floors as a whole. The Decathlon always took place on the weekend immediately preceding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January and served as a time of reunion for former students and housing staff, who often came and stayed in Gunn Hall for the weekend and participated alongside current students in the competitions. Academy students were allowed to participate in any extracurricular clubs or activities on campus except for social fraternities and NCAA athletic teams. Advanced Academy students have, at various times, headed the school's robotics laboratory, intercollegiate mock trial team, Catholic Life Society, Asian Student Association, and the student LGBT support group, Lambda. Past students have gone on to take professional or leadership roles in the West Georgia community, including student newspaper editor, Housing and Residence Life staff, and Honors College staff. Changes for the 2016-2017 Academic Year As the program was phased out in 2017, the Advanced Academy faced many changes in preparation for its discontinuation. Instead of accepting new residential students, the program only accepted new students who planned to commute to the school. The students who were returning from the 2015-2016 year (which included 2 international students) still planned to finish their high school education in the residential program, and were accommodated at the Oaks residence hall instead of their usual location at Gunn hall. The juniors during the 2016-2017 academic year were transferred to the school's normal dual-enrollment program for the following year. The 2016-2017 academic year also saw the removal of many events and practices designed to build community among Academy students, including mandatory Thursday Night Dinners and the Decathlon. The blue and green books, which were designed to ensure that the staff knew the location of each student and whether they were in the residence hall for the night, became impractical and were replaced with an online form. The director at the time, Adriana Stanley, left in March 2017 and was replaced by Kate Theobald as the interim director until the program ended in May 2017. Notable alumni Over 750 students have attended The Advanced Academy of Georgia since its inception in the Fall Semester of 1995. Academy alumni have gone on to attend several prestigious colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Yale University, MIT, California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Brown University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, Emory