Athens, Ga. – The brightest middle and high school students in Georgia and nearby states will get their first taste of the college experience during the UGA-Duke Talent Identification Program Scholar Weekend Nov. 13 – 14, hosted by the University of Georgia.
UGA-Duke TIP Scholar Weekend is offered in partnership with the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, the College of Education’s Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development and Duke University’s Talent Identification Program.
TIP scholars are identified through standardized test scores and invited to take the SAT or ACT in the seventh grade as part of the program. Students are then invited to attend TIP Scholar Weekends where they are exposed to interesting and challenging topics not typically covered in middle or high school curricula.
At scholar weekends, students are introduced to the collegiate experience by participating in two days of intense study in one of the provided courses taught by UGA professors or graduate students and Athens area school teachers. The overall goal is to enhance student skills, enrich the learning experience and foster an interest in college as well as specific collegiate majors.
“Students attending the [TIP Programs] are given an opportunity to go beyond the boundaries of school and explore the deepest thoughts within themselves as well as the knowledge all around them,” said Robert Branch, professor and department head in the UGA College of Education. “The University of Georgia faculty has the resident scholars who can appropriately challenge the mind of the intellectually gifted child in ways that promote creative and unique ideas to situations that have yet to be revealed.”
This is the first of three scholar weekends planned at UGA, which is one of only eight locations in the nation selected to be hosts. The second scholar weekend is scheduled for Feb. 12 – 13, and the third program will be held April 16 – 17. In 2009, UGA-Duke TIP Scholar Weekends served more than 200 students.
Courses offered include:
Physics in Aircraft and Spacecraft Design
In this class, participants will explore the amazing advances in aerospace technology, and the underlying scientific principles that make them possible. Through a wide variety of hands-on activities and experiments, participants will witness such physics concepts as Newton’s laws, energy, momentum, pressure, gravity, and orbital mechanics.
When Worlds Collide: Live Actors Meet Animated Characters
In this course participants will explore a number of compositing techniques, see clips from and discuss influential films, visit a green-screen and motion-capture studio, and begin to develop opinions about the industrial and aesthetic implications of combining these different types of performers.
Introductory Robotics
Try your hand at engineering in this introductory course! Participants will be asked to use real robotics hardware and software to find creative solutions to some common engineering issues. Participants will learn basic programming for microcontrollers, and explore the concepts surrounding the use of sound sensors, near-infrared light sensors, servo motors and computer serial communications.
Architecture: From Playhouses to Mansions
Our homes reflect more than just preferences; they are expressions of culture and set a stage for how we choose to live our lives. Participants in this course will examine the purposes, elements and fundamentals of house design at all scales by actively participating in the process of home creation.
Growing Concerns: Food, Politics and Society
You eat it every day, but how often do you think about what food does to your body, your community or your planet? In this course, participants will explore how food has become a defining characteristic of who you are, and where things like fast food, vegetarianism and organic farming fit into the American food landscape. Through film clips, discussions and hands-on activities, we will look at the availability of certain crops and the spread of urban food deserts, and examine how factory farms treat animals being raised for meat production.
For more information on this program see www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/scholar.
For more information on other UGA-Duke TIP programs, see the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education website at www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/ppdor call 706/542-3537.