GS West Campus Website
Welcome, Governor’s School West Students and Families!
GSW 2024 is hosted by Greensboro College in Greensboro, NC.
Announcements
Closing Day is July 20. Please check the resources tab for a schedule and specific information.
Opening Day is Sunday, June 23! Please review the GSW Opening Day Schedule for information on when to arrive, where to park, and what events have been planned for students that day.
Information about campus rules can be found in our GSW Site Details.
GSW Alumni:
Please visit the NC Governor’s School Foundation website to become a registered alumnus, to donate to the GS Foundation, or to learn more about becoming a GS Ambassador.
Thank you for a great summer! The GSW Office closed at the end of the session, and it will reopen in the summer of 2025.
Please contact ncgovschool@dpi.nc.gov with questions.
Weekly Calendars
The weekly calendar includes campus-wide events, such as performances, presentations, and speakers. Some events will be required. Optional events will include elective seminars and activities.
Students, if you have requests for recurring events or student interest groups (SIGs) that you would like to meet regularly, please visit the Main Office.
Campus-wide Events and Performances
Check back later for updates! This document will include dates, times, and locations for campus-wide speakers, performances, and presentations. Note: this calendar was updated on July 9.
View our photo albums!
Photos from Governor Cooper's Visit
GSW Publications: Summerbook
GSW Publications: Podcasts and Videos
Greensboro College - Thank You Video
GSW Podcast: THE Bob Davis Episode
GSW Podcast: The Deans Episode
GSW Publications: Seminar Newsletter
GSW Publications: Special Events
Governor Cooper's Visit to GSW
Guest Speaker Spotlight: Endia Beal
Guest Speaker Spotlight: Sherrill Roland
Interdisciplinary Presentation
What is happening on campus?
Week 3 Area I Updates:
Choral Music - This week, students have been refining their final concert music. Students have been working hard to make our music as beautiful as possible through great attention to detail and great amounts of focus. The energy is building and everyone is excited about our concert on July 15th! Next week, we’ll be taking time to reflect on our Governor’s School experience. As the session comes to a close, we’ll be looking to find ways to take the lessons learned here and carry them back to our lives at home.
Dance - During week 3, Dance students have begun working collaboratively with students from Instrumental Music for a special performance. Students have also been working towards crafting the final elements of the dance performance. Lastly, students have been working on identifying movements that speak to each individual aesthetic to assist in the development of their own style.
English - This week, English students have been diving into their final projects with gusto and imagination! In class, students have been exploring the conclusion of Arcadia, dabbling in the poetry of analogies, jumping into multilingual texts with Sandra Cisneros' "Woman Hollering Creek," and examining postmodern literature through various theoretical lenses. Next week, we look forward to continuing to explore + create literature. We are very excited to present the English department's final event on Wednesday, 7/17, at 8:00 pm!
Instrumental Music - In week three of our instrumental music classes, we began fine-tuning all of the big orchestral works for our final concert that is on Tuesday July 16th! The students have been collaborating with their peers in small sectionals to further improve the performance quality and formed small groups to create program note videos on the different compositions for the audience to witness during the concert. The final orchestra concert is on Tuesday, July 16th at 8pm! Come see your fabulous musicians perform professional level repertoire by various composers of the 20th and 21st century. You don’t want to miss out!
Mathematics - Students will present their research on Monday afternoon at the Math Function! The rest of the week will be spent learning about fractals and fractal dimensions, diving further into knot theory and being able to tell knots apart, and modeling scenarios and learning how to use graphs to solve different types of problems.
Natural Science - Natural Science students have been enjoying their first week of the new session. The transition has been an interesting one, especially for students who haven't done a lot of lab work before. Students are taking a deep dive into information and are starting to see connections between the different courses. Next week, students will take part in the Mad Scientist Ball where they will present their overall research project from the summer. Students in Ley's class will present their new zombie pathogens, and Juliet's class will research on microbiome topics that interest them. We're looking forward to an amazing end to the summer!
