A group of Western Kentucky University students, led by a Gatton Academy alumnus, will be cycling across the United States this summer to raise money for Alzheimer’s research.
The Fijis Across America fundraiser is being conducted in memory of Barrett Cummings, the grandfather of ride founder and WKU student Tyler Jury of Elizabethtown. Jury is a 2008 alumnus of the Gatton Academy.
The group hopes to raise $75,000 to benefit the Greater Kentucky/Southern Indiana Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and to increase local, state and national awareness as the students ride about 3,200 miles from California to Virginia.
The ride will begin in late May in Oceanside, Calif., and end in July in Yorktown, Va. The students will travel through nine states – California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia. (Click here for the route.)
In addition to Jury, riders include Chaz Vittitow of Louisville, Mitchell White of Bowling Green, Justin Cave of Glendale and Wade Haga of Lexington.
The students have been working for several months to organize the ride. Last fall, riders attended Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walks in cities across Kentucky, including Bowling Green, Elizabethtown, Louisville and Lexington, to promote the trip. They are currently seeking corporate and individual sponsorships.
More information about the trip, including a link to the group’s Facebook page, is available online at http://fijisacrossamerica.com/
For information, contact Tyler Jury at (270) 766-7121.
There are two great passions that I have as an employee of the Gatton Academy:
1) Helping to get parents, educators, and other adults better informed and excited about the important role gifted education plays in our schools and communities; and
2) Experimenting with the power of social media (like Twitter and Facebook) to shape our discussions online.
The Gatton Academy (@gattonacademy) and The Center for Gifted Studies at Western Kentucky University (@giftedstudies) have been excited to join in what has become a vibrant community of parents and educators on Twitter who share news, information, and insights about gifted education. Over the past several months we have come to fully realize how working together makes us a stronger body of advocates. You can check out a list of gifted education advocates on Twitter at by clicking here. With Twitter, our conversations are usually shared back and forth through individual tweets.
Beginning this Friday at 11 a.m. (Central) and 6 p.m. (Central), Deborah Mersino (@deborahmersino, Ingenious Blog) will host the first Gifted and Talented Chat, better known at #gtchat. If you’re interested in participating, you need only sign up for a Twitter account. Observe, think, and share. It’s that simple. When tweeting as part of the chat, simply include the #gtchat hashtag at the beginning or end of your tweet. Using a Twitter client like HootSuite or TweetDeck can make this easier. You can also follow the chat by Twitter’s search page or as an RSS feed.
If you’d prefer to simply look in on the discussion this time around, you can always come back to this page and follow the updates below. This is the first of what will become a weekly discussion on gifted ed. If you have questions about using Twitter or would like more information, send an email to academy@wku.edu.
Ballard Metcalfe of Eminence, Ky., didn’t seem nervous as he stood before a panel of legislators, policy advocates and business leaders in a meeting room of the Library of Congress.
Metcalfe wasn’t worried that his audience would dismiss the group’s message because of their age. Instead, it made him all the more confident.
“Students are able to create solutions that are ultimately bipartisan and pragmatic solutions, without many of the anxieties our current leaders face, such as protecting their own power,” Metcalfe said. “We are objective and our only goal is for the future.”
The Energy Board is a unique group of 50 national leaders on energy policy issues. Metcalfe and his colleagues from other National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Math, Science and Technology (NCSSSMST) schools were granted a tremendous opportunity to take action and affect energy policy in the country today, and as they consider their college and career choices in the future.
The proposal’s genesis came during the 8th Keystone National Youth Policy Summit (YPS). In June 2009, 30 students from seven math and science schools from across the country came together in Keystone, Colo., to develop consensus-based recommendations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the United States.
Additional Gatton Academy students participating in the conference included Elaine Flynn of Demossville, Ky., Alexander Hare of Morehead, Ky., Holly Mitchell of Salvisa, Ky., Kaitlin Oliver of Central City, Ky., and Hunter Smith of Elizabethtown, Ky.
The summit and subsequent white paper allowed participants to take stock of the larger technical, legal, environmental, social, economic, and political problems associated with current and future reductions in emissions across 10 sectors of the economy. Students shared their own research, sharpened the definition of the issues and options, and sought consensus on recommendations.
Derick Strode, the academy’s coordinator for research, internships, and scholarships, explained the summit and presentation were an extraordinary opportunity to combine advanced research with real implications.
“This was a chance for Ballard to apply his research, learning, and ideas to an important, real-world application,” Strode said. “As one member of the energy board pointed out, the presentation was especially influential because the students’ were not coming with any special interests to represent.”
Given the global emphasis on reducing greenhouse emissions, the topic serves as both a timely and relevant for emerging young leaders in science and mathematics. With guidance from the experts in science and public policy, these high school students produced viable approaches to dealing with a problem that is confounding national policy makers as well as those in state legislatures across the U.S.
Keystone Naitonal Energy Board Meeting
“Reducing greenhouse gases will be of utmost importance for the preservation of the environment for my generation, and many generations to come,” Metcalfe said. “It is important that we work towards achieving the goal of reducing greenhouse gases before it is too late, and one way to work toward that goal is by means of our recommendations.”
The findings were reported to energy and government leaders within their communities. Greenhouse Gas Reductions in the U.S. (PDF Link) represents the results of the students’ deliberations in the form of a written set of consensus recommendations.
Participants noted, if implemented fully and completely, the suggestions in this proposal would, over a four-decade time horizon, slow, stop and then reverse the trend of increasing carbonemissions in the United States. The primary driving force for these reductions in emissions is a market-oriented cap-and-trade system. Although the consensus statement was developed separate from, and independently of, other national initiatives, the economics bears striking similarities to H.R. 2454, or the Waxman-Markey Bill, which passed the House on June 26, 2009 — two weeks after the end of the student summit.
Student participants acknowledged the proposal is a compromise, and that it is not a perfect or a complete solution to the climate problem facing the United States. Instead, the policy suggestions were offered as possible catalysts for a shift in the nation’s perception of pollution, environmentally-friendly lifestyles, and policy making.
Metcalfe shared the advice given to him by a member of the board after Wednesday’s session.
“There are many people on either end of the spectrum, those in academia on one side, and the policymakers and politicians on the other,” he said. “Many times, these groups are not proficient at communicating ideas or understanding one another. Mediating between the two sides is an important task in our age, one that requires people who possess skills in both areas. Hard work on the part of people like myself and the other students who attended the YPS will be needed in order to mediate between the two ends of the spectrum, in order to form the policy that will make the world a better place for all.”
For information, contact Derick Strode at (270) 745-3167.
