Middle School students have unique STEM experiences at VGCC Science Camp

If you are an area middle school student who spent part of this summer breaking up rocks, bending glass, catching insects, dissecting squids and crayfish, making a compost bucket for worms or building a house for bats, then you must have been at Vance-Granville Community College’s fifth annual Science Camp.

A total of 33 students, including rising sixth, seventh and eighth graders from Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties, completed the day camp, which was held June 15-19 at the college’s Main Campus in Vance County. The week was full of fun, hands-on activities designed to pique campers’ curiosity about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) as they consider their future educational and career aspirations.

Sessions were taught by VGCC instructors, including many from departments outside the natural sciences. Keith Shearon and Wesley Williams, who head the college’s Mechatronics Engineering Technology and Electronics Engineering Technology programs, respectively, supervised as campers worked in pairs to put together small, four-wheeled robots. Later, students competed those same robots against each other.

VGCC Carpentry program head Keith Tunstall and his students helped campers build bat houses to take home, while Biology instructor Button Brady taught them about bat behavior. In another session, campers made their own versions of “lava lamps” using Alka-Seltzer and packaged candy into “blister-packs” as if they were medicine, under the guidance of Pharmacy Technology instructors and students. Fred Brewer, head of the Automotive Systems Technology program, conducted a session on electricity and electronics. Computer Education instructor Donna Gill helped students program a screen saver. In a session with art instructor Isaac Talley, campers made works of art using the reactions of vinegar, lemon juice and salt on copper.

VGCC Science department chair Steve McGrady said those were just some examples of the contributions made by more than 20 faculty and staff members from across all of the college’s academic divisions, who volunteered their time and talents to make the camp a success.

Four volunteer counselors helped facilitate the camp, including three students in the College Transfer program at VGCC: John Aguas of Henderson, Francis Scotland of Oxford and Robert Hudson Jr. of Halifax, Va., as well as Tamiya Davis of Manson, a Northern Vance High School student.

Six high school students who attended the camp in previous years also served as “counselors in training”: Imani Simmons, Noah Whittacre and Thomas Whittacre, all Northern Vance High School students; and Kasey Tanner, Martina O’Briant and Taylor McRae, all Falls Lake Academy students.

 

Above:  From left, Science Camp participants Savannah Jones of Creedmoor and Mar’kevious Cheatham of Oxford set up a chemistry experiment. (VGCC photo)

 

Above: Science Camp participants Emani Foster of Henderson and Evelyn Hann of Oxford dissect a crayfish. (VGCC photo)

 

Above: Science Camp participants test the small robots they had built and programmed in a competition. Standing at left, supervising the exercise, is VGCC Mechatronics Engineering Technology program head/instructor Keith Shearon. (VGCC photo)

 

Above: Science Camp participant Yumyah Hargrove of Henderson (left) conducts an experiment in which a “lava lamp” is created, with the assistance of VGCC Pharmacy Technology student Brandy Lynch of Hollister. (VGCC photo)

 

Related Content: Science Camp photos on Flickr!