The Telluride Association is a non-profit organization in the United States founded in 1910 by Lucien Lucius Nunn and named for his city of residence, Telluride, Colorado. The organization states its mission as providing young people with free educational programs emphasizing intellectual curiosity, democratic self-governance, and social responsibility. The Association's principal programs are summer seminars for high school students and the operation of scholarship "branches" for college students. These residential programs are extremely selective and are offered at no cost to the students. The Association is governed largely by those elected to membership from its recent alumni, Deep Springs College alumni, and current Branch students. History Lucien Lucius Nunn founded this association in 1910 after building the first Telluride House at Cornell University. The first President of the Telluride Association was Charles Doolittle Walcott, a paleontologist and fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The house originally provided room and board for young men who had worked for Nunn and were studying engineering at Cornell. It has since expanded to encompass a variety of co-educational summer programs, scholarships, and additional houses. The Association is non-denominational and tied to no particular political viewpoint. Telluride Houses Telluride Houses, or Branches, have operated at Cornell University since 1910 and at the University of Michigan since 1999. Students participate in a year-round public speaking program and plan academic seminars. The houses are largely self-governed, with somewhat different focuses: residents of Cornell Branch take on such responsibilities as hiring employees and maintaining and renovating the house, while residents of Michigan Branch plan and execute an annual project linking practical work in the community with theoretical and academic inquiry. Distinguished alumni include Steven Weinberg, Barber Conable, Eve Sedgwick, Francis Fukuyama, Paul Wolfowitz, Jan Švejnar, Dominick LaCapra, William vanden Heuvel and Gayatri Spivak. Faculty guests also live at the houses for limited terms. Distinguished faculty guests have included Michel Foucault, Richard Feynman, Frances Perkins, Linus Pauling, and Allan Bloom. Telluride Houses formerly existed in Pasadena, California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Telluride Association Summer Program Telluride Association Summer Programs (TASPs) are six-week educational experiences for rising high school seniors. Participants attend an intensive seminar led by college and university faculty members and participate in educational and social activities outside the classroom. Like the houses, each TASP receives a discretionary budget, whose use is democratically distributed via weekly house meetings. Currently, TASPs are hosted