In 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Telluride Association welcomed the opportunity and challenge to adapt our programming to a new site: The Telluride Association Online Seminar (TAOS).  

Telluride Association has decided to suspend its summer programs, including the TAOS, in 2021. We hope to offer our transformative summer programs again in 2022.

What is TAOS?

A Telluride Association Online Seminar (TAOS) is a free six-week ONLINE educational experience for high school sophomores and juniors that aims to to offer an online Telluridean education to this year’s cohort of TASS and TASP admits.

TAOS allows the Telluride Association to maintain its educational mission: to combine rigorous liberal arts study with practical experience, community-building, and self-governance. All of Telluride’s programs include these four components, though the emphasis varies from program to program.

In TAOS, the primary emphasis is twofold: to offer an online Telluridean education to this year’s cohort of TASS and TASP admits; and to mitigate the inequities of access to education that we see replicated and exacerbated by the transition to online teaching during the COVID-19 crisis.

How will TAOS seminars be conducted?

Each six-week TAOS seminar will be taught by two college or university professors, with 15 TAOSers per seminar. The TAOS seminars will meet three or four times a week, for an hour or two at a time. This year seminars will take place over Zoom and meet mid-afternoon Eastern Standard Time to accommodate students across the Western Hemisphere, as well as students in Europe/Africa. We will offer alternative resources for those unable to meet synchronously, including digital recordings of seminars and additional attention from faculty and staff. Pursuant to the Telluride Association’s policy to bar no student from attending a program for financial reasons, we will offer support to those who would not otherwise be able to access a virtual course. In the spirit of TASS/TASP’s priorities, participants in TAOS will not receive grades or college credit. The six weeks of TAOS will begin on Sunday, June 21 and conclude on Saturday, August 1.

What community building activities will  TAOS provide?

Similar to our traditional programming, TAOS will also offer opportunities beyond the seminar room, as far as the remote format allows. Participants and staff will be given considerable freedom to build their own social community. TAOS communities can choose to pursue additional projects, if they wish, but these will remain optional components that must be designed in line with TAOS’ overall goal to mitigate inequality. The formation of additional committees and programming will be left to the discretion of each individual TAOS.

How are TAOS participants selected?

The Telluride Association is solely responsible for selecting students for its summer programs. In making these selections, the Telluride Association does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, physical disability, or access to technology resources. Immediate family members of TAOS faculty, TAOS factotums, and TAOS Committee members are ineligible for the program, and admissions decisions are made by a separate Summer Programs Application and Recruitment Committee (SPARC).