The Center for Talent Development of Northwestern University serves academically talented students, their families, teachers, and counselors.
Identification is the crucial first step in the development of talent.
Multiple social contexts such as home, school, workplace, and neighborhoods influence talent development. Talent development is a process of understanding, providing, supplementing, and managing social support systems that enhance the development of talents and the development of the individual. Academically talented individuals exist in every racial and ethnic group. Gifted education is vital education-education that stimulates, excites, gives life, challenges, provokes, and inspires. Education programs for academically talented students should encourage students to set high goals and meet them, stimulate students' passion for learning, their quest for a vocation, and the development of a philosophy of life.