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It's not your typical summer camp.
Every June and July, young people from around the area gather at the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center. But, instead of roasting marshmallows and tying knots, the students that attend these summer camps are extracting DNA from wheat germ or learning how robots work.
The camps range from half-day outings for the youngest students — introducing preschool and kindergarten students to the rain forest or paleontology, for example — to intensive, two-week sessions on biotechnology that earn high school students college credit.
In one recent camp, for example, fourth and fifth graders were presented a crime-scene scenario that was appropriate to their age group. They had to determine which of two dogs was the “perpetrator” of the crime, a la the popular television series, CSI.
“One of the things we do is talk about forensic science and relate it to something they understand,” said Lisa Blair, director of the Abernathy Science Education Center. “They'll talk about the equipment they see on the shows.
“What we'll tell them is, 'That's all true. It's all the same equipment and now you get to use it.' They truly see themselves as the stars of the program because they're the ones using the equipment.”
All the day camp programs are heavily geared toward science and technology, Blair said. While day camps will never go away completely, Blair and her staff want to focus on multi-day camps and the greater opportunity to explore a topic they provide.
“We're able to get more in-depth with the programs” in a multi-day camp, she said.
Not all the camps deal with such serious subjects as DNA extraction and genetic profiling. Some of them are just plain fun, but they still focus heavily on modern technology, with a twist.
Russ Wilcox — whose regular job is programing and maintaining the shows in the Science Center’s state-of-the-art dome theater and planetarium — took a step back from modern techniques to teach a method of animation that dates back to the earliest days of film.
Wilcox’s students used the art of claymation and stop-action photography to create their own movies during their four-day camp. Claymation is just what it sounds like — animation using static clay figures that are moved and repositioned a fraction of an inch at a time to give the illusion of continuous motion.
The five students split into groups to produce their movies. They started with story boards, hand-drawn representations of the different scenes of the movies, just like in Hollywood. From there, they built their sets and made their characters. Using a still digital camera, the students took dozens of individual photographs, which were combined in the computer to produce the finished short films.
While, at first glance, the claymation camp may not fill the bill of the science-heavy focus of the other camps, it gives the campers an introduction to various technologies, Wilcox said.
The camps are over for this year, but Blair and the Science Center educators are already planning for the future, she said. Beginning next year, everything done at the camps will focus on bioscience and biotechnology. They're hoping to keep abreast of trends in industry around the state and prepare students for the future.
“We want everything we do here primarily to have a bioscience focus,” Blair said. “When you look at job growth and what's happening in the state of Kansas, bioscience is a huge field for our kids.”
Numerous industries, some you might not even think of at first blush, are involved in what's covered under the broad umbrella of bioscience. From farmers and ranchers to hospital laboratories to the new polymer research center at Pittsburg State, bioscience is a growing business in this area and across the state.
“We're hoping we'll generate that interest in the students so we'll have students here in southeastern Kansas that have an interest in bioscience,” Blair said. “That way, we can keep them here in Kansas and working in those industries.
“We hope to generate that interest in our kids in programs that are right here. I hope they understand that, but I also want them to understand that science can be interesting and fun.”
All the camps are limited in size. Blair likes to keep the student-teacher ratio at one instructor for every eight campers. That way, individual students can receive the attention and assistance they need to keep their interest peaked.
The camps are open to all students who can get to the Greenbush campus. This summer, about 400 students attended the camps. That's an increase of about 75 students or more over the previous year, Blair said.
The first camps were held about 10 years ago, she said. The initial focus of the camps was to get young people to the Science Center and get them interested in science.
That changed about three years ago, when the Science Center underwent a major remodeling project.
“We decided at that time we were going to have a major bioscience focus on all the labs we offered during the school year,” Blair said. “What we really need to do then was to carry that focus on and get it into the summer programs as well.
“We're not a facility where you look and don't touch. We want our kids to be very hands-on with the equipment, learning.”
In almost every scientific or educational endeavor, there's the “eureka!” moment, where everything becomes clear. Blair has seen more than a few of those moments while she's been working with the science programs at Greenbush.
“The kids are excited when they come to us, for the most part,” she said. “When we are doing a program like we did this week (in DNA extraction and forensic science), you just stand there and think, 'Holy cow! These kids are in seventh grade and they're getting this.'
“We're instilling that love of science and an interest in science in them at such a young age. Hopefully, they'll keep coming back to us and they'll keep that love of science in them.”
