During the summer, students from kindergarten to 12th grade come to NC State’s campus to participate in different engineering camps, including both residential and day camps. The goal of these camps is to educate young kids and teenagers about what the field of engineering encompasses.
Susan D’Amico, coordinator of engineering K-12 outreach extension, said that many people don’t have a full grasp of what engineering entails, so the purpose of the summer camp is to invoke curiosity within young students.
“We often call ‘E’ the ‘silent E of STEM,’ because people just don’t understand what engineers do,” D’Amico said. “What we try to do is make sure that everybody has an equal understanding … of engineering, and that they realize how much it can relate to them.”
D’Amico said that the program is mostly funded by camp fees, with a little help from the rest of NC State or sometimes other private sponsors.
“I would love sponsors, because primarily I’m self-funded,” D’Amico said. “I don’t get any funds from any students on campus, so it’s primarily through camp fees and that is it.”
The day camp costs $425 per week and covers lunch, provided to campers daily in Clark Hall. The residential camp costs $925 and runs for five days, from Sunday to Friday, and the price includes campers’ meals as well as housing in university residence halls.
According to D’Amico, the camp also offers financial assistance to campers. However, there currently are not enough funds available to cover all students who may need financial aid.
Assistant Day Camp Coordinator Whitney McCoy, a Ph.D. student in educational psychology, spoke about their desire to reach out to as many groups as possible to help increase diversity in the field of engineering.
“Susan’s summers definitely speak to the population of people that we have in North Carolina, compared to the population of students that we have in engineering,” McCoy said. “We definitely know what the numbers of engineers look like, and she does the best during selection to try to make sure that we have a population that represents the people that we have across the state and not just who’s in there, so we can increase the pipeline.”
While there is a large focus on trying to get as many kids from diverse backgrounds in the camps as possible, the same effort is put forth when hiring the staff. The staff for the camps is made up of undergraduate students, high school students and trained teachers, and all are hired as paid employees.
McCoy also spoke about the different camps that are in session throughout the summer as well.
“There are seven weeks of day camps, from June 17 all the way through the first week of August,” McCoy said. “Our residential camps are rising 11th- and 12th-graders, and day camps are rising kindergarten through 10th grade.”
To become an undergraduate counselor, McCoy said to look for the job postings around December of each year.
“Around late December, we post on ePack,” McCoy said. “What we do is we send emails to every single engineering undergrad, and then we target the education majors that have taken a certain course, Dr. Bottomley’s course through the College of Education that teaches them about how to teach engineering. We put up signs, and then they go through ePack and have to apply.”
D’Amico said she thinks engineering camp is a good outreach opportunity for NC State so that students feel like the university is their home.
“The kids make some really good, strong connections with a college campus,” D’Amico said. “To feel like, ‘This is my place, and this is a place that I had some fun, this is a place I went,’ when they’re driving by on campus with their families and they can point, ‘I went there.’ This is something they can make a connection, and it kind of breaks down barriers.”
