At NuVu High School, Karen Sutton is not only our Director of Admissions but also our Chief of Staff. This dual role gives her a panoramic perspective on NuVu’s mission and core values—insight that’s deeply woven into the school’s ethos. When families come to NuVu, it is Karen’s guidance that helps dissect just what a design studio is, how project based learning is conducted, and digs deep into what the NuVu pedagogy could mean for a prospective student.

We sat down with Karen to hear, in her own words, thoughts on admissions at NuVu…

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In your experience, what are families looking for when they come to NuVu

I think families that come to NuVu—whether they come independently or through an ED consultant—are all looking for something different. Often when I'm talking to parents, they share that their child’s current school is not meeting their needs or they're actually suffering in the classroom.

For many students, a traditional classroom means they are just sitting, listening and being told what they need to know, then asked to memorize and take a test to gauge their learning.

When kids come to NuVu, students are yearning for an opportunity to really share all of their observations, dig into research, consider things that are real and relevant to them and the world around them. And so when parents come to us, I want to lead them down this road where they can see how a student can learn so much more in our hands-on environment than in a traditional school.

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How do you introduce a family to the NuVu style of learning?

To truly convince a family that NuVu is the place for their student, I urge them to schedule a visit. It often takes a child coming to NuVu, hanging out and shadowing for half a day, to really get a sense of what it is that we do here. Talking with the students, seeing the projects that they are immersed in, getting a feel for what a typical day looks like. Then I often connect prospective parents with the parents of a current student. Hearing that first hand account of how a student can thrive at NuVu is often key.

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What learning outcomes have you observed in NuVu students during their first year?

I would say right out of the gate, it's the superpower of problem solving, and it starts immediately within our design studios. Students are given a theme—an open-ended prompt—and the student often starts by saying “I don't even know how to do that thing!” Then time and again I see that shift into “I want to learn how to do that!” Kids learn how to tap into their own agency, their own individual learning confidence and figure it out. That is the spirit of NuVu.

After problem solving skills, I’d say a heavy duty sense of collaboration is the next big skill. The third is an understanding of feedback and its purpose. Students discover the thinking behind their decisions, which often spawn other ideas, and eventually leads to a deeper understanding not experienced in a more traditional classroom.

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What’s after NuVu for our graduating students?

I would say 99.5% of our students go on to higher ed and follow a field of study that they've started to pursue while they were at NuVu. Our design studios are wide ranging, and often focus on four areas: design, engineering, art and technology. This opens up the door to so many topics that our students can dive into.

Typically, we see a lot of seniors heading into fields in design, engineering and architecture. We have students that are really interested in the arts too. It’s wide and varied because our students are exposed to many different fields of study, so their future options are often limitless.

How does the staff at NuVu make a difference?

What makes our coaches so unique is their collective backgrounds, interests and professions—that and they aren't hampered with teaching to the test like a traditional school model. They are not stressed by managing a classroom of bored kids because our coaches create new studio curriculum every summer. Those design studios are based on feedback from our own students and refined for optimal results. Our coaches are designers, engineers, architects, digital media experts, AI innovators, graphic illustrators, and writers. They know how to provide an engaging, thought provoking learning environment that their own skills can embolden.  

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Why do you feel that a school like NuVu should exist?

Any parent who wants their kid to really be self-sufficient, to face challenges and have the confidence to get through those challenges—thats NuVu at the very core. I personally don't feel that traditional schools provide that kind of opportunity for kids.

Let’s say a student really wants to study whale skeletons, even though the unit is on jellyfish. A traditional school wouldn’t have the bandwidth to offer an educational shift based on a student's interest. That’s what NuVu does. They shape a student’s interest, refine it, dive deep into it, and the student becomes so much more invested in their own learning. That intrinsic motivation is unstoppable in an educational setting.

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_{Don't just attend high school—thrive there. Visit https://www.nuvuschool.org/admission}

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