Social Science - Check out our awesome video showcasing Week 3 in Social Science. (https://youtu.be/sMmvKXoVqLg)
Spanish - The students finished the adapted drama of Don Quixote, learned the basics of the Latin Dance, Merengue, continued reading and journaling through their novel of choice and looked at Protest Songs from Latin and Central America. Students will take a final look at Don Quixote and possible interpretations, may learn Salsa basics, and will take a look at immigration as well as discover major tourism sites in the Spanish Speaking World.
Theater - Students spent this past week preparing for our week three performance, THE ROLL. The shows have been going well, and it has been wonderful to meet students’ community members! Week four is, oddly enough, my favorite week of GSW for Theater. After the show, we get the luxury of having class time without movement towards production. After debriefing on performances, we will explore college theater programs, audition technique, deeper physical theater training, and additional generative jams.
Visual Arts - During week 4, student groups finish prepping for their Social Practice pieces and will show them for the campus between two days. As we wrap up our session, we take time to reflect and create works to give away as memories of time spent at Governor’s School. Lastly, our students help us pack and clean up and ensure our space is the way it was found.
Update on Activities:
We started this week with an epic open mic night again. It featured karaoke performances, live music, and original poetry. We then featured some outdoor activities that included lawn games and water activities. The highlight of the week was getting to cool down with a water balloon fight. We the. Had our second installment of our Trivia night which featured a new winning team. We’re looking forward to hosting another Yoga Night and having the much anticipated Governor’s School Dance!
Update on Area II:
This week in Area II, students in some of our classes are exploring enduring questions in moral philosophy and ethics. Students are considering different theoretical approaches, applying them to case studies in technology, contemporary society, and the arts. Classes have also been investigating problems in the study of aesthetics, pondering such topics as the relationship between the artist and the art, definitions of art and beauty, and authenticity. Some classes are also pursuing independent group inquiry projects where students are closely examining multiple dimensions of a meaningful question or theme.
Week 2 Area I Updates:
Choral Music - We've focused pretty heavily on learning new repertoire. From dense harmonies and technical rhythms, Choral Music students have been working hard to prepare for their final concert. Along with more repertoire preparation, students have formed groups for 'Chorus Got Talent', where they pick their own choice of song that the Choral Music Faculty will coach them on for a more casual concert for the GSW community. We also look forward to collaborating with the percussion students from Instrumental Music for one of our programmed pieces for our final concert.
Dance - In dance this past week, we have been working diligently on safety release technique. This technique is a genre used to focus on efficiency of movement. In addition, we have been building individual aesthetics through guided prompts. The students are working extremely hard on pieces for our final performance.
English - This week we continued our study on the play Arcadia, reading through to the end and analyzing the characters along the way, as well as diving into the recurrent themes and how they appear through subject or object. In such, we discussed the Infinite Monkey Theorem and discussed how randomization with the appropriate amount of time may–or may not– produce Shakespeare’s complete works. We looked at “Zong,” a poem by M. NourbeSe Philip, and deconstructed languages' purpose and structure in a deeper account by the author. In a challenge that familiarized us with the collegiate library system, we used limited vocabulary to explore further how structure of poetry and prose can reflect subliminal ideas, even when deconstructed. In addition to the poetry and prose explored with the reading of “Zong,” we also created blackout poetry throughout the week — another way of finding and creating individual meaning in text that is already its own individual work. Next week, in addition to continuing their regular classroom study, students will dive into creating their final projects!
Instrumental Music - In our music classes, we continued exploring different artistic ventures with improvisation. Many of the students had the opportunity to freely create music to images and silent films. There was also a very productive discussion about AI in the music industry. And on Friday, a small group of students helped put together a seminar performance of Terry Riley’s in C! We also continued our daily rehearsals in orchestra to further prepare the challenging works we will be presenting at the end of week 4.
In the coming week, more musical topics will be covered in our context classes to further expand the students’ knowledge on the industry as a whole. We will also be preparing for our small ensembles concert which will take place on Saturday the 13th at 8pm.
