40 Coweta County students have been nominated to the 2007 Governor’s Honors program. Nominated in a variety of academic areas, the students have held formal interviews to attend the prestigious summer academic program at the end of January through the beginning of February.

Governor’s Honors – held each summer at Valdosta State University - is a highly competitive six-week summer instructional program designed to provide intellectually gifted and artistically talented high school students challenging and enriching educational opportunities not usually available during the regular school year.

Nominees and their parents were honored at a breakfast at the Central Educational Center January 18.

At the January breakfast, Coweta County School System Superintendent Blake Bass honored the nominees, saying that they all were among the most talented and highest-achieving students in Coweta County.

Bass also recognized Newnan Crossing Elementary School media specialist Dale Lyles, who has long participated in the Governor’s Honors program and serves as the program’s assistant program director.

Lyles was also a governor’s Honors student himself, in the summer of 1970, when he attended Newnan High School. Lyles noted that the program is highly competitive, with only 700 students statewide selected from among 2,500 nominees. “We can’t take everyone who deserves to go.”

Lyles and other former Coweta County Governor’s Honors students spoke to this year’s nominees.

East Coweta High School student Eric Arnold - who attended last summer, specializing in science – told the nominees that he wished he could go to Valdosta with them. “You’ll have a lot of people tell you that this will be a life-changing experience,” said Arnold. “They’re right.” The 700 students chosen to attend Governor’s Honors are “top-notch, high-caliber students.”

Ginny McGuire, who attended Governor’s Honors from Newnan High School to study Spanish in the summer of 1972, told the students that the experience will be well worth the effort.

Becky Freeburg attended Governor’s Honors in drama in the summer of 1973, said that her experience was wonderful. “But the honor… to be recognized by your teachers is the best thing about it.”

Rising juniors and seniors are nominated by their teachers to Governor’s Honors, and must pass interviews to attend the selective six-week academic program. The program is designed to allow students in-depth studies in major and minor subjects of interest, and provide each participant with opportunities to acquire the skills, knowledge and attitudes to become independent, lifelong learners. Students are nominated in a specific instructional area in which their abilities, aptitudes, and interests lie.

Each school system is assigned a nomination quota based on the average daily attendance of its 10th and 11th grade students. Nominees are informed of final acceptance decisions by early April.

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