NextGen Roundtable: Youth Summer Institute

The institute is open to high school students with an interest in current events, government, and/or public policy, and is a great week-long program option for students who have previously attended a Close Up deliberation. Major institute components include: 

• Engagement with experts and policymakers representing a range of opinions and expertise. 
• Policy inquiry workshops in which students will review policy proposals, gain an understanding of the issues at hand, and generate questions for expert panels. 
• Deliberation workshops in which students will work to find consensus around a series of policy recommendations for each issue. 
• Facilitation training to equip students with the skills to lead their own deliberative discussions, including a peer-to-peer deliberation in their home community. 
• Guided study visits to monuments and museums such as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. Memorials, the National Museum of American History, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where students will engage with themes of freedom, equality, and justice and consider how they apply to modern-day issues. 
• Culminating presentations in which students will share key takeaways and recommendations to bring back to their communities. 
• Social and cultural group activities such as night monument tours, explorations of historic D.C. neighborhoods, sporting events, and bowling nights. 
• Earn a Civil Discourse credential and build a verified learning record that can be shared with colleges and universities.

Dates: Monday, June 20, to Friday, June 25, 2027 

Location: Washington, D.C. The institute is residential, with students staying at a hotel in the D.C. metropolitan area. All academic components will take place at the same hotel. 

Eligibility: The institute is open to students who, at the time of the program, will be rising tenth graders through rising college freshmen. 

Tuition: $2,350. This includes lodging, institute sessions, evening activities, meals, and daytime and nighttime supervision and security. Transportation to and from Washington, D.C., is not included.