VALDOSTA —
When thinking of words to describe summer vacation, academic usually isn’t one of them. However, for a select, elite group of high schoolers, school is back in session today.
“We know it is summer when Governor’s Honor students and faculty are on our campus,” said Valdosta State University Interim President Dr. Louis Levy.
Through July 21, nearly 700 gifted and talented rising juniors and seniors will attend a four week, academic intensive program at VSU while living in residential halls on campus just as if they were true college students.
As the longest continually running summer enrichment program in the nation, GHP has been going strong for 49 years. The program is fully funded by the Georgia General Assembly — although they are in the process of forming an Alumni Association in order to solicit donations (via the Georgia Foundation for Public Education) and to lobby support — and is entering its 33rd year on VSU’s campus. “We provide even more prestige for an already prestigious institution,” said Dale Lyles, Director of GHP who also attended the program as a Visual Arts Major in 1970 and began teaching with the program in 1984.
Just as the name of the program suggests, it is an absolute honor to be chosen to participate in this program.
Approximately 2,900 students — which is only 1 percent of the state’s sophomores and juniors in all public and private schools — are nominated at their system level and are interviewed at the state level interviews in January and February.
Students who are selected attend as one of seventeen majors: AgScience (biotechnology and environmental science), Communicative Arts, Dance, Architectural and Graphic Design, Executive Management, French, German, Latin, Mathematics, Music (strings, piano, woodwinds, brass, voice, percussion, and jazz), Science (biology, chemistry and physics), Social Studies, Spanish, Technology and Engineering, Theater (performance and design) and Visual Arts.
The program is mandated by two points of instruction. The first is to provide instruction that is significantly different from regular high school classrooms and the second is to empower the students with skills, knowledge, behaviors and attitudes necessary to become a lifelong learner.
“The teachers and students who participate in GHP are a laboratory for teaching and learning, and over the past 50 years that has had a tremendous impact on the schools to which they return,” said Lyles. “VSU is proud to be supportive of that kind of positive influence.”
The GHP teaching staff is selected from all levels of education as well as various professionals in prospective fields. The residential staff is selected from college age students, most of whom are alumni of the program.
The average day for a GHP student is rather rigorous.
They spend approximately four and a half hours in their major area classes every morning Monday through Saturday. In the afternoons on Monday through Friday, students attend classes from which they have selected a minor. Outside of class time, students are offered a variety of seminars, activities, concerts and presentations.
“We are very happy to have the Governor’s Honors Program on our campus again this year,” said Levy. “We look forward to the creative energy that the faculty and staff bring to Valdosta State.”
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