Because a lot of schools feel like they have to choose whether they're meeting kids' academic needs or they're meeting their social needs. They have trouble doing both. In part because I mean it's a system. A system is designed for the majority of students and so trying to figure out the flexibility to meet the students who are outliers or the range of needs of students can be really tricky. I've had the fortune of working in a public school district that before I came to Kentucky that had lots of different options for different students and they were very purposeful about offering different kinds of programs. So they partnered with charter schools. They opened a school for highly gifted students who are extreme outliers. They offered a lot of different kinds of things for different students because they wanted to meet the range of students. Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so. This is American Potential. Hey everyone and welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host David Fry. You know when you're sitting around talking about stuff that matters, the conversation can sometimes turn towards talking about your kids. I know that's how it is for me. Not just how they're doing but about the school they go to and if you as a parent, like it or not, because you know as a parent you want your kids to be in a place where curiosity is just allowed, it's encouraged a place where they can explore and chase their interests. That kind of atmosphere can make all the difference in how they see the world and that brings us to today's discussion about an academy in Kentucky. It's one of those schools that is really intentional about giving students that space to grow. They built their program around letting kids dive deep into the world of STEM. This academy not only helps the students but the state and its workforce as well. By the time these students graduate they will have already enough college credit hours to have an associate's degree which really gives them a jump on their next step. So let's learn more about this Academy and how it came about with the director of Gatton Academy, Lynette Preetlove. Lynette, welcome. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. It's always great to talk about the Gatton Academy and what we do. Awesome. But before we get going I had to ask because there's a kind of a fun fact about you that I learned from the interview previous that I think it's just so interesting. So your mom is a fire chief, right? Yes. When you guys travel you stopped around a fire station, is that right? Yes. My mother never goes anywhere without stopping at a local fire station and to see how they approach things and it includes a tour. So I've gotten any time I've traveled with her I've gotten to see a local fire station and I have lots of pictures from all of her world travels of all the fire stations that she has seen. Now that's going to be pretty fascinating how cool. It is pretty fun. Yeah, she has a bit of a trailblazer. Is she a bit of a trailblazer? Oh, definitely. She was the first female fire chief to come up through the ranks in Texas at the time. And certainly she was a fire chief and working in firefighting at a time when that was very unusual for women. Yeah. God bless her. That's great. Yeah. All right. So Trudy, that's cool. Well, I mean, probably a lot of her rubbed off on you and what you're now leading at Gatton Academy. Maybe just talk to us about where the idea came from for Gatton Academy and what was the timeline and getting it open and up and running. Sure. Well, the first efforts to think about an Academy in Kentucky started in 1998. At that time, there was an Academy in North Carolina that was a statewide Academy that was like a public boarding school. It was a standalone campus where students came from all over the state to learn an advanced level to finish their last couple of years of high school. And in Texas, there was an Academy at the University of North Texas. So they utilized a different model where they utilized the university system to give students opportunities to really advance for their last two years in high school. And in Kentucky, there was a big push to advance education. At the time, Kentucky was not a leader in developing engineers or people in STEM careers. So there was a lot of thinking about how to change that for the state. And one of those efforts was a proposal to develop an Academy specific to Kentucky that was modeled after North Carolina and Texas's academies. But it took a long time and a lot of advocacy to develop it because we did not open our doors until the 2007-2008 school year. So it took a lot of learning and advocacy to help people understand the benefits of an Academy like ours, particularly in addressing brain drain and workforce development so that Kentucky could compete with the states around us and internationally. So was the challenge getting started? Was it convincing people that there was a need for it and that the resources should be spent to open a school like this? I think yes. Part of it was that it was going to require a significant investment to create an Academy like ours. But also to help people understand what an Academy like this could be because most people, particularly in our area, don't send their kids to boarding school. So the thought of sending your kids away is, to school, is really different. And also thinking about what a public entity could look like that would provide opportunities for students at such a high level, that was also a hurdle. So helping people understand how they could stay connected to their communities where they came from and the schools that they were used to at the same time taking advantage of a university environment, took some time for people to wrap their heads around and for legislators to understand why they should invest those dollars in Kentucky's future. So maybe explain a little bit about what the Academy does and what it offers students, particularly what's different than just a regular student experience in a one-of-the-mill semi-high achieving school. And because we're located on a university campus, we can take the ceiling off of learning for our students and they have all of the resources that the university provides, particularly like physical resources like an electron microscope or other laboratory opportunities