Students of Excellence camp comes to a close
The Students of Excellence camp kicked off Monday on the University of South Dakota campus.
About 120 high school students have been living on campus since last week. The high school students were joined by 208 middle school students on Sunday.
The camp is divided into two sections: the Governor’s camp for middle school students and the Ambassador’s camp for high school students which have been occurring for 29 and 24 years, respectively.
Students of Excellence targets gifted students and is led by a team of USD students.
Heath Weber, the program director for the Ambassadors camp, attended the camp when he was younger and has continued to participate in the camp ever since.
“On the surface this camp offers South Dakota’s gifted youth an opportunity for enrichment beyond the regular classroom,” Weber said. “It gives them the opportunity to explore things that they would never get to explore in their classroom.”
Their days are divided into three parts. In the morning students are able to take various academic classes, in the afternoon students practice for a community performance and at night they participate in leadership activities.
During the academic time students are offered a variety of classes. Before arriving to the camp, students were given a list of classes which they then picked their top 12 from and are now able to take them. Some classes include creative writing, PC building, photography, fencing and biology.
Through out the week, high school students have been rehearsing for Thursday’s public performance. The free performance takes place Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Wayne S. Knutson Theater in the Fine Arts building. The performance includes singing, dancing and acting.
Middle school students put together group and individual projects that they will present Friday. The projects are based on something that the students learned during the week. The presentation of projects is also open to the community. It will take place Friday morning in the Muenster University Center.
The Excellence program was originally started as a practicum class for students going in to teaching in the hopes that they would learn how to work with gifted students. Now that a gifted program is no longer mandated in South Dakota, past campers and current USD students run the camp.
Students and leaders will finish the camp Friday evening after an award ceremony that will take place Friday afternoon.
