Supporting Academically Gifted Low-income Youth

 

Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
Image: cty.jhu.edu

Accomplished venture capitalist Harvey Goldstein has spent more than 50 years in the Southeast Asian market and possesses decades of expertise working with foreign investors in Singapore and Indonesia. Outside of his work, Harvey Goldstein is a champion of supporting gifted students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and has worked with the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Talented Youth.

Findings from a Johns Hopkins study into high-ability students from low-income backgrounds indicate a lack of resources for gifted students. While many states enact policies to identify gifted students and train teachers to challenge these students appropriately, the study shows that all states need to improve access to resources that enable gifted students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds to perform at an academically advanced level.

Johns Hopkins researchers advise policymakers to expand universal screening programs to identify high-ability students earlier and offer more responsive learning tracks to all advanced students, including dual grade-level enrollment and early graduation programs.

Francis Crick, Notable Alumnus of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering

 

Francis Crick
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Indonesia-based business leader Harvey Goldstein attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where he received the Outstanding Electrical Engineering Alumnus Award in 1993. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree from the university, Harvey Goldstein moved to the Southeast Asian region, where he eventually founded PT Harvest International Indonesia, a firm that has directed billions of dollars in investments and venture capital to Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

One of the oldest, most important engineering schools in the United States, the NYU Tandon School of Engineering formed when the Polytechnic Institute merged with New York University’s engineering school. Since its inception in 1854, the school has been home to numerous prominent alumni, including Francis Crick and several additional Nobel Prize winners.

Born in Northampton, England, in 1916, Francis Crick earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at University College, London. Although World War II interrupted his studies, he returned to academia; after earning his PhD at Cambridge University, Francis Crick moved to the United States to conduct research at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering). During this time, he was working on innovative research into the structure of DNA with several other scientists, including James Watson.

In 1953, Watson and Crick formally proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, a groundbreaking hypothesis that eventually led to the duo receiving the Nobel Prize. Over the next several decades, Crick would continue his groundbreaking research in biochemistry and receive numerous honors for his work. He died in 2004.

Johns Hopkins Discovery Awards Chart New Interdisciplinary Territory

Discovery Awards
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American business executive Harvey Goldstein leads PT Harvest International Indonesia as its chairman. He has built up more than 40 years of experience at the helm of major projects dealing with technology, natural resources development, consulting, and investment in Indonesia and the Southeast Asian region. In addition, Harvey Goldstein remains dedicated to assisting promising but under-resourced students in their educations, and has funded full scholarships for some of Singapore’s brightest young men and women to attend Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth.

His commitment to Johns Hopkins University (JHU), and its current president, Ronald J. Daniels, is noteworthy. Daniels has developed the 141-year-old research university’s considerable capabilities even further, with an extensive focus on collaboration across disciplines.

In 2017, JHU presented its latest round of Discovery Awards to 26 interdisciplinary faculty research teams. The awards, comprising 23 Category 1 and three Category 2 prizes, span nine of the school’s academic divisions. JHU’s Category 1 awards offer $100,000 to each recipient team for collaborative efforts that cross divisional boundaries. The quarter-million-dollar Category 2 awards are designated as project planning monies, to be used in support of applications for large-scale external grants.

The 2017 roster of Discovery Award recipients includes teams working on projects that include the use of innovations in DNA sequencing to diagnose infections, the investigation of the role of hydrogels in assisting post-stroke recovery, and an inquiry into whether metadata gathered from mobile communications devices can help trace demographic shifts in the developing world.

The Role of Parents in the Online Education of Gifted Students

Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth
Image: cty.jhu.edu

A graduate of NYU, Polytechnic, Syracuse University, & SUNY at Buffalo, Harvey Goldstein has been the president and director of PT Harvest International Indonesia since 1987. While maintaining his Indonesian Office, Mr. Goldstein moved to Singapore to become a director at Business-Link Consultancy Pte Ltd, and has been based there since 2006. Apart from his professional pursuits, Harvey Goldstein is an active supporter of Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.

Founded in 1979, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth is on a mission to educate some of the brightest and most advanced K-12 learners from all over the globe. The organization conducts an annual search for students who meet the criteria for enrollment. These students are then given further training through its summer and online programs.

The center’s online programs cater to thousands of students from over 60 countries every year. This unique, individualized, distance-learning program provides challenging yet academically appropriate courses to participants through email and virtual classrooms. The success of this program does not only rely on the students’ natural abilities, but is also dictated by the participation of their parents and guardians.

Parents and guardians, by providing appropriate moral support and guidance, are an important component within the program. By ensuring that the students promptly turn in their homework and exams, and that they are in constant communication with their instructors, parents and guardians contribute to their student’s success.

CTY Explores Ways to Inspire Hard Work Among Advanced Learners

A foreign direct investment expert based in Singapore, Harvey Goldstein is a director of Business-Link Consultancy PTE LTD, and is the chairman of Harvest International in Indonesia. In addition to stimulating investment, Harvey Goldstein endorses educational opportunities for the most gifted young students worldwide by supporting the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

Center leader Elaine Hansen recently authored on article that discussed the relationship between intelligence and hard work in order to explore claims that academically advanced students have less “grit.” According to leading CTY faculty and staff, there are too many personal factors at work to make such a generalization, but the organization’s educators explain that they do employ strategies to help student sustain grit. CTY educators foster hard work by focusing on three main imperatives, which include combating boredom, emphasizing questions instead of answers, and rendering hard work contagious.

Hansen asserts that boredom is one of the main issues for advanced students, whose abilities may be untested by standard school curriculum. To overcome boredom, educators establish high academic goals, challenge students with difficult material, and maximize self-directed, interactive learning. CTY educators also state that students work harder when they are surrounded by motivated peers with whom they can collaborate to seek knowledge and tackle problems.

International Students Gain Access to Program for Gifted Youth

Harvey Goldstein, a business executive who founded PT Harvest International Indonesia, is actively engaged in helping talented students pursue higher educational opportunities in the United States. He established the Goldstein Scholarship program so that gifted students from Singapore with financial need can attend Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY) summer programs. Through this scholarship, Harvey Goldstein helps talented students attend a prestigious academic program where they can envision their potential to contribute to the future economy in Singapore, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian nations.

CTY provides residential summer courses in the United States and Hong Kong for qualified students to pursue challenging academic work. While the program focus is academics, students also gain valuable social experience from interacting with peers. CTY conducts a talent search to identify potential program participants. Students who attain qualifying scores can attend CTY summer program or online courses. In addition, CTY participants gain access to other learning resources, such as magazine and Web content, additional educational testing, and college counseling.

International students who wish to participate in the CTY talent search can apply online and submit a parental consent form. Students may register for tests via an approved testing agency. After testing is complete and scores are calculated, CTY mails test results to participants.