Mathematics - Students have been diving deeper into their research topics, studying periodic behavior of functions that cascade into chaos, developing an understanding of the field of topology, and learning what it means to prove something to be mathematically true.
Students will begin creating a product with their research groups to show the rest of the community what they learned, formally proving what it means to be chaotic, further diving into knot theory (a subfield of topology), and after rediscovering graph theory, we are using our new math tools to solve problems and reveal new and different ways to work with graphs.
Natural Science - Students have finished their first session classes! Some have been focusing on engaging with data while others have worked on a transformation experiment with E. coli. Ley's students presented their Zombie pathogen posters and described how they would take over the world. In journal club, student teams are exploring their areas of interest, including why some animals evolved to survive on blood and how pesticides impact nutritional value of foods. Groups are hard at work on their presentations for the Mad Scientist's Ball.
The entire faculty look forward to seeing a whole new crop of students on Monday. Classes reset and students will switch teachers.
Social Science - Check out this amazing video our social science department put together for week 2! https://youtu.be/IY0by51GKqQ
Spanish - Students have continued performing an adapted play of Don Quijote, reading and journaling through books of their own choice. We also watched a documentary on the Trial of General/President Rios Mont for Genocide against the Mayan/Indigenous people of Guatemala. We will continue with Don Quixote, individual reading and will learn about Liberation Theology.
Theater - Throughout week 2, the ensemble has been both exploding and exploring new ways of making plays and working on putting those discoveries into script form. The highlight of the week was spending some time outdoors during our brief cooler weather- they created site-specific performances around the quad.
Theater students are pitching their plays to be curated for our show, THE ROLL, next week. THE ROLL is a riff on the Neo-Futurist show "The Infinite Wrench," in which the plays are performed by a randomizing mechanism. I won't spoil the show- but the ensemble is riffing delightfully. We will be getting each individual play up on its feet, sourcing props, refining the work this week. We can't wait to welcome you to THE ROLL.
Visual Arts - As we work through art historical examples, students learn about movements like Dada and Fluxus, Happenings, and Social Practice as well as using video as documentation and an art piece. We end the week by having students start to plan a social practice piece by free writing about a topic or issue that is important to them. During Week 3, we will also have our more traditional art show in our upstairs gallery spaces where students have been given autonomy in hanging and displaying their own body of work from the session so far.
Update on Activities:
Week 2 Activities were absolutely unforgettable! We kicked things off with an electrifying Open Mic Night🎤, where everyone brought their A-game! Monday was all about the heat of the 5-on-5 Basketball Tournament🏀. The Fellows faced off against Team 2016 Cavs in a nail-biting championship, with the 🥇2016 Cavs 🥇taking the crown. But the Fellows are already plotting their epic revenge. Tuesday featured an inspiring talk from Sherrill Roland, followed by a Juneteenth Celebration and recognition event. Wednesday saw the Fellows turning up the fun with their unique Fellow Festivities🥳 in each hall. Thursday was a blast with a red, white, and blue Party in the USA to celebrate the 🎉4th of July🎉! On Friday, everyone found their zen with 🧘♂️Yoga on the Lawn, and we wrapped up the week with a thrilling day of soccer and fun⚽️.
Get ready because next week's activities are going to be out of this world! We've got a spine-tingling, heart-pounding Murder Mystery🕵️ planned. Who did it? Why? Could it be you? Or me? The suspense is real! Plus, can Team “Winners POV” defend their Volleyball 🏐 Championship? Trivia is back, and the competition is fierce—will you claim the victory this time? And rumor has it, there might be water balloons💧making a splash at an event. But you’ll have to come to the Activities Square to find out! Buckle up for an epic week ahead!
Update on Area II:
During Week 2, we discussed the concept of real/reality. We read Plato's “Allegory of the Cave” and Thomas Nagel's "How Do We Know Anything?" Ultimately, we decided that it didn't matter if we were "in a simulation" or if nothing really existed outside of our minds because we were going to continue to do our best to live a good life and make the world nice for others. Next week we will begin to discuss ethics and aesthetics.
