Academic Approach: Beginnings
I founded Academic Approach in Chicago in 2001, but the story begins in 1996 in New York City when I was earning a Ph.D. in English at Columbia University. While I was teaching freshmen in Columbia’s core curriculum—classes on logic, rhetoric, grammar, and strategies of essay composition—I was also working as a test-prep tutor, coaching NYC high school students preparing for the SAT and ACT. In doing both simultaneously, I realized that I was teaching the same underlying skills to both college freshmen and high school students…