Zwickel, Steven B.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering has been sponsoring Camp Badger Exploring Engineering since 1998. I have been a Camp Facilitator from the beginning. Our goal is to bring kids from all over the state to spend a week living on the UW-Madison campus and learning all about many different ways of applying math and science, particularly in the fields of engineering. The campers have been identified by their parents and teachers as having good math and science skills. We try to recruit children who need hands-on experiences to fuel their motivation to stick with math and science courses in school. They often come from families where college degrees are not the norm and they may be intimidated by the thought of college. With youngsters who may not think they can become engineers, we try to show them a diverse set of presenters and a wide variety of experiences so they can understand that race, gender or background need not be barriers to becoming an engineer or scientist. We run five week-long sessions each summer, with 30-34 campers in each session. Campers sleep in the dorms, eat in the dining hall and get a real feel for what college is like. Camp Badger campers are supervised by adults and college student counselors. Our campers will be entering 8th grade in the fall, so they are about 13 years old and seem to do best with 45-60 minute-long activities. Experience has taught us that the best way to help young people understand what engineers do is through field trips and visits to job sites, hands-on activities, and small group discussions with professional and student engineers. Visit us on the Internet at http://campbadger.engr.wisc.edu/

Summary

Instructor:

EPD275: Technical Presentations

EPD395: Elements of Computer-assisted Publishing

EPD155: Basic Communication

Date last modified: 07-Nov-2011
Date created: 29-Jul-1999
Content by: zwickel@engr.wisc.edu
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