Telluride Association

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 "Telluride Houses" 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.

Lucien Lucius Nunn founded the Association in 1911 after building the first Telluride House at Cornell University in 1910. 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, or Branches, have operated at Cornell University since 1911 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 Svejnar, 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.

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