What we're looking for when we select scholars again is a wide range of students' experiences and backgrounds… we want to have a diverse cohort,” she said. She also highlighted the importance of the nature of proctoring as a leadership role: “It's a great opportunity for students who maybe don't have other leadership opportunities on campus.” Reflecting on her proctoring experience, Ewuzie ’28 said, “I felt like I was like a role model to the students.” 

Head Proctor Eddie Andrews ’27 said that RSP allowed him to get to know a lot of underclassmen he wouldn’t have known without the program. Reflecting on proctoring for two years, he said, “I would recommend everyone to apply to be a proctor, whether you did it or not…It definitely changed my outlook on boarding school.”

Ms. DeLuca spoke about how some students had expressed that during RSP, they felt part of a tight-knit, supportive community, which they lost when school actually started; students who had grown close together in the small group were again thrust into a sea of new faces without the guidance they had previously relied on. To try and remedy this, Ms. DeLuca is working on bringing the RSP cohort from this past August back together during Turkey term to discuss ideas to further the program. “Ideas for the program mostly come from students themselves,” Ms. DeLuca said. Ms. Koyama also added that she had a vision for the program where older scholars would become mentors for others in the program throughout the years; “Once a scholar, always a scholar.”

Both Ewuzie and Ms. Koyama emphasized the importance of the relationships made in RSP. “The relationships that they make with the other scholars, as well as with the proctors, has been the thing that they said they've taken away the most,” Ms. Koyama said. Ewuzie agreed,  adding, “a bunch of the friendships I have currently are because of RSP.”

Ewuzie describes RSP as having a lasting impact on the way she views Deerfield. As she said, “The final moments of RSP have always stuck with me. I feel like at that moment I knew that I chose the right school for me.”