New coding and service camps highlight Engineering Challenge Camp schedule

Students from 17 states will be attending the Statler College’s annual Engineering Challenge Camps.

Students from 17 states will head to Morgantown this summer to attend one of 14 Engineering Challenge Camps being offered by West Virginia University.

“In addition to our local students, we have campers coming from as far away as Russian and Alaska,” said Cate Schlobohm, outreach program coordinator in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. “It’s very rewarding to see so many campers from previous years decide to study engineering at WVU as a result of their experiences at camp; many even spend the summer with us as camp counselors.”

The seven-week series of camps begins the week of June 18 with the Statler College’s newest offering for high school students: the Engineering in Coding Camp. Campers will see how computer science and engineering skills can be applied to topics like robotics, cyber security, the “Internet of Things,” biometrics and the human-computer interface. Campers will get the opportunity to meet with industry professionals and Statler College faculty to design and build hands-on solutions to real-world problems.

“Parents and campers have shown interest in a computer science-based camp for several years,” Schlobohm said. “With the support of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and several industry partners, we were able to put together an exciting week of activities.”

Also that week, the first of three middle school camps will be held. Engineering Around the World will take campers from Japan to India to Brazil as they explore bridge building, dam construction and wind turbines. The camp will be repeated the weeks of June 26 and July 24.

Another new offering, Engineering in Service, will be held the week of July 16. Campers will see how engineering skills can be applied to serve others in their communities and across the world. Throughout a series of day-long projects, campers will get unique hands-on community service experiences while working as a team and applying creative problem-solving processes.

“We have integrated community service activities into past agendas, which have resonated with our campers,” Schlobohm said. “We decided it would be fun to build an entire camp around the idea of using engineering skills to serve others. The camp filled very quickly!”

The popular all-female high school camp, Growing Roots in STEM, returns to the schedule the week of June 25. Campers will design and build hands-on engineering projects, tour industry facilities and work in teams and with professionals to learn about career paths and opportunities within STEM.

Two high school camps—Engineering in Action and Engineering in Sustainability—will be conducted the week of July 9. Engineering in Action focuses on how engineering can be applied to the sports world. Campers will tour athletic facilities with civil engineers, build and test cardboard canoes, learn the physics of weight lifting and baton twirling, learn about traumatic brain injury research and more. Focusing on energy problems and solutions campers attending Engineering in Sustainability will learn about sustainable design and sustainable technologies, while thinking of novel ways to apply these technologies to every-day scenarios.

A series of week-long, half-day camps, Engineering Your Dream Job, will be held for elementary school children. Morning sessions will be held for campers in grades first-third, while fourth and fifth graders will meet in the afternoon. Campers will explore careers ranging from doctor to geologist to astronaut as they build articulated hands, conduct rock experiments and build air pressure rockets. The camps will be held the weeks of July 17, July 24 and July 31.

WVU’s Engineering Challenge Camps are co-sponsored by the Statler College and EQT, and are sponsored in part by Halliburton and Eaton.

---