Summer Enrichment Program (University of Colorado)
The Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) is a summer camp for gifted and talented children entering grades 5 to 10, located at Center for the Education and Study of the Gifted, Talented, Creative at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. SEP consists of two mutually exclusive sessions, each two weeks long, during which time students reside in the university residence halls. Thousands of students, from most American states and many foreign countries, have attended SEP.
Typical classes include art, computers & technology, creative writing, cultures, debate, drama, dance, history, mathematics, music and science. There is minimal textbook instruction, but emphasis is instead placed on hands-on activities, for example (during sessions in the late 1980s and early 1990s):
- performing insect migration studies on local grasshoppers
- writing East Asian calligraphy with a native of China
- observing the radioactive decay of Polonium in a cloud chamber
- playing against a chess champion from Mexico
- fermenting yogurt and observing the bacteria under a microscope
- training on the violin with a composer/conductor from Hungary
- constructing and flying model rockets
The associated Young Child Program is designed for gifted and talented children from age 4 until the 4th grade. It is a day camp founded in 1980 to precede attendance at the Summer Enrichment Program. The Leadership Enrichment Program is designed for gifted and talented high school students entering grades 11 and 12. It is a program to succeed attendance at the Summer Enrichment Program.
SEP was started in 1977 by Dr George Betts (Ed.D.), a Professor of Special Education at the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at UNC. He is a key figure in the development of the Autonomous Learner Model (ALM) method of teaching, popular in many countries (United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, ...), and is also closely associated with the Life-Long Learner approach.