VALDOSTA — Valdosta State University is hosting the 44th Governor’s Honors Program, now in its 28th year on the VSU campus.

The six-week residential program is designed to challenge the state’s top rising junior and senior students toward lifelong learning through intensive learning and performance courses instructed at the college level.

“The two main goals of GHP are to deliver differentiated instruction, hence the collegiate environment, and to foster the attitude of becoming lifelong learners,” said associate program director Cary Brague. “There are no grades and no credits earned. Students here benefit from the learning intensive environment of their major and minor courses by being able to focus more deeply on the elements of a larger structure.”

A function of the Georgia State Department of Education and fully funded through by the Georgia General Assembly, Governor’s Honors is the longest running summer enrichment program in the nation. Every year, students are selected from a statewide competition of 2,500 who were recommended by their local systems. The 690 finalists are selected to attend the program and explore one of 16 majors and a minor of a different subject.

“The students who are selected are very much alike, but at the same time, very diverse, because local systems make the decisions based upon academics,” said Brague. “This program is about full immersion, so you’ll see our language students playing softball or re-enacting ‘Star Wars,’ but the entire time, the terminology and dialogue is in German or Latin. Also, as the different majors interact, math with music, social studies with architectural design and so forth, they learn to develop social fabric.”

Instructors are just as diverse as the students.

“Our instructors are from everywhere, although most are teachers from Georgia, and others, like our orchestra conductor, are not teachers at all,” said Dale Lyles, assistant program director for instruction. “One thing any instructor here must realize is that a successful teacher knows when to get out of the way.”

As Sanjaz Srivatsan, 17, left his Communicative Arts minor class, he shared how the program differs from high school.

“The difference here is the instruction — the teacher doesn’t make the class, the students make the class,” said Srivatsan. “We pick what we want to learn, and everyone is really motivated to do so. It’s been a great program so far.”

In his fifth year as a instructor, Jobie Johnson, a Gwinnett County teacher, attested to the personal drive he has witnessed among this group of students.

“As an instructor, everything I do here, I bring back to my local school, and the main thing that I have learned about the kids is there is a craving for experience and exposure to new things,” said Johnson. “I don’t have to drag interest out of the kids.”

The Governor’s Honors Program will conclude next week with nightly presentation events open to the public. For information, call 229-333-7166.