CRSTL’s Summer Engineering Camp a Success

Friday, July 28, 2017

In July, the OSU College of Education’s Center for Research on STEM Teaching and Learning (CRSTL) collaborated with the OSU College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT) to offer an engineering camp for kids entering grades fourth through sixth grade.

This camp is one of many that OSU hosts in the summer to challenge students intellectually. Engineering camp focuses on helping students make sense of the engineering design process and creates career awareness related to engineering fields.

The engineering camp was instructed by Dr. Becky Hammack and directed by CRSTL Director, Dr. Juliana Utley.

“With the increased need for a strong STEM workforce and in particular the high need for engineers it is important for students to be exposed to engineers and the work of engineers earlier than high school,” Utley says.

With several engineers providing their expertise at the camp, students explored a variety of engineering activities, such as designing boat that would travel in water propelled by a motor and designing a car that could hold an egg without breaking when crashing into a wall. Along with these activities, students also went home from camp with an activity to explore on their own each day.

To create career awareness in the engineering field, students toured labs in CEAT while engineers helped them understand the variety of engineering careers available.

At the end of the week, a showcase was held where students presented projects and activities they completed to family and friends.

“My son loved the camp because it gave him opportunities to practice being a leader and allowed him to learn about the various fields of engineering,” Everett Miller, father of an engineering camp student, says. “He liked the camp because it took math and science off of a piece of paper and put them in his hands.”

CRSTL is planning to hold the engineering camp again next summer. Learn more CRSTL’s work at crstl.okstate.edu.