Week 1 Area I Updates:
Area I Updates
Choral Music - Week 1 has had a heavy focus on breaking down what it means to be in a choir. We've explored the concept of "music vs. sound" in improv class by not defining certain sounds as "good" or "bad", but rather as a way to delve into what our voices are capable of and push past our preconceived limits. Concepts as simple as knowing how to stand or breathe are broken down into their most basic elements and brought back again as a more fully understood whole. Choral Music students participated in the Interdisciplinary event on Saturday night and used their improv skills to reflect on the defining word of the evening, "genesis". All throughout this week we have been introducing repertoire to emphasize these concepts and in preparation for our concert at the end of the summer.
Week 2 will bring a heavier emphasis on learning repertoire to prepare for our final concert. Representing multiple languages, genres, and notation styles, the repertoire of GSW Choral Music seeks to reach ways of singing that our students may not have experienced at home. From graphic notation scores, to 20th century or later pieces, or to challenging rhythmic or vocal demands, Choral Music students are digging into repertoire that represents a wide variety of concepts. As singing requires so much of the self, we also take time to explore who we are and what it means to be a singer. We look forward to further discussing who we are as singers, academics, and most importantly people.
Dance - This week in dance by Logan Cain, “This week dancers were asked, ‘Can you make a bad dance?’ and then we created some of the worst dances I’ve ever been a part of. These featured bad technique, horrible timing, and even fights. But then we were asked the better question, ‘How can you take a dance that is choreographed badly and turn it into something presentable?’ While collaborating, we transformed our pieces with better technique and creative polish, encouraging everyone to reimagine the choreographic and performance processes. In the end, we threw away fears and original plans to realize what the process really called for: letting go.”
English - The English students have been extremely productive this week! Through diving into the work of playwright Tom Stoppard, students have considered concepts such as: insanity vs genius, physics and time, and creation vs discovery. The students are also exploring the boundaries of literary expression. They dove into the poetry of modernists Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein, and through targeted exercises, experimented with finding their own creative literary voices. For the session's Interdisciplinary event, English and Choral Music students collaborated together to perform for the entire school.
In addition to continuing our current classroom explorations, next week, we look forward to collaborating with the Theatre department on Monday. We also look forward to introducing students to their final project for the summer.
Instrumental Music - In our instrumental music classes, we cover three main subjects every week. Along with daily orchestral rehearsals, we offer a musical context class, improvisation sessions, and small ensemble rehearsals. Context class is a discussion based course where we cover a wide range of topics related to the music industry. Some of the topics discussed this week were centered around the composers of the pieces that we are preparing in orchestra. Students learn all there is to know about the great masterminds behind the repertoire we select and what it means to convey the artist’s message through music. We also had a brief conversation about what truly makes music! The idea was to deconstruct the ideas that the students already came with to give them a fresh outlook on the world of 21st century classical music.
Next week we will continue to prepare our full orchestra for the concert that will take place at the end of week four. As for our other classes, we will continue to have more improvisatory sessions while incorporating other forms of media, cover more musical topics to expand their knowledge on the industry, and continue rehearsing in our smaller sections for the small ensemble concert that will take place at the end of week three.
Mathematics - Math this week learned how to iterate functions and draw cobweb diagrams, worked on puzzles and defined graph theory, and explored an introduction to abstract algebra.
They also met with their research groups, decided on a topic, and started to learn about what it means to conduct math research.
Next week they'll continue researching, start learning topology, and we'll keep working to build our math community.
Natural Science - This week, natural science students have been engaging in critical and out of the box thinking. Students have practiced dissecting an academic journal article, explored how to analyze data, learned the basics of biochemistry and genes, and identified different types of pathogens.
Next week, students will continue evaluating data and practice determining fact from fiction in scientific and popular literature, complete a bacterial transformation experiment, and design their own infectious pathogen that could create the zombie apocalypse.
Social Science - Check out the amazing video our social science department put together for their week one!
