Sensing and Measuring the Environment Workshop as Exposure to Engineering Technology for High School Students in a Summer Residential Camp

Summer programs are the latest trend in extracurricular STEM education programs offered by universities. Efforts are made towards residential summer programs, which have the ability to expose students not only to specially designed STEM activities but to the university campus environment and student life, as well. These types of programs are expected to have better success in getting students engaged and to capture their interest in STEM fields. This paper presents one example of designing and implementing a summer residential workshop in order to expose high school students to the field of engineering technology, specifically to electrical circuits, electrical prototyping, microprocessor based design, sensing and measuring the environment, and the Internet of Things. The camp includes other workshops that are focusing on other areas of STEM, specifically science and mathematics. The paper presents the workshop setting, the activities organized, and the feedback received from students

Exposing Students to STEM Careers through Hands-on Activities with Drones and Robots

Autonomous robots have been used in a variety of ways from collecting specimen in hazardous environments to space exploration. These robots can be found in various manufacturing systems as Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) to transport parts and assemblies throughout the manufacturing system. They have also been used as a vehicle to convey design thinking and other STEM-related concepts in mechanical engineering/mechanical engineering technology, electrical engineering/electrical engineering technology, computer science, and computer engineering. Various outreach events have included robotics based activities that engage students in building and programming autonomous robots for the purpose of achieving a specific task. These events are often found in schools in a form of STEM outreach, career days, robotic competitions, or during residential on-campus programs. This paper focuses on three robotics related sessions conducted during a three-day summer residential program for high school students offered at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia during the summer educational program named ODU BLAST. ODU BLAST is part of a Virginia Space Grant Consortium initiative called Building Leaders for Advancing Science and Technology (BLAST), offered at three different universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Improving Stem Recruitment Through a Theme-Based Summer Residential Camp Focused on Sea Level Rise

In this paper, the authors present an enrichment program that focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) concepts. The program is named Building Leaders to Advance Science and Technology (BLAST) and is held each summer at three universities across the Commonwealth of Virginia: Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. BLAST is sponsored in partnership among these three universities and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC), and is funded by the General Assembly of Commonwealth of Virginia. Its main purpose is to expose high school students to topics related to different STEM fields through engaging hands-on activities so that more high school graduates will choose to pursue STEM careers. The program stems from the first session that was held at Old Dominion University in June of 2016 and was named ODU BLAST 2016. Two additional sessions followed in the summers of 2017 and 2018. Each year, eighty rising ninth- and tenth grade students from across the state participated in this summer enrichment program. The program is residential and lasts three full days, Sunday to Wednesday, with an overarching theme focused on resilience to climate change and sea level rise. It includes faculty and students from various colleges and STEM fields. The main program has four rotating daily sessions, with additional sessions held on each of the three evenings that students spend on the ODU campus