SD instructor Leo White reflects on his first year at ATDP In a 1676 letter to a colleague, Isaac Newton famously wrote, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Indeed, Newton saw farther than most and remains one of the most renowned scientists and mathematicians of all […]
Read More →Category: Spotlights
Geoff Quan: Filmmaker
We extend our heartiest congratulations to ATDP alum Geoff Quan, who was recently invited into Film Independent’s prestigious Project:Involve film mentorship program as a director. A long-time member of the ATDP family, Geoff attended courses at both Elementary and Secondary Division—everything from Math Analysis to Shakespeare—and later went on to earn a degree in Cognitive […]
Read More →Former SD Instructor Gemma Whelan Launches Novel
Several hundred ATDP alumni share exciting memories of their experiences in Gemma Whelan’s Shakespeare as Theatre classes at ATDP. I particularly enjoyed the performance put on by students in her “Teenagers in Shakespeare” class, which featured actors playing their parts while up (fairly high) in the branches of campus trees. [Yes, this was done both […]
Read More →Supporting Rural Education From Berkeley to China
by Cary Lin, ATDP alum and former TA (writing from Guiyang, China) Every day I wake up to the sight of rice paddies in mountainous and landlocked Guizhou Province, China, and it seems that I really could not be further away from the breezy hills of the Bay Area. As a 2010-2011 Fulbright grantee based in […]
Read More →A Lifelong Community
by Aaron Liao, former ATDP student, mentor, TA, and instructor My name is Aaron Liao. I live in Newport Beach, CA and work for Microsoft as a Technical Account Manager and Evangelist in Hollywood. I occasionally present at conferences, give talks at college recruiting events, and share my experiences working in tech with a variety […]
Read More →From Watts to Berkeley, Part 2
Part 1 (in the Summer ’09 issue): From Berkeley to Watts, and Back Again If this were an east coast prep school, we might say that it’s all about school ties—alumni of a prestigious institution making certain that valuable educational and social experiences are shared with people “just like them” (meaning others already targeted for […]
Read More →World’s Oldest Living Alum Testifies on Behalf of Evolution
ATDP pioneer Abigail Lustig before the Texas Board of Education, posted on YouTube! Back in the dim mists of time (well, in 1982) ATDP began its life as the “UC Berkeley Gifted Program.” One of its 282 students was a middle schooler from Lafayette, CA named Abigail Lustig. As it says on the ATDP Timeline published […]
Read More →Alumna, Engineer, Math Tutor
When Aimee Lopez was a 6th grader, her two passions were soccer and mathematics. When her teacher Grant Mellor (who gave up teaching in favor of being a pediatrician, but who remains a brilliant educator) introduced Aimee to algebra, she put the same dedication and energy into her studies as she did into soccer—an awesome […]
Read More →ATDP and the Internet: Four alumni… four thousand and one stories
Thirteen years is an eternity in internet time. 1996 was the Jurassic era, as far as the online world goes, and that was when ATDP first dipped its toes in the nascent WorldWideWeb. The ATDP website, construction on which began in late 1995 and unveiled before the summer of 1996, was among the first such […]
Read More →From Berkeley to Watts, and Back Again
A young teacher’s journey It always starts with one teacher, and one or two students. More than 20 years ago, a middle school math teacher in California’s Central Valley saw great academic promise in one of her students, and thought he’d be a good fit at a summer acdemic program for gifted students at the […]
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