From left are SMHS Governor’s School participants Taylor Lapinski, Temple Glascock, Laura Holland, Rachel Mersch, Jonathan Shander and Ben Gruber.Several of Signal Mountain High School’s best students experienced a taste of college life this past summer at Governor’s School, a program offered by the state of Tennessee for gifted and talented students.
Governor’s School offers a dozen intensive and challenging subject-specific programs, and only 32-44 students are chosen to participate in each subject. SMHS students participated in a range of programs such as computational physics, visual art, theater performance, humanities, film and emerging technologies. Each program is located on a college campus within the state.
Depending on the program, students earned between three to six hours of college credit by taking the actual college courses, lived on campus, ate in the cafeteria and basically learned what it is like to be a college student, they said.
“I wanted to be around other people from around the state of Tennessee who like to do theater and share talents with them,” said Laura Holland, who participated in the theater performance program at Middle Tennessee State University.
She said she misses her fellow participants a lot and they do regular group chats to keep in touch.