WOWK TV – June 24, 2014
By Hillary Hall, WOWK TV
MONTGOMERY, WV – Hair cells, blood spatter, and fingerprints…things that are more likely to be found at a crime scene than a summer camp. The STEM program held at West Virginia Tech is a little bit different than your run of the mill camp for high school students.
STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is a program designed to give high school students across West Virginia a hands on experience with jobs related to those topics. They get to work in forensics, engineering, computer programming, math, and science for an entire week. An experience hoped to lead them to a future job in one of those fields. “They don’t know what an engineer does or what a mathematician does, this lets them apply the things they are learning in school in a real world environment” say first year engineering and science director at WVU Tech Dr. Kimberlyn Gray. She feels that more interest in STEM will lead to job growth in West Virginia in the future.
The students at the summer camp seem to enjoy the unique things they are getting to do. Tarryn Walker from Oak Hill High School in Fayette County said “you are learning but its not like it is in school” he went on to say that “you could never get to do something like this in a normal classroom”.
The camp is made possible by donations from AT&T, DOW, AEP [American Electric Power Foundation], and Toyota. Some students are also at the camp on scholarships from other organizations.
The camp runs through Friday, June 27th. It’s too late to apply for this years camp, but if you are interested in applying for next year please visit http://campstem.wvutech.edu/.
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