that a typical public school district, particularly in rural Kentucky, cannot provide. And which university you guys co-located with? So we're housed on the campus of Western Kentucky University. We're in Bowling Green, Kentucky about an hour north of Nashville. And WKU was selected as the right place because the Center for Gifted Studies has been at WKU for over 40 years. And their expertise was part of that proposal and we grew out of their work. So people knew what was offered here at WKU. And there was a lot of support from local superintendents and other key people, stakeholders that were part of building the proposal and building that out. So what the Gatne Academy is, we are a two-year residential program for high school students who finished their last two years of high school, basically by starting college. But they live in our dedicated residence hall with full-time staff who support them and focus on supporting their academic and personal growth. And then during the day, they're like college students. They are fully embedded in the university for all of their classes. So they take calculus and they take biology or they take microbiology or they take biophysics. And those classes are with other WKU students and taught by WKU faculty. So by day, they are college students. And then by night, they come back to our building in the evenings. We have a curfew and we do checks to make sure everyone's here and doing what they're supposed to do. But then they have a community of peers who are high ability students from across Kentucky who are high school age. So they can have all the academics the university offers. And then in the evenings, they have the community that's appropriate for their age and their development level. So it's a great way to meet all of students' needs in a way that utilizes existing resources. Great. So why would attracted you to Gatne Academy and kind of work in there, really? My career has been almost all in gifted education. I started as a special education teacher teaching students who were struggling learners and then literally cross the hall to work with gifted students in that same school. But I found that gifted students or high-ability learners are exceptional learners in the same way other students who receive other special educational students are in that they need something that's often beyond what is offered in a typical school setting. Because they're just a little bit of outliers from what the school was designed to serve. And so when I learned about the Gatne Academy, I was really excited to see a program that was so fully designed for advanced learners. For learners who were ready for much faster and much more in-depth academics, but also were still teenagers. And so being in a really unique place like this has been a wonderful experience for me. Part of the highlights is I get to see students during two really intense years of their lives, right, teenage years or something else. And most of us wouldn't probably not choose back to go back and be teenagers again. But then I also get to see where they go as adults and reconnect with them because they stay really close with our community, which is really wonderful. And as an educator, it's a little unusual to be able to see where your students go after they leave your school. And so it's lovely to have that opportunity. And so how do you decide which students to accept? Is it kind of similar to college, like where they apply and evaluate them? What's the process like? Sure. It is very much like applying to a selective university. So students apply through our online application. They write some essays. They tell us what their extracurricular activities are. They have to have a 22 math, ACT score or the SAT equivalent. And then they have to have letters of recommendation. And then from there, we select students to interview and they go through a panel of interviews and have a day on campus learning a little bit more about who we are, what we do, and giving them a chance to figure out if we're the right fit for them. At the same time, we're getting to know them. So we know if they're the right fit for us. And then we invite about 100 students each year from there. It's very important to us that we are a statewide program. So in order for a student to be eligible, they have to be a Kentucky resident when they apply. And we want to serve students from all over Kentucky. And we know that students all over Kentucky do not have the same opportunities. So we have something of a holistic process, particularly through the essays and the interview process. We're looking for students who are a little more mature than your average high school student because they're going to live on a college campus and manage their own time and their own schedules. And we want to serve students who are really interested in STEM because our program is very rigorous. And if you don't love science and math, making it through calculus too might be really difficult for you. I would say so. I never made it through calculus too. I've really got to do calculus one. I'm happy to say, but I don't even know there was a calculus too. Oh, well, there's a lot of math. I imagine so. I imagine so. So you're, it's going to be pretty interesting to bring so many motivated students and high achieving students together under one roof. And there's probably challenges, but also I imagine there's just some really cool things that happen when you bring that caliber of student all together. I don't know what to like. Like what's kind of the dynamic that and then you know, are there things that stand out to you about that? You know, we have worked very, very hard to develop a culture of support and not a culture of competition. So our students are coming from schools where they were the smart kid and you know, Vine for Valedictorian is a big part of that and having perfect GPAs. And there's a big spirit of competition often in many schools. And we've worked really hard to build a culture where they all come. They're all high ability students who have been used to that kind of competing. But now we want them to be the best version of them and they all have different strengths. And we're going to put them through really rigorous courses in every STEM area. So you might be really great at math. So those kids who take calculus to and beyond, or you