Spanish - Week one included an adapted play of The Classic novel Don Quixote, in which the students acted out and used puppets for Act One, scenes one through three. In addition, the students spent time learning about El Salvador, its civil war and the place of the Catholic Church and Evangelical Churches and LGBTQIA rights within its cultural challenges of the last four decades. The students also spent time reading and journaling through Spanish novels as well as learning the basics of the popular dance, The Bachata.
Week two will continue the adapted play of Don Quixote, including the filming of the famous windmill scene. Reading, journaling and illustrating will also continue as the students move through their novels of choice. In addition, time will be spent covering the challenges of development in Guatemala, as well as the uses of Liberation Theology. Students will also learn the basic steps of the Merengue as well as practice translation focusing on cognates and context.
Theater - In week one, we have been building trust and collaborative language as an ensemble through movement exercises, improvisation, and workshopping short original pieces. We've introduced some introductory building blocks to Viewpoints work, and we are making our way towards creating short Neo-Futurist plays. The students are lovely, kind, funny, and collaborative.
In week 2, we will make as much short-form performance as possible. Next week will be full of short play assignments that rely on the skills and collaboration we're building this week.
Visual Arts - During the second week, students turn their focus to understanding how the mediums they chose have implicit history attached to them, particular craft materials. Students will explore form and identity through a ceramics project and are provided a space to mix monoprinting and freedom of expression.
Update on Activities: Week 1 Activities were a blast! We kicked things off with some epic Quad Games that set the tone for an incredible week. Trivia Tuesday had everyone racking their brains 🧠, and the Fellows took the spotlight with their spectacular Fellow Festivities on Wednesday night. Thursday brought out our playful sides with an exhilarating Field Day, where 🚦Red Light Green Light kept everyone on their toes! The week culminated in a fierce yet friendly Volleyball Tournament🏐, where Team 🥇“Winners POV”🥇 emerged victorious, claiming the first championship 🏆! We wrapped up the week with a sensational Week 1 Celebration, dancing the night away🎶!
Get ready for even more excitement next week! Here’s a sneak peek: On Sunday, showcase your talents at 🎸Open Mic Night🎤—bring your friends and steal the stage! Monday heats up with a Basketball Tournament 🏀—gather your best five and compete against top-tier teams, with a rumor that the fellows might join in (but keep that under wraps). The fun continues with a spectacular July 4th Celebration🎆, peaceful Yoga on the Lawn, a vibrant Juneteenth Celebration 🎉, and thrilling Pick-up Soccer⚽️! Trust us, you won't want to miss out on these events! We’ll be seeing you soon😎!
Update on Area II:
Our Area II classes had a great week getting to know each other and exploring some of the "big picture" questions of Area II, such as "how do I know what I know?" and "how is knowledge a social project?" Students also spent some time investigating what it means to ask a good question. Area II instructors also put on some great seminars, with topics including language families of the world, ethics and charity, and the ethics of using knowledge gained through unethical means. Next week, Area II classes will continue examining topics of language, consciousness, aesthetics, and more! Students can also look forward to seminars on topics like archaeology 101, out of context thought experiments, and the evolution of alphabets offered by our wonderful Area II faculty.
Pre-Session Update:
3, 2, 1... Let's go, West! We are just 3 days away from the official beginning of the 2024 session of Governor's School West and the staff of GSW and Greensboro College are eagerly awaiting the arrival of students. Wondering what we've been up to? Lots of planning, preparing and presentations. Staff have been working diligently to get ready for students but are excited for the fun to begin.
Social Science Fellow, Dylan Ward, explained when asked what he is most excited for that he is looking the most forward to working with "the best and brightest our state has to offer."
"I'm looking forward to helping students navigate challenging questions with curiosity and care," said Kirby Jones, Area II Teacher.
Lead Art Teacher, Alexis Michelle, said, "I'm most excited for new perspectives on old traditions."
We can't wait to see you on Sunday for opening day.
Continue to check back for more updates and pictures during the session!