SENGChat: Challenge, Community, & Opportunity: Exploring a University Radical Acceleration Program for Girls Age 12-16

Radical acceleration has been proven to be an effective educational intervention (Assouline et al., 2015; Gross & van Vliet, 2005). Results include demonstrating strong social and emotional skills, individual income far above the national average, and completing more higher education degrees (Hertzog & Chung, 2015; Jett & Rinn, 2020; Wilson, 2021 ). In this way, the opportunity to pursue radical acceleration can address the educational malnourishment that many gifted students face in the K-12 education system (Cross, 2014).

Founded in 1985, Mary Baldwin University's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG) is a unique research­based program for gifted girls aged 12-16 who want to pursue their university career early by living in the PEG dorm and attending university classes. PEG students receive services such as specially trained staff, mentoring, optional in-house counseling, Peer Advising, and peer led programming. This allows them to perform their best and explore the many opportunities on campus. Whether that's researching with their psychology or biology professor, playing collegiate softball, or being Editor in Chief of the university literary magazine, these young women get a true college experience. Once graduating from Mary Baldwin, some PEG students go straight into the world of work, while most others continue their education at some of the nation's best universities, including Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Oxford. Regardless of their path, PEG graduates go on to have impressive, and fulfilling, lives around the globe, including excelling as surgeons, lawyers, artists, researchers, and entrepreneurs.

About the Presenters: 

Carla Van Devander became Director of the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG) in 2018. She is also an Assistant Professor for Mary Baldwin's School of Education offering coursework on classroom and behavior management, instructional differentiation and exceptionalities. And she is the coordinator of the Education Leaders Learning Collective (ELLC). Prior to her full-time role at MBU, Carla was a teacher and then served as a differentiation specialist focused on gifted and academically motivated adolescents.

Liesel A. Lutz is a 2020 alum of Mary Baldwin's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted. She is currently a doctoral student studying Educational Psychology, specializing in Gifted and Talented Education, at Baylor University. Liesel's research interests include motivation and belonging, especially as they relate to gifted and talented students, as well as students who are twice exceptional.