 Hello, welcome to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. I'm Bob Gottwals, I'm a member of the chemistry faculty here at the school. A number of years ago I was hired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Chemistry Department to put together a summer refresher course in chemistry for incoming students to the University. The program was so successful that we decided to implement the same program here at the North Carolina School of Science and Math. So as an incoming junior you are required to take the summer science prep course. This is an online course, it has four modules in it and you will be able to work on this course in your own time from your home. What we're hoping to be able to do with this course is to make sure that you are ready when you come to NCSSM for the very rigorous academics that you're going to be facing when you arrive here. The academic challenges that you face at Science and Math are especially pronounced in the first two weeks. You're moving into the dorms, you're trying to learn how to deal with residential life, there's a lot of information coming at you very quickly. So with the summer science prep course we're basically going to give you a head start on either your chemistry course that you'll be taking or the physics course that you'll be taking as an incoming junior. The course is not very hard. If you've not had chemistry yet it will be a good introduction to some basic topics in chemistry. It'll also introduce you to a little bit of scientific mathematics and other topics that you're going to see during your first two weeks. If you have had a chemistry course it should be simply a refresher course for you. So when you arrive here on August 6 for moving day and school starts the next week you are ready to go. The course will open on June 3, that's Monday and the course will close a week before moving day so we encourage you to get a good start on this course, do a little bit every day and get it done before you get here for moving day. The other thing the course does is it gets you used to using some of the online tools that you will be using every single day during your academic career at NCSSM. These tools include Moodle, they include being able to learn how to read email from faculty members and a wide variety of other resources that you're going to be using on a regular basis. So the prep course really is designed to get your head in the game and when you get here in August you are ready to accept the greater challenge. If you have questions send them to me on Bob Gottwals and my email is Gottwals at ncssm.edu