Arizona Western College in Yuma launches its first ever high school science camp this summer. Organizers hope to use the camp to encourage a love of science in local students. Maya Springhawk Robnett of the Arizona Science Desk reports they were surprised at the community response.AWC math professor Reetika Dhawan hoped to share her love of science with local high school students. When she and an administrator at the college came up with the idea for a science camp, they thought they’d offer 24 spots and see what happened. Instead, Dhawan says, "We got more than a hundred calls so we’re going to focus again on the same camp next year.”
The camp, open to students from 14 to 18 years of age, filled within three hours, leaving more than 70 people on the waiting list. The tuition-free workshops last five days, three hours each day. They will focus on topics such as disease transmission, fossil examination, physics, and entomology.
Paid for by a grant from the Science Foundation of Arizona, Dhawan says the camp will expose high-schoolers to science in a hands-on environment, “And they will learn basically stuff from the ninth grade of science to all the way to college. I mean, it’s real stuff going on in real life.”
The camp will take place June 27th to July 1st.