BALTIMORE June 12, 2008 — For high school graduate Tiffany Dinkins, a summer scholarship to study the Chesapeake Bay Oyster helped launch a career in the sciences.

After receiving a scholarship for an advanced summer course through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (www.cty.jhu.edu), the Gwynn Oak teen discovered she was deeply interested in the sciences. Over the next four summers, she took advanced classes ranging from principles of engineering design to genomics – and recently was accepted on a full scholarship to Duke University.

“I aspire to one day become a cardiac surgeon,” said Dinkins, who qualified for CTY’s Talent Search by scoring in the top five percent on a standardized test in fifth grade.  “But wherever I go in my future, I will always remember the impact CTY had on me.”

Goldsmith Family Foundation makes the difference

Left/right: Beth Goldsmith, Emily Rockefeller, Cole Salters, Chloe Friedman, Tiffany Dinkins, Rachel Chappell, Teryn Dickson, Dominique Willis, Courtney McKeldin, Suzanne Cohen and Nicola Heller.

On Tuesday, June 10th, Dinkins joined five other Baltimore area students in the Johns Hopkins Mt. Washington campus Octagon for an afternoon reception thanking their scholarship donors and honoring the 15th anniversary of The Harold N. Goldsmith Scholarship Program. Since 1993, the Goldsmith Family Foundation has provided more than $1 million in financial aid for more than 400 promising students in Baltimore and Maryland to attend CTY Summer Programs.

“The Goldsmith Family Foundation has played a pioneering role establishing CTY’s local outreach and scholarship programs,” said CTY executive director Dr. Lea Ybarra.

The foundation established the scholarship program in memory of Harold Norman Goldsmith, a Baltimore businessman who desired to make a difference in public education and ensure all children have an opportunity to fulfill their potential. The program has served as a model for CTY programs in other urban areas, and inspired support from many local philanthropists – including Suzanne Cohen, who provided Tiffany’s first scholarship.

Over 174 Baltimore area students benefited in 2007

In 2007, 1,730 qualified students were provided $4.26 million in scholarships to attend the Center for Talented Youth’s Summer Programs. In Maryland, there were 174 scholarship students, with more than half of those coming from the Baltimore area.

In contrast, fewer than 50 scholarships were available in 1993, the first year of the Harold N. Goldsmith Program. “There were hardly any scholarship funds available prior to then,” Ybarra said. “We had students who qualified for our programs, but couldn’t afford the tuition.” These students’ success in CTY courses, however, propelled the scholarship program’s growth, encouraging grants from other foundations and philanthropists.

Baltimore City seventh grader Dominique Willis was at the recent reception to thank Beth Goldsmith, the president of the Goldsmith Family Foundation. “Without CTY and the help of the Goldsmith Family Foundation, I probably wouldn’t be so passionate about creative writing, and probably wouldn’t already be thinking about Columbia or Brown for college,” she said. 

For Teryn Dickson, a rising junior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, CTY’s courses “aren’t about doing school work. They’re about goals, and what path you want to take with your life.”

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About The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth (CTY)

CTY conducts the nation's oldest and most extensive academic talent search and offers educational programming for students with exceptionally high academic ability. CTY parallels, and complements, a gifted child’s regular school experience. CTY’s programs and students have been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and other premier American publications. Other information:

• CTY is a nonprofit center at The Johns Hopkins University.
• CTY draws students from 50 states and DC, as well as students from over 90 countries.
• 2007-08 saw over 63,000 second- through eighth graders participate in CTY’s Talent Searches.
• CTY provided $ 4.52 million in financial aid to over 1,700 students in 2006-07.
• In the 2006-07 Talent Search, 15.6% of students in CTY’s Talent Search were identified as underrepresented.
• Gifted students qualifying for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program may join the Talent Search virtually for free.

More information is available at www.cty.jhu.edu, including a 2006 story that aired on NPR about middle schoolers and the SAT.

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