High school students interested in skyscrapers, sewers and transportation systems will be able to live on campus in June to participate in a free, revamped summer camp.
The High School Infrastructure Summer Camp was held as a nonresidential camp for 30 students from 2002 to 2004, but will become a residential program for between 20 and 25 applicants this summer.
The former nonresidential camp only attracted local high school students, said David Schulz, executive director of Northwestern’s Infrastructure Technology Institute. ITI hopes to attract students from across the country by making the camp a five-day residential program this summer, he said.
ITI has had difficulty getting high school administrators to promote the program, but this year the institute asked personal contacts in the professional world to market the program, Schulz said. Two weeks after announcing the new camp, the institute is already seeing results.
“We’ve already got an applicant from Wisconsin,” Schulz said. “It’s like throwing a pebble into a pond. We’ve told infrastructure professionals (to spread the word) and now we’re getting a response third or fourth hand.”
The camp was designed to familiarize students with the basics of infrastructure by giving them a hands-on experience. The program accepts juniors in high school, but sophomores and seniors may be considered this year, Schulz said.
“Chicago is perhaps the best infrastructure laboratory in the country,” he said. “We have everything conceivable in public and private infrastructure.”
Accepted students must pay for transportation to campus and personal expenses, but housing, dining and field trips will be paid for by ITI. The institute will use grant money it has received in the past to pay for camp expenses, Schulz said.
An overnight program will allow students to interact more with one another, work on group projects and explore campus life, Schulz said. As was done in previous summers, students will take field trips to Chicago toll roads, railroads and airports and learn about the creation and maintenance of public transportation and the sewer systems. Students may work in groups to solve hypothetical disaster scenarios, said Delvina Christian, Communication ’80, the program’s on-site coordinator. Christian will live with the students on campus.
The high school summer camp is intended to teach students about the relationship between infrastructure and society and is not meant to attract students to NU, Schulz said.
But universities across the nation have been having problems attracting applicants to their undergraduate and graduate infrastructure programs, Christian said. Employment opportunities in infrastructure are abundant, but there are not enough mathematicians and scientists to fill the needs of the profession, she said.
“We need people who have communication skills and who can manage people and projects,” said Christian, also the elementary director of Country Meadows Montessori School in Gurnee, Ill. “This is a unique field that combines communication and science. Students applying don’t have the communication skills.”
But Christian noticed a high level of communication between students in her two-year pilot infrastructure camp for 6- to 14-year-olds, she said. Christian directed the elementary version of NU’s camp for the past two summers and noticed that students were suggesting creative solutions to disaster scenarios. Christian said she hopes to apply some of the group exercises to the high school program.
“I observed the program for high school students,” she said. “I felt they needed the challenge of a lab opportunity and working on team projects.”
Reach Margaret Matray at [email protected].
