The Boston CTY Alumni Association (CTYAA) was founded in September 1998 by students from MIT and Harvard, and other local alumni. Our purposes are to facilitate communications among alumni, to serve as a point of contact with CTY's main office, to offer courses and mentorships that enhance the educational options available to local CTYers and other talented students, and to offer our members opportunities to develop their teaching skills.
We offer two courses for talented junior high and high school students living in the Boston region. Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science, our spring course, is an abbreviated version of the CTY course of the same name. Introduction to Neuroscience, our fall course, is a series of lectures and activities led by local neuroscientists. Our teaching staff is drawn from MIT, Harvard, and other local institutions, and many of our staff have taught at CTY. We work closely with other MIT groups, including the MIT Educational Studies Program and the MIT Student Information Processing Board. If you'd like to receive announcements of future events and courses for local CTY students, send mail to cty-exec@mit.edu asking to be added to the announcements list. All our courses are free.
If you live near Boston and would like to join Boston CTYAA, have a look at our constitution, then send mail to cty-exec@mit.edu asking to be added to our electronic mailing list for members. Members are expected to attend regular meetings at MIT and Harvard.
In our meetings we apply consensus decision-making, a method that may be new to many participants. Consensus can take more time than a simple vote, but by giving every member of the group a stake in the decision it leads to stronger commitments. Meeting facilitators and meeting participants should take a look at some brief guides on meeting facilitation. (This was originally written for Quaker meetings - you can ignore the stuff about breaking into rousing song - unless you feel like breaking into song :-).)