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Science Technology & Engineering Preview Summer Camp for Girls
• Technical Activities • Developmental & Recreational • Sample Daily Schedule
Activities
The activities of the camp have been developed to achieve an appropriate balance between technical development and recreational activities and to conform as closely as possible to UW-Stout’s “hands-on, minds-on” philosophy in a small group setting. Selected activities focus around manufacturing concepts, involving both processes and production systems. No more than two consecutive hours are scheduled for any technical activity to avoid surpassing the attention span of the youthful audience. Instructors were tasked to develop activities that are not only instructive and interesting, but also fun. As many woman role models as possible are presented to the campers in both technical and administrative contexts.
The campers are given an experience as close to college life as can be provided. They live together in a dormitory for their week of camp attendance, eat meals in the Merle Price Commons cafeteria, attend classes in college classrooms and labs, and are taught by real college professors. They are organized into four teams of ten, each team identified by a distinctively colored T-shirt (red, blue, yellow, and green).
Technical activities are integrated around the manufacture of a radio-controlled model boat. The boat is final assembled in the Transportation Lab after other lab activities produced parts as “subcontractors” or analyses and information as “consultants”. Integration of the participation of several of the activities in the production of the boat is described as follows:
Subcontractors:
Foundry Casting aluminum steering console
Plastics Thermoforming: deck, hull & wiring
Packaging Automated fabrication of harness cover boat house components.
Consultants:
Physics - Theory of Boyancy
Chemistry - Batteries
CADD Manipulation and modification of a 3-D computer rendering of the boat, development of a plan drawing of the boat
Mathematics Analysis of weight and balance
A detailed set of schedules for a typical week can be obtained upon request to the CTEM Dean’s Office at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
In addition to the activities surrounding the manufacture and assembly of the boat, the campers also develop and publish a newletter and a weeklong website detailing some of their experiences. The website can be viewed by clicking on the web page gallery link on this site. These web pages provide an interesting view of the excitement experienced during the week in many of the technical, developmental and recreational activities.
As you can see from the pictures in the Web Page Gallery, the STEPS for Girls campers are very actively involved in the “hands-on, minds-on” activities. These activities truly do follow the UW-Stout philosophy and provide the young women with many take-home mementos of their camp experience.
Developmental and Recreational Activities
Several purely recreational or developmental activities are interspersed with the technical activities throughout the week. The girls have a picnic, swim in the community pool at Wakanda Park, bowl in the Stout recreation center, tour two area-manufacturing companies, participate in a “Ropes” leadership, problem solving, and teamwork developing activity and have a pizza and karaoke party.
For pictures of the different activities, please click on the web page gallery button on the top of this screen.
7:00am – 8:00am Breakfast
8:00am – 11:00am Technical Activity I
(Plastics processing, computer graphics, radio controlled boat design and model construction, automation, math, and science orientation)
11:00am – 12:00pm Recreational Activity
(Recreation center, bowling, or book store shopping)
12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch
1:00pm – 3:00pm Technical Activity II
(Robots, metal casting packaging, or printing)
3:00pm – 6:00pm Recreational or Development Activity
(Swimming pool, Manufacturing tours)
6:00pm – 7:00pm Dinner
(Dining facility, pizza party, or picnic)
7:00pm – 9:00pm Evening Fun
(Piloting radio controlled model boat, movies, recreation center, karaoke)
9:00pm – 10:00pm Discussion time with team counselors in dorm
10:00pm Lights out