OSU's summer camps focus on STEM for K-fifth-graders

Jun. 24—Inside one of the classrooms at Oklahoma State University's Endeavor Lab, 23 kindergartners through second-graders were busy building "igloos," made from plastic bowls, cotton balls, tape and flexible wires.

They were all campers at OSU's STEM Engineering Adventure this summer, and they are learning about insulators and how they work in engineering.

Oklahoma State sophomore engineering student Keeghan Hess said it was his first time to intern at the STEM camp, and so far, it was going well.

"One of the biggest things that we try to teach at these camps is teamwork," Hess said. "Most of these kids are so young that they don't fully understand the concept yet, and that's a super important thing to learn, because if you can't work with a team, you're almost obsolete."

Hess said that for engineers, the biggest thing they do is work with different contractors, homeowners and companies.

"That's their job," he said. "(They have to) come to a single (focus) instead of everybody doing their own thing."

The campers had just returned from a trip outside, where they launched water bottle rockets in the yard across the street from the Endeavor Lab.

Clusters of excited campers showed off their self-designed water bottles, some claiming they were "smoothies," having stuffed bits of paper into the bottles.

Meanwhile, OSU STEM intern Cade Blakeman placed the water bottles onto a nozzle or airtight "launcher," and used an air pump with a handle to push air into the bottle. When a camper squeezed a "pressure release" or bike handle, the "rocket" launched across the yard — much to the delight of the campers.

OSU's K-12th camps include summer camps, teacher training programs or virtual resources available for educators and students in all 77 Oklahoma counties. OSU STEM Camps Program Director Jovette hopes to expand the STEM camps to all counties.

STEM camps, such as the Engineering Adventure, are offered through OSU and the National Defense Education program, but they also partner with community entities such as Freedom City OKC, Urban Coders Guild, Boys and Girls Club and more, according to OSU's Department of Defense STEM website.

In 2021, OSU's College of Engineering, Technology and Architecture partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense to reach Oklahoma students with STEM education and resources. CEAT received a $6 million grant through the Department of Defense. The goal was to provide every child an opportunity to discover STEM for themselves.

Program Director Dew said, in the past, OSU was only able to put on a couple of summer camps, but with the DOD grant, the university has been able to scale up its offerings.

Now, 60 STEM programs will be held across Oklahoma this summer with around 2,000 K-12th-graders attending.

The camps are tailored with a "near peer teaching approach," with OSU students working directly with student campers. This method allows campers "to connect more with their instructors and see themselves better represented in STEM environments."

Hess said he was involved in robotics in high school and heard about the camps through another intern.

"I've been interested in engineering since the day I can remember my first thought," Hess said. "(High school robotics) is very similar to what we're doing now with the community outreach and teaching students STEM. I really enjoyed that, so I thought, 'Why not try and continue to do that?'"

Hess said the first couple of weeks he and the other OSU interns spent most of their time training — prepping for classes, learning how to help the campers with activities and safety issues, deciding what supplies they would use and more.

STEM Camps started June 3, and will continue through most of the summer. K through fifth-grade campers were divided into two groups. Hess said the seven interns teach four activities in both morning and afternoon sessions, which includes a lunch break and bathroom break.

With each camp lasting four days, campers learn 16 different activities based on a new theme each day — including building igloos, coding robotics, launching water bottle rockets and completing a chlorophyll project.

Hess said the chlorophyll project was one of his favorites, and he explained how the students extracted the color from leaves, using rubbing alcohol and coffee filters.

"We have them rip (the leaves) up into small pieces and put it in the cup," Hess said. "And then, they take their popsicle stick and they mush it around and stir it up, trying to kind of break up that leaf, making it easier for it to soak up into the coffee filter."

The students pour rubbing alcohol into the cup until the leaves are covered by the rubbing alcohol and dip the coffee filter into the cup until it's saturated with the color from the leaf.

Hess said the class also learned how to code a robot in an activity called, "Think Like a Robot." The interns split the campers up into pairs — one camper acting as a robot, one camper acting as a coder. The students would create robot dances with the coder giving step-by-step instructions to the "robots."

"What we teach them more specifically, is the fact that robots don't think like humans do — they can't infer," Hess said. "Everything that a computer does it's been told to do."

Even the interns — Blakeman and Jaydynn Walden — got involved.

"Yesterday I was doing ballet," Hess said. "I'm not really a ballet person, but the kids loved it."

Hess said there was a big learning curve when he first began studying engineering, but now he feels at home.

"Just jump right in," he said. "... Don't be afraid of failing, because that's what engineering is ... you fail, and you do it again ... and again, until you find an answer."