History
Telluride Association seeks out young people with the desire and the ability to contribute to society, and helps them develop intellectually and as community members. Telluride Association promotes no particular political or religious viewpoint.
Telluride Houses, or Branches, have operated at Cornell University since 1911 and at the University of Michigan since 1999. Each house is populated by a diverse group of graduate students and undergraduates who share an interest in self-government and intellectual community. 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 such 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. A handful of faculty also live at the houses for limited terms. Distinguished faculty guests of the Cornell Branch have included Michel Foucault, Richard Feynman, Frances Perkins, Linus Pauling, and Allan Bloom.
Telluride Houses have formerly existed in Pasadena, California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.
Telluride Association Summer Programs, or TASPs, are six-week educational experiences for rising high school seniors offering intellectual challenges rarely found in secondary school or even in college. They are designed to bring together young people from around the world who share a passion for learning. Telluride students, or TASPers, attend an intensive seminar led by college and university faculty members and participate in many other educational and social activities outside the classroom. Like the Telluride houses, each TASP receives a discretionary budget, whose use is democratically distributed via weekly house meetings
Admission to TASP is based on an application that includes six essay prompts and for some, an interview. Out of approximately 950 applicants, about 180 are given an interview with members of the Telluride Association or TASP alumni. Admission is very competitive; in recent years, fewer than 10 percent of TASP applicants have been admitted. A total of 86 students are admitted to the five TASPs. Many students are invited to apply based on strong standardized test scores or the nomination of educators who are familiar with TASP. However, any high school junior may request an application, and acceptance largely ignores standardized test scores and graded academic performance. Like other Telluride programs, TASPs are free.
Since the first TASP was held in 1954, TASPs have been held at college and university campuses across the United States. Nationally known faculty who have taught TASP include: John Schaar (UC Santa Cruz), Hanna Pitkin (UC Berkeley), Donald Kagan (Yale), Kurt Heinzelman and Sue Heinzelman (University of Texas), Herbert Storing (University of Chicago), Robert Nozick (Harvard), Leon Kass (University of Chicago), and Thomas Palaima (University of Texas). Alumni of TASPs and Telluride Houses include political economist Francis Fukuyama, literary critic Gayatri Spivak, political theorist William Galston, former Stanford Law dean Kathleen Sullivan, Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg, literary critic Paul Wang, and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz.
Telluride Association Sophomore Seminars, or TASSes, are also six-week summer programs. TASSes, which are offered to high school sophomores, have an academic focus on African American studies and related fields. Their basic plan is similar to that of the TASPs, and some TASS alumni choose to attend a TASP the following summer.
TASSes have been held at Indiana University since 1993 and at the University of Michigan since 2002.

Awards
Telluride Association consists of about 100 volunteer members. Members are elected to membership, usually while in their early twenties, on the basis of demonstrated leadership and commitment to Telluride's educational goals. The Association's membership is comprised mainly of current and former participants of its programs and a few who are alumni of Deep Springs College, a separate two-year college founded by Nunn in 1917.