Staffing issues figured to affect a number of activities across the country this summer, but Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY) wasn’t expected to be one of them.
After all, its website refers to the program as a “world leader in gifted education since 1979” and its alumni include Lady Gaga, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
But hundreds of students, including those heading to several locations in Pennsylvania, found out by email that their three-week-long academic program had been canceled due to staffing issues. Even worse, that news was distributed less than 48 hours before the program began, meaning that some of the students already were en route when they and their families were notified.
The Washington Post reported that around 870 of the nearly 2,900 students enrolled in commuter or residential programs for CTY’s first summer session were affected, according to program officials. Run by Johns Hopkins, these programs are held at college campuses and other sites across the country.
Those sites, according to the story, include:
- Johns Hopkins in Baltimore
- Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster
- Dickinson College in Carlisle
- Haverford College near Philadelphia
- Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York
- The University of California at Santa Cruz
Fifteen of the 21 sites were affected by cancellations, the story said.
Affected were programs that included biotechnology, poetry, ethics, psychology, genetics, neuroscience, engineering, the graphic novel and zoology.
Families were offered full refunds of tuition and travel costs but that did little to reduce the outrage, particularly with the notice of the cancellations coming at the last minute, the story said.
“I fully recognize that these options do not make up for the disruption this has created for parents who planned their summers around our programming, and the extreme disappointment for students who dedicated themselves to preparing for this opportunity,” Virginia Roach, the program’s executive director, said in a statement.
One woman told the Post that her 14-year-old son was supposed to attend a residential philosophy program at Franklin and Marshall for three weeks at a cost of more than $5,200.
Instead, she and other families were scrambling to find substitute academic experiences for their children.
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