Outline
The main purpose with the Academy of Talented Youth is to give high school students with an academic potential a wider and more continuous offer to get intellectual challenges and experiences, that qualifies their daily work, strengthens their study competencies, and naturally leads them towards a higher education.
Furthermore, they will get a social network of equal minded.
The Academy of Talented Youth also collaborates with companies in the region with the purpose of introducing to the professionalism of the company and how it is carried out in practice, and for qualifying the company’s recruitment of new staff members.
Description
The Academy of Talented Youth is a 2-year extracurricular academic talent programme for students enrolled in secondary education. Every year the academy enrolls 115-200 students (115 during Corona) from all high schools in Southern Denmark. I 2023 143 students was enrolled.
To join the programme you have to be academically skilled, curious for knowlegde and aim for a higher education.
The Academy of Talented Youth consists of seminars on universities, workshops, summer camps, mentoring etc. that runs alongside their regular classes in high school.
The academy revolves around five learning horizons:
- Academic formation
- Personal formation
- Study competencies
- Education- and career clarification
- Innovative and creative competencies
During the two years the high school students will be introduced to exiting, new knowledge and get a view of what life at a university is like. Researchers, teachers, and students will contribute with lectures and exercises to the mandatory seminars and summer camps.
The seminars are divided into introduction seminars and immersion seminars.
It is also possible to participate in voluntary activities at the faculties at SDU. Those activities could be both academic presentations, presentations on study guidance, practical workshops and camps that process a specific subject in depth and challenges the participants academically.
Target group
There is a list of criteria the participants must meet to be accepted into the programme:
- Academic talent expressed as a broad academical knowledge
- General motivation and curiosity
- The ability to work creatively and critical and to create independent opinions
- Openness and the need for challenges regarding specific academic areas
All classes are free but there can be some expenses during e.g., summer camps.
Researchers, teachers, and students are involved in the seminars, workshops, and activities.
The Summer Camp is organized by the office of The Academy of Talented Youth. The Summer Camp is offered to both classes e.g., Year 2021 og 2022. Most of the participants join the camp in their first year, which is recommended, because it gives the best possibility to network and “shake” all the participants together.
They can only participate once in the camp, but the year after, they can join as tutors, and organize/run the camp with activities.
Goals
For SDU the objective is that working with talents will reflect positively on the basic level and make SDU even more eligible.
Students involvement
At the moment SDU students contributes as trainers with workshops and activities. But there is a movement towards minimizing this.
The students of The Academy of Talented Youth also contribute with activities or alumni contribute with workshops. Also, in videos/social media and as speakers at the graduation.
Inspiration and evidence
A project group under the direction of The Danish Ministry of Education worked out a report on talent development in April 2011. The Academy of Talented Youth is based on recommendations from that report.
The report showed that there is an average of 2-3 talented students in every high school class that needs extra challenges and academic inspiration. The report also stated that the educational system in Denmark needed to focus more on talent development and that the focus had to be a coherent and coordinated effort on all levels of the educational system.
Points of attention
A point of attention is that the activities must be at a high academic level. Earlier it has been a mix of lectures and activities from both academic staff and students, but evaluations shows that the participants from the talent programme expects a higher academic level than the one the students provide, so to help improve the initiative it would be a good idea to move more towards including academic staff and less of students.
Many of the activities and workshops arranged by students are also a part of what SDU normally offers for secondary educations in DK, and therefore some of the participants may already have experienced some of the activities as part of their regular high school curriculum.
Evaluation
Yes, both the initiative as a whole and the seminars every semester are evaluated.
I 2018 there was an alumni inquiry on what and where the participants from the talent programme studied after finishing their secondary education. The inquiry wanted to look at what influence The Academy of Talented Youth had on the participants further journey in the educational system.
This showed that SDU had a minor advantage as the university they continued their studies at, and that a large part of them (18 %) studied Medicine.
The plan is to make a new alumni inquiry in 2023.
Communication
The students learn about the academy from the local “talent coordinator” at their high school. They are responsible for spotting the talents and inform them of the possibility of joining the academy. Every school can offer a meeting, also with the current students at The Academy of Talented Youth to inform about the talent programme.
The Academy of Talented Youth also advertises on Social Media.
Timing
It is a 2 year long programme. The high school students get accepted during their first year of high school and they graduate during their senior year.
|
Autumn semester |
Spring semester |
Summer |
| 1st year of high school |
Admission process |
Talent and academia |
Summer camp |
| 2nd year of high school |
Academic knowledge creation |
Academic imparting and collaboration |
Summer camp (if the participant wasn’t at summer camp the year before) |
| 3rd year of high school |
Academic study life and career |
Graduation |
|
Resources
The Academy of Talented Youth is run in collaboration between the independent office of the academy and SDU. This description is therefore a description of the resources used at SDU.
Administrative staff: One central coordinator and one coordinator at every faculty (at SDU there is five faculties)
Academic staff and students: Every faculty provides one mandatory seminar and two voluntary activities every semester and one workshop every summer camp. Academic staff will be required for this – alternatively students can cover the workshops.
The principal of SDU is also involved when the participants in the talent programme graduates. SDU is the hosts of the graduation reception.
Skills
Coordination, research-based teaching, evaluation, knowledge on the target group, strategic communication.
What material can be used to learn more and to increase transferability?
Transferability
We think it is easily transferable to other contexts or groups.
Specific for the context
The Academy of Talented Youth is only partially organized by SDU. The Academy of Talented Youth is an independent office – and is divided into regions throughout Denmark. The one described here is the initiative from Southern Denmark, because of the location of SDU (University of Southern Denmark), and because all the students in The Academy of Talented Youth is from Southern Region of Denmark.