After 40 years of serving gifted and talented children, Duke University has abruptly terminated their highly-regarded Talent Identification Program (TIP), laying off all employees of the non-profit organization. Like many other educational programs, TIP suffered from the loss of revenue from canceling its summer residential programs due to the pandemic (and perhaps Duke deciding they'd rather have a different type of summer program).
It is a devastating loss for me as well. TIP changed my life twice, and saved it once.
As a student, the 4 summers I spent at TIP were major defining experiences of my life. The person I am today was greatly shaped by my time there, and the students and faculty I met. Many of my TIP friends remain my closest and best friends today.
As a teacher, TIP reminded me of the person I had forgotten I was, and the person I had forgotten I could be. My first summer teaching inspired me to leave Los Angeles for San Francisco. Teaching at TIP also reinvigorated my passion for music, after a decade in L.A. had nearly killed it. Several of my former students have gone on to either make music their vocation, or their passion, and I am still in touch with some of them. Several of the instructors I met during that time remain good friends as well.
One of my TIP friends saved my life. A story for another time, though some of you have already heard it.
I have written about some of my TIP experiences here as a student and as an adult occasionally, but perhaps not as much as I should.
Today's news is roughly equivalent to finding out that your childhood home, your high school, and your alma mater all burned to the ground. I am heartbroken over the loss of something so important to me, sympathetic to the dozens of TIP employees who have been laid off, and sad for all the gifted kids who will never have the TIP experience.
Thank you for everything, TIP.
There are so many special people I met through TIP as a student and teacher I can't even begin to list them all. I am sure all of them are feeling the same terrible sense of loss I am.
Thank you, Dr. Sawyer, for your persistence, belief, and hard work. TIP would never have happened without you.
Thank you Dr. Greg Kimble, Mark DeLong, Angela Teachey, and all the other tremendous instructors and teaching assistants who both saw our potential and put up with our adolescence.
Thank you Deborah-Kay Hughes, Shawna Young, Vicki Rennecker-Nakayoshi, Tasha Martin, Brian Cooper, Ramon Griffin, Vicki Stocking, Hollace Selph, John Pollins, Lynn Daggett Pollins, Pamela Clinkenbeard, and the countless other hard-working people who kept TIP's back offices running.
Thank you G. Stanat, Glen Borg, Art Shepard, and all the RAs. You were role models of the best kind, and provided a different, but equally important kind of education out of the classroom for your young charges.
1 comment:
Hey man. This made me sad, too - passing of an era. There is no doubt that this program changed for the better the lives of countless brilliant students and staffers, and served as a catalyst to seek insight into better ways to educate, liberate, and develop the minds of academically gifted youth. Personally, as a residence adviser and as an instructor, I loved every minute of my association with Duke TIP (even though I’m a die-hard Tar Heel...). Cheers, mate! Hope to catch up with you again someday!
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