“Where Smart is Fun!”
August 7, 2007: Where do smart and fun meet? At the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (GSSM), in Hartsville, SC! Our club was honored to host Kim Bowman last week, who is the executive director of the school. Ms. Bowman is rightly proud of the school, located in the Pee-Dee region of our state. She is the mother of three children, originally from West Virginia, and has an impressive background serving schools in our state.
The GSSM, not to be confused with the other Governor’s schools in our state, has many ties with the Lowcountry area: of the 33 board members on the GSSM, 3 hail from the Charleston area; the chairman is Ray Greenberg, from MUSC; there are donors from the Charleston area; 40 alumni live and work here; 10 GSSM students lived at MUSC last summer to perform research; and 7 out of 128 GSSM students are from the Lowcountry.
The school is composed of an even ratio of females to males, and juniors and seniors. Although only 128 students may enroll at the school currently, it has plans to expand to house 300 students sometime near 2010! Currently the average spent on a student at the GSSM is $25,000 per year, compared to about $8-10,000 per child in a public school. The students at GSSM are asked to contribute $1,125 each semester to help defray the tuition. The faculty to student ratio is 1/10. An amazing 80% of the faculty members have PhD’s and 100% of the faculty members have Master’s degrees. Many faculty members were professors of higher education at one time.
The students at GSSM have the opportunity to learn in a very special environment at their school. While an amazing 82% of the students play a varsity sport, they are all gifted mentally. The average SAT score on the 1600 scale is 1365. They are challenged with hands-on research projects, such as the ones that some of the students worked on when they stayed at MUSC. The students have the chance to work with adults and learn research techniques specific to their fields of interest.
Ms. Bowman’s presentation was enlightening to those who were not aware of the amazing resource right in our state. The GSSM is the first stepping stone in the lives of brilliant researchers, scientists, mathematicians, and doctors. We are delighted that many of these students chose to return to South Carolina to continue the cycle.
Submitted by Jacqueline Grau, Keyway Committee