Summer Program for Juniors (TASP) | General Information
What is TASP?
A Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) is a six-week educational experience for high school juniors that offers challenges and rewards rarely encountered in secondary school or even college.
Each program is designed to bring together young people from around the world who share a passion for learning. Telluride students, or TASPers, attend a seminar led by college and university faculty members and participate in many other educational and social activities outside the classroom.
Students attend TASPs because they want to challenge and change themselves. Telluride Association seeks students from all kinds of educational backgrounds who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and motivation, rather than prior knowledge of the seminar's subject matter. TASPers participate solely for the pleasure and rewards of learning with other intelligent, highly motivated students. The TASP offers no grades or college credit.
- The TASP seminar
- The TASP community
- Why apply for a TASP?
- Telluride Association Summer Programs are Free
The TASP Seminar
TASP centers on an academic seminar that meets every weekday morning for about three hours. Each seminar is led by a team of two professors, who are selected not only for the distinction of their scholarship but also for the excellence of their teaching. Classes emphasize group discussions rather than lectures, in programs designed so that students read texts carefully and critically, and express and analyze ideas in their discussions and writings. Students do not simply master a body of facts or knowledge; they are forced to think for themselves about what they have read and learned. Similar to upper-level college classes, the professors meet with each student to discuss the writing assignments, for which the students receive written comments but no grades. Through this process, students and faculty members become very closely involved with the material and with each other.
TASP seminars meet three hours a day, five days a week—a schedule that allows the students and faculty members to become very closely involved with the material and with each other. The student-teacher ratio is lower than ten to one, and every student receives personal attention from the professors.
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The TASP Community
Life at TASP extends well beyond academic exploration. The participants are given considerable freedom to build their own dynamic social community, meeting as a group to democratically plan the summer´s activities and projects. This modest element of self-government is an essential part of the TASP experience. Recent TASPs have organized community service projects, music and theatre events, and excursions to state parks and art museums. Most of the programs also perform a limited amount of physical work in the form of cleaning or gardening and occasional weekend cooking. Participants always find time for impromptu discussions and parties, movie-going, and pick-up sports.
Students learn to form, and live responsibly within, an intellectual and social community. Each TASP encourages the students to use the seminar as a foundation for exploring ideas together, and the intellectual life of the program continues well after the seminar ends. TASPers are urged to take advantage of the resources of the college and university communities where the programs are held. Students attend specially arranged guest lectures and give speeches on topics that interest them—as well as join in informal dinner-table and late-night discussions of a great range of issues! Students also attend group meetings and are responsible for planning community activities and discussing questions of self-government.
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Why Apply for a TASP?
The TASPs bring together intelligent, motivated students from the United States and abroad. College admissions officers throughout the country are familiar with the rigorous selection and preparation of TASP participants. Indeed, the vast majority of TASP students go on to attend the finest colleges and universities in the country.
TASP is perhaps the most successful and prestigious academic summer program in the nation. The more than 2,000 living TASP alumni include leaders in politics, journalism, academia, and the arts. For many, the six-week Telluride Association program was a key formative experience in their lives. Telluride Association hopes the TASP experience endows their students with a sense of intellectual purpose and community responsibility that will prepare them for whatever course in life they choose.
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Telluride Association Summer Programs are free.
Housing, dining, and tuition expenses are covered by Telluride Association and the host institutions. Students pay only the costs of transportation and incidental expenses. Participants with demonstrated need may request financial aid to cover reasonable travel costs. We can also offer stipends of up to $500 to replace summer work earnings for students who would otherwise be unable to attend a summer program. It is the policy of Telluride that no student be barred from attending a TASP for financial reasons.
The 2009 programs are made possible in part by the bequest of Frank Monaghan in honor of Elmer M. "Johnny" Johnson and George Lincoln Burr. Johnny Johnson joined Telluride Association in 1915 and later served as Chancellor of Telluride Association from 1930-1960. George Burr was a Cornell librarian from 1890-1922 and variously a Cornell professor of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History. He lived at Telluride House as a faculty fellow from 1915-1938.
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