Full-Throttle Schooling

Every summer for the past three decades, students in the Center for Talented Youth program come to Dickinson for an intensive academic experience. Photo by Carl Socolow '77 (2013).

Students in the Center for Talented Youth program come to Dickinson for an intensive academic experience. Photo by Carl Socolow '77 (2013).

Plumbing academic depths during intensive CTY camp

By MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson

The learning continues at Dickinson this summer as 90 educators and 400 middle- and high-school students come to campus to take part in the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) Intensive Studies program. Hosted at Dickinson for more than 30 years, the CTY camp provides advanced courses in the humanities, writing, science and math to gifted students from across the country and overseas.

Session one began in late June and will end in mid-July; session two runs from mid-July to early August. For five hours each weekday, the campers attend advanced-level courses in subjects spanning cryptology, microeconomics, poetry, politics, pop culture, U.S. history and neuroscience. Afternoons are filled with scheduled activities like board-game sessions and theatre workshops, and a two-hour study hall caps each day. On weekends, the campers enjoy day trips, carnivals and other special events. Each summer session also includes a CTY talent show.

By the end of the three-week camp, each student will have had the chance to learn enough information to fill a yearlong high-school-level—or semesterlong college-level—course. And by studying in Dickinson classrooms, sleeping in campus residence halls, eating in the Dining Hall and using college facilities like the Kline Center, College Bookstore and Waidner-Spahr Library, they get a chance to sample college life.

Dickinson is one of a handful of institutions across the nation that serves as a CTY site. The college also hosts other guests throughout the summer, including dance students attending the nearby Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet camp and elementary- and high-school student-athletes who attend Dickinson sports camps.

Learn more

Published July 15, 2014