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The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics ('''NCSSM''') is a two-year, public residential high school located in Durham, North Carolina . The school accepts rising juniors from across North Carolina and enrolls them through senior year. Though S&M is a public school, enrollment is limited, and applicants undergo a competitive review process before being admitted. NCSSM is a member of the NCSSSMST and a member institution of the University Of North Carolina . HISTORY The brainchild of former North Carolina Governors Jim Hunt and Terry Sanford , and well known author and academic John Ehle , NCSSM opened its doors in 1980 as the first school of its kind in the United States. NCSSM is located on the site of the former Watts Hospital , which operated there from to 1908 to 1976. One of the school's buildings is still known as Watts and houses the math department, many administrative offices, and the school registrar. NCSSM's campus is listed in the National Register Of Historic Places , and it is home to a refurbished lunch counter from a F.W. Woolworth 's in Durham, in commemoration of a Sit-in which took place in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 7 , 1960 . The student body has grown to approximately 650 students since 1980. Since its inception, the school has been fully funded by the state, meaning no student is required to pay any tuition, room, board, or other student fees. A tuition fee was considered for the 2002-2003 school year, but it was abolished at the beginning of the term and students were able to have the fee refunded. Students who would have experienced hardship due to family or financial situations were able to have the fee waived. Legislation was passed in 2003 granting all graduates of the school free tuition to any institution in the University Of North Carolina System , as an incentive to encourage NCSSM's talented students to stay in North Carolina. The school has served as a model for 18 similar schools, many of which are now members of the National Consortium For Specialized Secondary Schools Of Mathematics, Science And Technology . ACADEMICS Designed with a strong focus on science and math, all students are required to take 2 trimesters of Physics , Chemistry , and Biology during their two year stay, and are required to complete at least 6 math credits. Although focusing in science and math, the school maintains strong humanities programs as well. Many humanities offerings are more innovative than those at traditional public high schools, with courses ranging from interdisciplinary combinations of History and Literature to studies of contemporary culture in Latin America and Africa . Every teacher is required to have at least a Master's Degree , and one instructor has five PhD s. The educational staff are highly qualified and knowledgeable in their fields. A prime example of this would be one of the foreign language instructors who has studied thirteen different languages. A particularly unique aspect of academics at NCSSM is the existence of a two week (eight academic days plus two weekends) "miniterm" in the spring where students are able to design their own independent project or study with staff support, travel abroad in a faculty designed study, or participate in one of a wide range of small classes designed by faculty including: A Short History of Oral Tradition, The Human Genome Project and Disease, and Shakespeare . Students also have the option of designing semester-long seminars in topics of their choice for partial academic credit. The school is currently run on a 3 trimester system rather than 2 semesters. The school switched to this from year long classes in 2004. This allows students to enroll in a greater variety of classes but, due to the need to condense courses, less material is taught. For example, students in the past needed to take one year of physics to meet graduation requirements. Now, however, only two trimesters are required. The mathematics department offers classes such as " Game Theory and Combinatorics ," " Vector Functions and Partial Derivatives ," and other post-calculus mathematics courses. NCSSM's budding Computer Science department offers both introductory programming classes and upper-level classes that combine advanced algorithms with Discrete Mathematics . Students at the school are strongly encouraged to become involved with computers and technology. One example of this is "Neverland," the official name of the entirely student-run, Linux -based server. The server, whose web site resides at neverland.ncssm.edu , provides personal and academic web space to students as well as computing resources to research groups on campus. The student administrators, who change each year, have traditionally also maintained a lab of Linux-based computers used to instruct other students in the use of Linux through seminars. This lab was displaced during the 2004-2005 academic year, and it has not yet settled into a new location. The students are not given a class rank and are encouraged to strive for their best rather than competing against other students, but students have consistently done extremely well in national academic competitions. It was not until several years ago that students were given grade point averages to simplify the college application process. Even without the standard methods of encouraging academic achievement, students attending NCSSM strive to be challenged intellectually and to succeed in their courses. DEMOGRAPHICS
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