"It helps kids grow a growth mindset," Julie Gruber, outreach coordinator for the Benjamin Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, said. "A lot of the times they're stuck in like, 'I can't do this, I'm a failure.' Engineering helps teach them that you're not going to get things right on the first try."
Going on for 11 years now, WVU's Statler College is holding its summer engineering challenge camp this week.
The weeklong program takes place in June and July. The camps are broken up into three groups, elementary, middle and high school. Activities for the campers are selected based on age appropriateness, with the youngest kids encountering engineering concepts for the first time. Older kids get to work on more advanced projects like building a camera from scratch. Three hundred and four students took part across the entire camp this year, with 41 campers at Statler College this week.
The program is popular, with the elementary and middle school camps filling up in March on day one of registration.
Gruber said that it's a great way for the kids to immerse themselves into a science, technology, engineering and mathematics environment without being overwhelmed and just doing math and science all the time.
"The math and science is there but we're trying to show them that you don't have to be a genius in math and science to be successful in engineering," she said. "You just have to know how to solve problems."
Although Gruber was an excellent student throughout grade school and went to an excellent high school, she didn't know exactly what engineering was until she reached college. It's a similar situation that a lot of other students throughout the state are also in, she said. Programs like the challenge camp can expand a child's worldview by providing the exposure.
At the middle school portion, grade schoolers argued with each other over who got to be mayor for their assigned project. Ditching voting, one group settled the matter with rock paper scissors, with rematches demanded when it didn't go someone's way.
One of the counselors, Connor Anderson, is an incoming senior in mechanical and aerospace engineering. His love of teaching is what led him to become a counselor this year. He corralled middle schoolers for a lesson about how civil engineering happens. Although topics touched on infrastructure, municipal cooperation and industry, the main goal for the exercise was learning how to work together so that their differences could complement each other for the common good of all.
"It's very important that kids learn more about the world," Anderson said. "Kids are very curious. Their brains are like sponges. It's important that we teach them about all these different things in STEM so they come out with some kind of lesson being learned."
Exposure to STEM is important for another reason. The older the groups got, the fewer girls were there. The elementary school group was about an even split, but the high school group only had one girl in it. It's a trend Sherrie Schulz, a rising senior studying computer science, is familiar with. Only about 10 percent of her classmates are girls. In high school, she was surprised by how much her male classmates already knew, herself only being exposed in the 10th or 11th grade.
Gruber said the problems enrolling girls in camp reflects the same problem enrolling women as freshman in STEM programs. About 20 percent of the student body at WVU Statler is female. That's why programs like the challenge camps are important, because they can show girls that engineering isn't just for boys. It plays into society all throughout, she said.
"A girl's perspective, as a minority in the group, can bring a different perspective on each project they do," Lauren Musbach, rising senior studying biomedical engineering, said.
Introducing middle school students to the engineering design process in class could be one way to bring more women into engineering, she added.
The next big outreach event for Statler College takes place in October. Students will build a contraption that will protect a pumpkin from a tall vertical drop. Gruber also does school visits, and has a Listserv that teachers can join to be included in those visits.
"There's a time and place for lectures and notes," Gruber said. "But if you can make their learning exciting and make it come alive, that's really important to their learning. They're going to remember that once they're out of your classroom."
©2023 the Times West Virginian (Fairmont, W. Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