might be really great at biology. And those are different skill sets. And so we have built a culture where students help each other even when the it gets hard. And so it's wonderful to see students helping each other through that struggle and acknowledging that now they're in a place where learning is hard and they haven't been in that environment before. And so the level of support they have for each other is really, really rewarding. But then you also get to be, you know, part of some really interesting conversations between those kids who are really interested in philosophy or talking about physics or how philosophy and physics are related or, you know, the research they're doing that I rarely can even understand what the title of their research is. You know, I'm not the professor in mechanical engineering. So I don't really know what the forces and the materials they're using to test are. But the conversations they have because they all allow each other to really like nerd out in their topic area is just really wonderful. You know, I it's interesting to me you talk, you talk about there's always been some competition but getting them to work together, respect one another, strikes me that that's great preparation for going into the workforce. You know, they're going to be, they're going to have great jobs. They're going to be on teams of other high achieving individuals who are hired and some of them are more experienced in knowledge and that might be intimidating. But like at some point, you know, we all want our teams to work together to achieve more because it's more than, you achieve more than just as individuals. So I imagine this, I think that some typical high school environments don't necessarily cultivate that whereas it seems like this would really prepare students well for that reality. You know, one of the challenges students face when they are working in groups, when you're a high achieving student, you often, I mean, our students are selected to come to us because they care about their grades and they care about their academic performance. I mean, that's one of the reasons why they choose to leave home and come to our program. But that often means that they've taken over every project they've ever done or done all the work for anyone who they deem is sort of not up to the par or slacking a little. And so our students have to learn that you work better if you're not the only voice and you have to value other people's work and other people's strengths. And coming together in an environment where people have similar abilities actually teaches you to navigate that and then they take those same skills out to a more diverse group. So because they work together here, they learn to be better partners when they work in their lab groups here at DBCU that include DBCU students and Gatton students. And they don't walk around our university with like a big label that says I'm a Gatton student, they just blend in. Learning to navigate differences and respect differences and respect different people's opinions and listen to those opinions is really important. And because of the community aspect here, I think our students learn that and then can apply that very quickly as they leave the academy. Yeah, that's that is some great preparation. You know, one of the things that I always, then the show we've talked about education, education, freedom, other parents making decisions for their kids and some of the policy ramifications there. But at the end of the day, I mean the vast majority of students, 90-some percent go to public school. And we want public schools to be as, to me, as many needs and be as dynamic as possible. And you know, we talk about education freedom sometimes. A lot of people think that just means school choice or vouchers or education savings accounts and all. But the reality is, is that greater freedom in the public system is essential for our nation to have the workforce that we need and to meet the needs of kids. And I love this because so often the standout kids, the kids who are high achieving, can get overlooked because it's like, they're fine. You know, I need to focus on the folks who are lagging. And I understand that, but we need to be able to do both. I'll tell you a quick story, which you being in the kind of the gifted, your career being around gifted kids might be familiar or not familiar, hopefully, hopefully not familiar. I have a colleague who's just a super smart guy. You talked to him for two minutes and you're like, okay, you're one of those really smart guys. And he went to school up in Boston, a very elite school. And in elementary school, they said, wow, you're really smart. And they put him in a closet for two years to learn on his own. Because he's like, they're like, we're going to hold you back. We're going to stick you in this closet and you can learn on your own. And then after the second year, there was another kid they put in with him. And I was like, man, they seem a little, little prepared for the really outstanding students. And now eventually high school and other thing, he was able to go to a very elite high school and have his needs met. But it just struck me that we haven't always done it the right way when we're trying to meet the needs of really smart talented kids. You know, that story really resonates because a lot of schools feel like they have to choose whether they're meeting kids' academic needs or they're meeting their social needs. They have trouble doing both. In part because, I mean, it's a system. And a system is designed for the majority of students. And so trying to figure out the flexibility to meet the students who are outliers or the range of needs of students can be really tricky. I've had the fortune of working in a public school district that before I came to Kentucky that had lots of different options for different students. And they were very purposeful about offering different kinds of programs. So they partnered with charter schools. They opened a school for highly gifted students who are extreme outliers. They offered a lot of different kinds of things for different students because they wanted to meet the range of students' needs. So it is possible, and it is possible, like at the Gatne Academy, to meet students' academic and social needs. And one of the benefits of the Gatne Academy is that we offer, you