Summer Program/Internship

We are no longer accepting applications. Please check our website from time to time for future opportunities!

Program Description

Have you ever struggled with the feeling of being excluded by peers? Have you ever worried about not getting into your dream school, receiving poor grades despite your great effort, or having lots of conflicts with your parents or siblings? With so many mixed emotions (e.g., anger, guilt, shame, regret), you may start to perceive yourself or your struggles as failures, leaving you wondering “What should I do now?”

 

You are the one who will be Successful!

Our summer program will provide you access to effective coping tools and abilities that are aimed at revealing your true potential and weaknesses in order to help you turn your challenges into successes. You will experience various kinds of simulated failure experiences and be asked to analyze how you accept and navigate setbacks or failures. You will be under the guidance of professional youth counselors and cognitive psychologists who have conducted in-depth research on more than 30 extraordinary athletes, Nobel laureates, and other top professionals about their successes. Through this program, you will discover your new and great potential in experiencing failures and in reviews from the experts.


The program utilizes the flexible adaptive instructional training (FAIT) model to fully immerse our students in the process of learning from their failures. Professional experts specializing in youth coaching will encourage students to use their strengths to turn their setbacks into successes.

 

INSTRUCTORS 

Our instructional team consists of renowned professors of motivational psychology, experienced school psychologists, youth psychotherapists, Master’s, and Ph.D. students from the EPIC and Columbia University.


EPIC is also partnering with the Alliance for Integrated Awareness (AIA)  to help students enrich understanding of the role acceptance and integration plays in succeeding at failure. Using Acceptance and Integration Training® (AAIT™), our students will discover how to neutralize charged and challenging emotions and thoughts associated with failure.

 

DATE AND DURATION OF THE PROGRAM 

This is a three-week online program that starts on July 10th and ends on July 28th. The students will have the option to attend the final presentation in person (two days on campus). *The 2023 Summer Program will be fully virtual*

 

CERTIFICATE 

Students who complete the program satisfactorily will receive a certificate from EPIC/Teachers College, Columbia University. EPIC will select the top five students to be regular interns.

What Do Students Gain From Participating In This Program?

The benefits include, but are not limited to the following areas:

  • Develop a realistic picture of your strengths and weaknesses
  • Develop realistic and attainable goals
  • Develop healthy habits and skills to tackle failure experience 
  • Build the capability to embrace negative emotions without them clouding your judgment 
  • Turn negative emotions into action plans to improve performance
  • Gain confidence in accepting and overcoming failures

Frequently Asked Questions:

We welcome high school students in grades 9-11 around the world to apply for the program. The admission is not based on academic merits, but on your interests and commitment to improving yourselves.

We are currently not accepting applications for the 2023 Summer. Please check our website from time to time for future opportunities!

EPIC Summer Experience is a three-week program from July 10th to July 28th. 

There is no application fee. 

The 2023 Summer program will be a fully virtual program. Our weekly meetings will be hosted via Zoom.

Please refer to the section of “What Do Students Gain From Participating In This Program? ” on this website.

You will be expected to work about 20-25 hours a week on various projects. 

Yes, your parents/guardians need to sign the program consent forms before you can officially start the program.
If you decide to join the program, we need one of your parents/guardians to sign a consent form and email it back to us.

Background Image: Einstein Background

Research Spotlight: “Even Einstein Struggled”

Students’ beliefs that success in science depends on exceptional talent negatively impact their motivation to learn. For example, such beliefs have been shown to be a major factor steering students away from taking science and math courses in high school and college. In the present study, we tested a novel story-based instruction that models how scientists achieve through failures and struggles.

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