Connecticut College’s Summer Program in the Humanities was developed in 1965 as “a plan to introduce forty high school girls to the excitement and challenge of study on a college campus and under the conditions of living and working that prevail in a small liberal arts college.” This program was modeled after similar initiatives developed at Princeton, Dartmouth, and Oberlin in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation’s Equal Opportunity Division, which aimed to strengthen educational opportunities for students of color in the United States.

The College’s program was initially spearheaded by English professor William Meredith. Meredith participated in Princeton’s summer program in 1964 and sought to develop a similar initiative at Connecticut College geared toward high school girls who showed academic potential but lacked economic support. Initially funded by a three-year, $150,000 grant by the Rockefeller Foundation and supported through partnerships with local institutions and community action programs, the six-week summer program featured academic, athletic, and recreational activities. In addition to academic work in reading, writing, history, sociology, mathematics, and the arts, students developed independent projects and received intensive counseling and instruction in study techniques. In 1969, a community service component was added - that year, students could work with children at the campus’ nursery school, or volunteer time at Waterford’s Seaside center, a regional center for adults with intellectual disabilities.

By 1967, similar summer educational opportunity programs had been established across the country, many with federal funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity’s Upward Bound program, an initiative introduced in 1965 to provide better educational opportunities to first generation, low-income, or rural high school students. Rather than continue to operate an independently-funded program, Connecticut College modified its program to align with Upward Bound guidelines, and renamed its initiative the Summer Program in the Humanities/Upward Bound (shortened to Humanities/Upward Bound, or HUB, in 1970). In this expanded program, the six-week summer residential phase was followed by a 10-week support program of counseling, tutoring, and mentoring. By 1974, nearly 90% of the 600 students who participated in HUB had been accepted to colleges across the Northeast.

In June 1974, the College was notified that no further federal funding would be appropriated for its Upward Bound program. Program director Ernestine Brown worked with the College to fulfill its commitment to the 70 students who had been accepted for the 1974 season, but was unable to find a permanent source of funding to continue beyond the summer. As a result, Humanities/Upward Bound ceased at Connecticut College by the end of 1974.