Founded in 1990, the North Dakota Governor’s Schools (NDGS) have given over 1200 North Dakota High School students the opportunity to experience what life can be like on a college campus in a summer residential program. The program started with two areas of study: Mathematics, and Science. After two years it was decided that more could be done to enrich the lives of our scholars so morning Life and Leadership classes began. This allowed our scholars more time to interact with people not in their discipline.

In the late 1990’s, Business was added. The funding for this program originally came from local businesses but was later fully funded by the state legislature. Shortly after Business began, both Visual Arts and Performing Arts were added on an odd year/even year rotation. Initially the Performing Arts program was paired with the Moorhead, MN-based Trollwood Performing Arts School, but it was later run as a joint venture between the Theatre Arts Department at NDSU and Theatre B, a Fargo, ND theater company.

In 2008 NDGS expanded again, this time making Information Technology (which had originally been a part of the Math program) its own discipline. The next year, English was added as a 3 week trial program. After proving to be successful, it was expanded to 6 weeks. NDGS continued to expand by adding Engineering in 2013 and Architecture/Landscape Architecture in 2014.

Due to a lack of funding, NDGS was not open from 2020-2023.