About GHA

In normal times, the West Virginia Governor's Honors Academy is a three-week summer residential program designed to stimulate and support excellence in education for up to 175 (originally 140) of the state's top achieving rising high school seniors and residents of the state of W.Va. The program is funded by the State Legislature as requested by the Governor. State funds provide tuition, room, board, and instructional materials for each student who attends the program on the site of a residential college campus. In addition, the hosting institution provides significant financial support.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has led to many changes in education in the past year, and that includes plans for the West Virginia Governor’s Honors Academy (GHA) in 2021. The West Virginia Department of Education and the Governor’s Schools of West Virginia are creating a Virtual West Virginia GHA for this summer that will be informative, motivating, exhilarating, and rewarding.  We are consulting with experts who have successfully provided a virtual arts academy, and we look forward to building a successful virtual program for interested students.

A non-credit program that seeks to create a unique experience for a select group of our state's best students and school citizens, GHA provides an intellectual atmosphere impossible to sustain in ordinary academic settings. The excitement of intellectual and artistic pursuits and the expectation of significant conceptual gains permeate all aspects of the participants’ lives for the full three weeks.

The curriculum is designed as a unique supplement to the usual high school curriculum. It is neither an acceleration of high school nor an anticipation of college curricula. Students are led to explore cutting-edge theories in the arts and sciences and develop a greater understanding of how art, culture, and knowledge change with time. Students are challenged to develop the rigorous creative and intellectual skills that will be critical to their leading a well-lived life and for making positive contributions to their communities and to society at large.

In 1984, Governor John D. Rockefeller, IV, started West Virginia's first Governor's School, the West Virginia Governor's Honors Academy (GHA). GHA is a project born of a partnership among education, business leaders, and state government.

The mission of the academy is to operate an academically rich environment designed for high ability/high achieving students in an institution of higher education, challenging them to grow intellectually, creatively, and socially in a culturally diverse atmosphere.

Through a competitive bidding process, GHA has been hosted at West Virginia Wesleyan College, Shepherd College, Marshall University, Concord College, West Virginia State College, Bethany College, Fairmont State University, (two times), and WVU, (four times),  The host for 2018-2022 is Marshall University.