The Pinnacle Scholars Program is something that is rooted in high secrecy for reasons unknown to students. While everyone at Stevens is, to some extent, familiar with this program, the inner workings of Pinnacle are fairly undisclosed to students not part of it. For this reason, The Stute interviewed Anna Dabrowski, the Vice President of Operations (VPO) on the Executive Board of the Pinnacle Planning Committee, who shed some light on what it is like being a part of the program.
When it comes to the Pinnacle Scholars Program, one of the questions that many students have is what proportion of the student body is chosen to be a part of the program. Dabrowski, being a student herself, did not know the exact statistic but did share that she had observed that members of the program were incredibly diverse. She explained that she believes the program has achieved a higher rate of diversity compared to the general Stevens student body. Dabrowski also shared that in order to achieve this, it is likely, although not confirmed, that selection to the Pinnacle Scholars Program could be stratified by major, making it harder for those in more popular majors to get selected. Dabrowski also said that the percentage of students selected remains consistent despite Stevens’ growing class size.
In terms of the operations, the Pinnacle Planning Committee is the entity in charge of planning events as per the cultural passport. Any member of Pinnacle has the ability to plan events or be part of the committee. Dabrowski stated, “We encourage all first years to plan at least one event from start to finish for the experience.” She explained how this would allow them to take advantage of the benefits of the program and also foster leadership. Although everyone in Pinnacle can choose to what extent they want to be involved, the Planning Committee still has its own eBoard for those who want to take an additional initiative to lead. The eBoard consists of the President, Vice President of Operations, Public Relations Chair, and Treasurer. Just like in other student organizations, Pinnacle Scholars have to run for these eBoard positions and get voted in. Although they are the eBoard, they try to only plan one event each again to facilitate engagement from other scholars. The eBoard’s main role is to work with administration and advisors and meet twice a month collectively.
Regarding the funding of the program, Dabrowski wanted to clarify that the program runs because of donor support and none of the money that students pay to Stevens goes towards Pinnacle. The amount of money received by the Pinnacle Scholars program remains undisclosed but the budget is said to be far lesser than the budget of the Entertainment Committee (EC) who plans similar events. For comparison, the EC’s budget is set to be 16% of the Student Activity Fee and was about $500,000 last year. Even though Pinnacle aims to have everyone organize an event, there are still rules they need to abide by when it comes to budget. All events have to be approved by administration and the more expensive an event, the fewer tickets are permitted to be purchased. Similar to EC, the tickets tend to sell out fast. However, if there is an event where there are leftover tickets, Pinnacle students are allowed to have a non-Pinnacle friend attend.
While there are still many unanswered questions regarding the Pinnacle Scholars Program, the student insight provided by Anna Dabrowski shines light on the internal operations of the program. Also discussed were the potential changes being made which would have applicants to Stevens apply to be considered for the Pinnacle Scholar Program. To this, Dabrowski stated that she did not have much information on what an application would be like but did say that “switching to an application ensures that people interested in it [Pinnacle] are ready to commit.”
