Radford summer camps make STEM learning a blast

Her dark green waders dripping wet from the waist down, Lillian MacNamara stepped out of the New River and walked over to a small group of her fellow students standing along the river bank.

"Is the water cold?" one of the students asked.

"A little," MacNamara replied. She paused, smiled and added, "but it's kind of like getting a big hug."

But when she recalled walking into the river's current, "It was really rough," MacNamara said. "That's something I've never experienced before."

It was Tuesday morning and only the second day of Radford University's annual Summer Bridge - Women in STEM camp, but already, MacNamara and the campers were getting exposure to a number of unique experiences.

In the river, MacNamara and three other Summer Bridge students were part of the research team collecting water samples they would examine later that day in a laboratory at the university's Artis College of Science and Technology's Center for the Sciences.

"We're the river research team," announced Kristina Stefaniak, an associate professor of chemistry, standing at the river's edge in Radford's Bissett Park. She, along with Assistant Professor of Biology Steve McBride, led this team of young scientists throughout the weeklong Summer Bridge residential camp. "Today, we're studying the impact of Connolly's Run stream on the New River."

The two Radford science faculty members led the group, and other groups throughout the week, through a variety of experiments during Summer Bridge, a weeklong experience for young women who are rising sophomore, junior and senior high school students interested in science, technology and mathematics.

Held July 12-17, it was the first of two STEM-related residential camps hosted by Radford's Artis College. The other camp, BLAST, short for Building Leaders for Advancing Science and Technology, is a free program designed to help rising ninth- and 10th-grade students from Virginia find a place in STEM. Held July 19-22, BLAST participants spent three days in a Radford residence performing hands-on STEM activities.

After collecting water samples and a well-deserved lunch, the river research group shuttled back to campus to analyze their samples in a chemistry and microbiology lab.

"In the lab, we basically look for the microbes that grow and their antibiotic resistance, and then we'll look at water chemistry," McBride explained. "So, we're looking at things like nitrates and ammonia, which can be an indicator of fertilizer."

Radford rising senior Cara Rossmeisl, already on campus this summer conducting her own research, volunteered to help teach the Summer Bridge students.

"I wanted to experience working with a group of students that I could really connect with," said Rossmeisl, a biology and chemistry double major from Blacksburg, Virginia. "It's satisfying when you are teaching more advanced topics to older students and know they're getting it. It's a very satisfying feeling. Very gratifying."

Rossmeisl assisted with a variety of activities throughout the week, including wading into the river to assist with sample collecting and a river flow activity that involved one of the students tossing an apple into the flowing waters while another timed its travel between 5 meters.

"It's a little bit more complicated when you've got the current trying to suck you away," Rossmeisl joked, "but it's really fun, and I really love seeing them having fun with it."

Summer Bridge isn't all river chemistry - not even close. Throughout the week, students visited the campus planetarium - "It was fun flying through the universe," MacNamara said - built robots, learned cybersecurity and participated in a capture-the-flag competition. They also gained hands-on experience with ground-penetrating radar and some of the same equipment Radford faculty and students use on their biennial geophysics research trek to Utqiagvik, Alaska.

One of the most popular activities among the young women each year is building their own rockets and then launching them into the sky high above the Radford University campus.

Shooting handcrafted and decorated rockets into the atmosphere is a popular activity at BLAST, too.

"I love aerospace and airplanes, and I love learning the mechanics of how it works," said 14-year-old David Kal, soon after building his own rocket in a Center for the Sciences lab.

At the launch site about an hour later, Radford physics faculty Rhett Herman and Sandy Liss led a group of about 15 students to their launch site on a campus lawn. Herman briefed the students on the launch procedures.

"The battery is going to set fire to the igniter, and the igniter is going to blow the engine, and that rocket is gone," Herman explained. "These rockets will go up to between 500 and 1,000 feet, that's about two-tenths of a mile."

Minutes later, at 11:28 a.m., Jocelyn Hernandez, a rising 10th-grader from Louisa, Virginia, connected the igniter and launched the group's first rocket toward the dark clouds hovering above.

Whooooooooosh!

"That was a lot of fun," she said, still smiling after successfully firing her pink, yellow and white rocket spaceward. "It was just a lot of fun putting it all together and then coming out here to launch."

In addition to rockets, BLAST students learned geology, cybersecurity problem-solving, geology and robot construction and programming. "They spent much of their time programming the small robots," Herman explained, "to execute a proscribed route to mimic what, for example, Mars rovers or firefighting robots do without human intervention."

They also got a chance to fly drones about the length of a football field away from the rocket launch site. "We did that yesterday," Hernandez said. "I've never flown a drone before, so that was a lot of fun and a new experience for me."

Learning from professors and getting an opportunity to live for a few days on a university campus were also unique experiences for BLAST and Summer Bridge students.

"It's actually pretty neat," said 13-year-old BLAST student Sri Arul of Roanoke, Virginia, an aspiring software engineer. "The professors are really knowledgeable - you can tell that they care - and this gives us a chance to prepare for this type of lifestyle because I want to go to college and I like to be able to experience it before I go."