Day 1: Monday

Today was a wonderful first day of STEM InCYte Camp! The weather was beautiful which we appreciated during our morning Geocaching activity. We welcomed 39 students this morning. As they arrived, the excitement and volume grew!

We would like to provide information about the consent and assent forms for research purposes that we ask for every year. The purpose of the research is to develop a camp model that promotes STEM careers to adolescents and can be replicated. We also look at students attitudes towards STEM and the impact of our activities. Consent and assent to participate in research allow us to understand the effects of STEM InCYte camp and provide us with insight about how to improve the camp. We never report any names or any individual data. It is always aggregated together! You can read about some of our work and our sister camp here.

Morning

Students began their day at the School of Education where they met camp staff, had a morning snack, and discovered which group they would be a part of: red or gold. Each group had about 20 students and three teacher leaders. Each year we begin STEM InCYte camp with geocaching based on the excited feedback from students in years past. For the activity, students were divided into five teams identified by a color: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Teams set out to geocache and explore the Iowa State Campus. This is similar to a scavenger hunt where students used a map and the clues they find to identify the next location on campus. At each location, teams engaged in an activity, such as creating a pyramid in front of the iconic campanile. Other places they visited included the Parks Library, the Memorial Union, the Women in Science and Engineering office, and the hidden tunnel underneath the Iowa State campus. A poplar destination this year was the Sloss House, where they got a snow cone.

After geocaching, it was time for lunch. Students had walking tacos, a favorite of many previous STEM InCYte campers.

Afternoon

Teams worked with graduate students from the School of Education in a STEM extravaganza! The extravaganza included several different stations that the teams visited.

Station 1: Ecology

Station 2: Energy Consultant

Station 3: Astronomy

Station 4: Plant Physiology

Station 5: Electrical Engineering

Station 6: Microbiology

Station 7: Epidemiology

Each station had hands-on activities that engaged the students in a variety of science concepts including building circuits to make a light turn on and off and determining which materials are good conductors of electricity, building molecules out of Legos to see how plants get their energy, and creating a scale model of the distance between our solar system's planets which stretched the entire length of the hallway.

After snack, students headed over to the Molecular Biology Building to explore pH. We learned about pH by using red cabbage juice indicator and drank some delicious lemonade with the Science Bound Organization.

In their words…

Each day we’ll post some excerpts from the students’ reflections of what they learned each day at the STEM Content session. We don’t correct for spelling or grammar in these.

"I did not know how far away the planets are."

I liked "that we got to test how far it [the planet] was."

"Circuts can travel thougth fingers."

"It was Awesome"

"How bacteria can spread really quickly and easy."

I liked "that it was fun way to learn"

I learned about "how to make shuger"

"I learned a lot about diseases and predator/prey & microbiology"

"I liked doing a game at the prey, predator, and adaptation station"

I like "making the elertricity light up"

Photos of the Day

Each day we’ll post camp highlights. Please note that we try to capture pictures of all the campers, but we cannot guarantee that we will get every single one. We try our very best to though! Also we are STEM teachers and not full time photographers, so our pictures are not perfect and we leave them unedited, so if you love to edit photos… feel free!