The College has been chosen to host between 600 and 700 of the nation's brightest elementary and junior high school students this summer as part of a program for academically-talented youth run by Johns Hopkins University.
The students will arrive on campus for the first of two three-week sessions on June 24. Students attend classes or take science courses for seven hours a day in two- and three-hour intervals, beginning at 9 a.m. There is time in the afternoon for a one-and-a-half hour recreation period, then students return to the books from 7 to 9 p.m. The students will live in Davidson and Richmond residence halls.
The summer residential program is operated by the Center for Talented Youth, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The organization selects the students from twenty-five states and thirty-six countries. More than 8,000 students take part at a dozen colleges nationwide, compressing a full high school or college course into a three-week session. Seventh-graders scoring 500 and more in either the verbal or mathematics section of the College Board exams are eligible; tenth-graders must score close to 700 in the tests.
Brad Lewis, professor of economics and director of corporate relations, is overseeing the program. “This is an absolutely terrific set of students, the kind that every campus would love to have,” he said. Officials said they chose Union because of its strengths in the sciences and significant laboratory space.