Tapped by TIP

 

In honor of its twenty-fifth anniversary, Duke's Talent Identification Program instituted an awards program to recognize significant contributions by its alumni. The TIP program identifies gifted children and provides summer sessions on the Duke campus to develop their abilities. Besides classes for fourth- and fifth-graders, there is a seventh-grade talent search program that focuses on the identification, recognition, and support of high-ability students who can take college entrance exams alongside high-school students.

Awards were presented in the areas of community service, the arts, and career/profession. Of the four TIP alumni named recipients in May, two went on to graduate from Duke: Stacy Stansell Klein B.S.E. '91 and Marc Starnes B.S.E. '93.

Klein, who was recognized for her career achievements, earned a master's in biomedical engineering at Drexel University and a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University. She taught high-school science for three years and introductory engineering courses at Vanderbilt. The high-school-level, biomedical engineering curricula she designed has been recognized by the National Science Teachers Association as one of the fifteen best practices in science education in the country. She runs national workshops for high-school science teachers to train them how to use her challenge-based biomedical engineering curricula.

Starnes, who won the TIP award in community service, is a mathematical statistician for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. He earned two master's degrees from Johns Hopkins University--one in public-health policy and management and the other in biostatistics. He was recognized for providing academic, emotional, and financial support to an underprivileged young man in Baltimore. Through Starnes' mentoring and encouragement, the student was accepted by a highly regarded private school in Baltimore and is now enrolled at Bowie State College.

Kevin Young, a professor at Emory University, was recognized for his national reputation as award-winning poet and editor, and Rachael Goodhue, an associate professor in the agricultural and resource economics department at the University of California, Davis, was recognized for her professional accomplishments as a public-policy economist.

 

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