Learning Unlimited helps high school senior with an award-winning idea

Andy Keller describes Granite Hills High School as one of the "better" high schools in San Diego. Granite Hills has an International Baccalaureate program for academically advanced students; some of its graduates continue to prestigious universities like UCLA and Stanford.

But when Andy wanted to take an IB physics course as a junior, only 14 of the over 650 juniors at Granite Hills showed interest, and so the class was cancelled.

Andy, who had a subscription to Popular Science at age 10, was appalled. "How can a school with such a large population have so few students who want to take challenging courses? Why is the school turning away new students due to overcrowding when my AP and IB classes are often half empty?" he wrote.

Later that year, Andy attended Spark and was able to take courses on black holes and quantum theory from MIT undergraduates. (Spark is MIT's spring Splash program.) At Spark, Andy was surrounded by enthusiastic teachers who designed their dream courses and excited students who wanted to be taking those classes.

And Andy thought: why not bring this kind of passion to Granite Hills?

Andy and six of his classmates are organizing STING, a one-time program that will introduce middle school students to Granite Hills' academics and extracurricular activities through courses taught by high school students and others. The idea has not only been received enthusiastically by the teachers and administration at Granite Hills, but it also won him the 2010 Dreamers Challenge for Southern California and earned him a scholarship from the California Museum.

"More than just getting middle school students interested in a topic, I want them to continue that activity after STING, whether that topic be physics, tennis, or anime," Andy said.

Andy has also been working with Learning Unlimited throughout the planning process. LU CEO Daniel Zaharopol, who has been running enrichment programs for over ten years, advised Andy on the program’s organization and offered Andy a website and scheduling software.

"The website is awesome," Andy said. "I wouldn’t have been able to do anything this intense on my own. We had been planning to register teachers and students by hand."

Andy will be entering college in the fall and intends to major in physics. His award-winning essay is available here (PDF), and more information about the award is here.

Help LU reach more students hungry for learning!

Fall 2010 Goal: $10,000.
Fall 2010 Raised: $9,225.

To help LU reach its Fall fundraising goal, the Board of Directors has personally offered to match all donations received in the remainder of 2010, up to $2,000.

LU needs your help more than ever! The requests from college students eager to start Splash keep pouring in and we need more money to train college students, provide websites for registration, and to mentor student leaders running those programs. Without your support, these new Splash programs won't happen!

Our goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of 2010, and we need your help to reach it. The Board of Directors, all of whom are volunteers, have come together to make this a success: donations received between now and the end of 2010 will be matched by members of the Board of Directors up to $2,000 total.

LU programs are run by college students who get substantial leadership and service experience—and won't get that experience without LU training and support. Our Splashes reach as many as 2000 students each. The best part is that the LU model is self-sustaining: local programs fund themselves. Because of the success of our model, you get the kind of lasting payoff that you rarely get at this level with charitable organizations.

This year, with the help of our supporters, we reached 5,000 students and started three new programs. We are now on track to reach 50,000 students annually by 2015, at which point the organization will be self-funded. Your gift will truly be used to impact thousands of students for years to come!

You can donate here, and thank you.

Diary of a Nonprofit Startup

As CEO of Learning Unlimited, it's been a wild ride guiding the organization to success. Before LU, I'd never run a nonprofit. So at the end of this year I took some time to reflect and write down everything that LU's been up to. If you're curious what it's like to start a new organization, or if you want to know where your volunteer hours and donations go, I hope that you'll take a look!

What We're Reading

Questions of what real leadership looks like and the solitude necessary to understand yourself are considered in this fascinating article Solitude and Leadership.

Elementary school students do real science and have it published. Should science education look like this?

Scientific American says that we have to do more to recognize the importance of spatial intelligence.

And finally, for much younger kids: we all know that talking to your child is important to build their vocabulary. But a new NSF study finds that when parents talk about numbers, childrens' math skills improve, too.

Upcoming Programs

January 25-February 22 — Cascade at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Weekly on Tuesday nights. Free.

February 19 — Splash at Duke University, Durham, NC.

February 19-April 16 — HSSP at MIT, Cambridge, MA. Weekly Saturday classes on a huge variety of topics. $30, fee waivers available.

March 12 — Spark at MIT, Cambridge, MA. $20, fee waivers available.

March 26 — cSplash at New York University, New York, NY. Focus on math and science. Free.

April 2 — Splash at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

April 16-17 — Splash at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. $40, fee waivers available.

There's even more coming—watch this space in the coming months for additional program announcements!

Also, please be warned that the LU server is currently experiencing some problems maintaining its connection and the weather has prevented us from servicing it! Thus, some of these sites may not function properly. We expect full functionality to return by Thursday.