It's not your typical summer camp.
Every June and July, young people from around the area gather at the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center. But, instead of roasting marshmallows and tying knots, the students that attend these summer camps are extracting DNA from wheat germ or learning how robots work.
The camps range from half-day outings for the youngest students — introducing preschool and kindergarten students to the rain forest or paleontology, for example — to intensive, two-week sessions on biotechnology that earn high school students college credit.
In one recent camp, for example, fourth and fifth graders were presented a crime-scene scenario that was appropriate to their age group. They had to determine which of two dogs was the “perpetrator” of the crime, a la the popular television series, CSI.
“One of the things we do is talk about forensic science and relate it to something they understand,” said Lisa Blair, director of the Abernathy Science Education Center. “They'll talk about the equipment they see on the shows.
“What we'll tell them is, 'That's all true. It's all the same equipment and now you get to use it.' They truly see themselves as the stars of the program because they're the ones using the equipment.”
All the day camp programs are heavily geared toward science and technology, Blair said. While day camps will never go away completely, Blair and her staff want to focus on multi-day camps and the greater opportunity to explore a topic they provide.
“We're able to get more in-depth with the programs” in a multi-day camp, she said.
Not all the camps deal with such serious subjects as DNA extraction and genetic profiling. Some of them are just plain fun, but they still focus heavily on modern technology, with a twist.
Russ Wilcox — whose regular job is programing and maintaining the shows in the Science Center’s state-of-the-art dome theater and planetarium — took a step back from modern techniques to teach a method of animation that dates back to the earliest days of film.
Wilcox’s students used the art of claymation and stop-action photography to create their own movies during their four-day camp. Claymation is just what it sounds like — animation using static clay figures that are moved and repositioned a fraction of an inch at a time to give the illusion of continuous motion.
The five students split into groups to produce their movies. They started with story boards, hand-drawn representations of the different scenes of the movies, just like in Hollywood. From there, they built their sets and made their characters. Using a still digital camera, the students took dozens of individual photographs, which were combined in the computer to produce the finished short films.
While, at first glance, the claymation camp may not fill the bill of the science-heavy focus of the other camps, it gives the campers an introduction to various technologies, Wilcox said.
The camps are over for this year, but Blair and the Science Center educators are already planning for the future, she said. Beginning next year, everything done at the camps will focus on bioscience and biotechnology. They're hoping to keep abreast of trends in industry around the state and prepare students for the future.
“We want everything we do here primarily to have a bioscience focus,” Blair said. “When you look at job growth and what's happening in the state of Kansas, bioscience is a huge field for our kids.”
Numerous industries, some you might not even think of at first blush, are involved in what's covered under the broad umbrella of bioscience. From farmers and ranchers to hospital laboratories to the new polymer research center at Pittsburg State, bioscience is a growing business in this area and across the state.
“We're hoping we'll generate that interest in the students so we'll have students here in southeastern Kansas that have an interest in bioscience,” Blair said. “That way, we can keep them here in Kansas and working in those industries.
“We hope to generate that interest in our kids in programs that are right here. I hope they understand that, but I also want them to understand that science can be interesting and fun.”
All the camps are limited in size. Blair likes to keep the student-teacher ratio at one instructor for every eight campers. That way, individual students can receive the attention and assistance they need to keep their interest peaked.
The camps are open to all students who can get to the Greenbush campus. This summer, about 400 students attended the camps. That's an increase of about 75 students or more over the previous year, Blair said.
The first camps were held about 10 years ago, she said. The initial focus of the camps was to get young people to the Science Center and get them interested in science.
That changed about three years ago, when the Science Center underwent a major remodeling project.
“We decided at that time we were going to have a major bioscience focus on all the labs we offered during the school year,” Blair said. “What we really need to do then was to carry that focus on and get it into the summer programs as well.
“We're not a facility where you look and don't touch. We want our kids to be very hands-on with the equipment, learning.”
In almost every scientific or educational endeavor, there's the “eureka!” moment, where everything becomes clear. Blair has seen more than a few of those moments while she's been working with the science programs at Greenbush.
“The kids are excited when they come to us, for the most part,” she said. “When we are doing a program like we did this week (in DNA extraction and forensic science), you just stand there and think, 'Holy cow! These kids are in seventh grade and they're getting this.'
“We're instilling that love of science and an interest in science in them at such a young age. Hopefully, they'll keep coming back to us and they'll keep that love of science in them.”
