Camp offers budding scientists and engineers a wide variety of fun

09/06/2009

“I’m surprised he doesn’t sleep with the latest issue of Lego magazine in his bed,” says Zach’s mother. Zach, a rising fifth grader, loved the Lego robotics at Legoland in Carlsbad, California. When he heard about the New Arc Academy, a summer day camp at the University of Delaware where the campers build and program Lego robots, he was, as they say, all over it.

Timothy, a rising sixth grader, loves animals and marine life. This is the second year he has grabbed the opportunity to go on a trip to Delaware Bay with knowledgeable guides to describe the marine life the campers catch in their seining net. And he likes computer programming using MIT’s educational programming language, Scratch, and building his own Web site.

Designed to offer a daily variety of activities to hold the interest of young potential scientists and engineers, and refined over 15 years of experience, the New Arc Academy enjoys family loyalty. Repeat campers are frequent and siblings are numerous. This year, as happens most years, there was a waiting list of applicants.

The New Arc Academy, for grades four to eight, is co-sponsored by the College of Education and Public Policy’s Office of Educational Technology, the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Sixty students, one quarter of whom were girls, participated this year.

Certified teachers lead the campers in age-appropriate laboratory and field activities, while specialists in marine studies, engineering, computing, and educational technology help out in their areas of expertise. This year the theme for the two-week camp was marine science (always a hit), and, in addition to the Delaware Bay trip, the students spent two class periods dissecting sharks.

Dr. Thomas Pledgie, the program’s founder and director, says the exercise of fine-tuning the curriculum for the age of the participants has been a particularly enjoyable part of the yearly effort. For example, when college-age engineering students design and build model bridges out of balsa wood and glue, they then test their designs by weighting the bridges until they break. It took only one summer to learn when New Arc Academy campers design bridges, they expect to take their bridges home intact. So a regular part of Pledgie’s duties is giving all the bridges a coat of gray spray paint, after which they are sent home looking great but with their breaking strength unproven.

To register for next year, interested students can watch for updates and download a registration form by mid-March at www.udel.edu/oet/naa.

Article by George Mulford