were talking about your friend's elite education, we're able to offer something that's very similar to an elite private education, but for any student from across the Commonwealth who we can accept. And so we provide something that a kid who's from a low-income family from rural Kentucky might not even know with an option and out there to give them the same opportunity that a more advanced student might have. That can change the economics, not just of that student and their family, but of the entire state. Totally true. Yeah, let me ask, what's the cost for students who attend the academy? So the students, tuition, housing and meals are all paid for by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. So they receive essentially full scholarships for their two years with us. And that is a purposeful investment so that it is accessible to any student that we accept. There are other academies, like ours and other states, that only provide tuition-based scholarships. They don't provide the housing, which would mean in Kentucky, the vast majority of our students wouldn't be able to afford to come to us. So the investment from the state makes Gatne really possible for students from across the Commonwealth. That's fabulous. Yeah, I love to hear that. Well, maybe as we look to venture close here, do we have some of the stories of former students? Because that's really one of the ways that we evaluate the success of an endeavor like this. I imagine there are some students who have done just some amazing things. So maybe you could share some stories about former students and what they've achieved after they graduated. You know, it's really fun to see where they go and what they choose to do and just be a part of watching them grow. We have a student from Estelle County, Caleb. He was so interested in the outdoors. Like any chance he had, he was on a hike or walking somewhere and growing up in Eastern Kentucky and on a farm. That was very much his roots. He's one of our students who had the opportunity to go away to college. He happened to go to Harvard, but came back because he really wanted to be part of his home community. And he did a master's degree in bio systems and agricultural engineering and he works for a stream restoration company and works on his family farm. I didn't know stream restoration was a thing, but it is. Jenna, one of our students who was interested in medicine, she is from sort of Northwestern Kentucky in a rural area. She stayed at WKU and went to college, finished college two years after us and then went to medical school. So essentially she was able to start medical school two years early, which is one of the nice benefits of our program. She's doing her residency in pediatrics now at University of Kentucky because she wants to serve people in her home community. So she wants to go back to Trimble County to serve students and young people there. Engineering, we've got quite a few folks who are interested in aeronautics or in space. So we've got some folks at NASA and some folks at SpaceX, which is kind of fun. And you know, at some point when there's a launch, I'm hoping we'll get an invitation to one of those launches through those connections, but we'll see what happens. That's great. Nathan, another one of our alums, he's got a couple of patents in mechanical engineering. He works for a company that does conveyor systems and he's got some patents on some guide rails. And so he's also here. And then we have an alum we often highlight who happens to be a dentist and owns a leather good company that he started while he was here at WKU. So you know, we have students who do, we have also alum who are lawyers and who are financial advisors and actuaries and all different and us some who didn't choose to stay in STEM. But they're all pursuing things that are really passionate to them. And 87% of them will major in STEM or STEM related field. So STEM related or healthcare or teaching, quite a few math teachers. So it's just really wonderful to see where they're launched and the difference they're making in their communities. Well, I just love the idea that these motivated, you know, intelligent kids can kind of be set off to run, you know, and achieve and like just let their mind expand and kind of operate at its highest level with colleagues. Like what I, you know, classmates really, but I think it was colleagues and what a great preparation. I'm so happy to hear about the work that you all are doing getting Academy. I hope you guys have enormous success and just continues to grow. And I'd be excited to hear 10 years from now, but even more alumni stories because it's probably going to be more new and great, interesting things happening. Well, certainly they're going to be working in fields that aren't fields that we have today in 10 years. Good point. Well, we'll have students who are experts in AI and doing all kinds of interesting things. They probably already have students that are expert in AI at least comparatively to a lot of us. Well, we did have an alum presenting the other night about the benefits of working at his company that is at the forefront of AI. So he was recruiting current students to consider taking a gap year. Nice. That's a great, some great richness. I hope that those kids can keep soaking up and that and hopefully benefit, you know, the nation, but especially Kentucky. So I think it's a wonderful program. So I want to thank so much for joining us and sharing the story. Well, thank you for giving me this opportunity where we're really proud of what we offer students and of our student success. And we're really grateful that the Kentucky General Assembly has continued to make this an opportunity that's accessible to students statewide. Yeah, that is great. Well, thanks again. Folks, if you like this episode and like to stay connected with the podcast, be sure to like and subscribe to our channel as well as following us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And always remember, Liberty and Freedom are usually taken for granted. Don't take it for granted. Go out there and defend Freedom and Liberty. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to American Potential. You may listen to more stories from Americans working every day to expand freedom and opportunity in their communities by visiting Americanpotential.com.
