Summer camps give middle and high school students an authentic college experience

By Liz DeFluri

Emily Hoag found her love of philosophy at a unique age - sixth grade - and she explored it recently in a unique way - summer camp. In June, her pursuit of wisdom led her from her Michigan home to Virginia Commonwealth University, where the College of Humanities and Sciences is giving middle and high school students a taste of college in a range of engaging topics.

"I go to a really small school, so just being able to talk to so many different people from so many different backgrounds and with so many ideas is what it's really about for me," said Hoag, a rising junior at Ivy Wood Classical Academy in Plymouth, Michigan, near Detroit.

Now in its fifth year, the College of Humanities and Sciences Summer Camp program has grown into a series of eight weeklong sessions in fields such as chemistry, artificial intelligence and genealogy. Attendees get to work alongside VCU faculty members and use the university's state-of-the-art technology and facilities to complete projects and showcase their newfound knowledge: At the end of the week, campers present their work to family members.

Associate professor James Fritz, Ph.D., led this year's philosophy camp, which challenged students to think critically about legal rights, discrimination and moral objectivity.

"He creates such a nice environment for sharing opinions and having an open and loving discussion that isn't just attacking other people's opinions," Hoag said. "Everyone can share openly and be very respectful of everyone else's ideas."

For high-schoolers interested in STEM fields, assistant professor Weiping Guo, Ph.D., led a new camp - BeakerBreakers: Hands-on Chemistry - which offered dynamic labs, such as growing crystals using borax and building a spectroscope for a chromatography activity.

A particularly popular offering this year was another new camp - AI Imagination Lab: Media, Creativity and Digital Literacy Skills - that was sponsored by the Robertson School of Communication. It filled up within the first week of registration.

The camp, offered to middle-schoolers, reinforced that artificial intelligence is just a tool that can help develop human ideas. Campers created their own superhero character and narrative using Google Gemini.

The College of Humanities and Sciences Summer Camp program allows attendees to use the university's state-of-the-art technology and facilities to complete projects and showcase their newfound knowledge. (Contributed image)

Associate professor Joshua Smith, Ph.D., started each session with insights to help students better understand and effectively use AI technology.

"We talked about the fact that AI makes mistakes and the fears that scholars have about people relying too heavily on these tools to help them write or design," Smith said, describing a risk he calls cognitive offloading. "We talked about how the brain is a muscle and that you have to keep exercising it to keep those skills active while still responsibly using AI to assist with certain tasks."

In addition to access to VCU faculty and facilities, campers got an authentic taste of college life. They toured campus and interacted with VCU students who shared their passions and perspectives.

"We had one VCU student talk about information systems, which piqued one of our camper's interest since they want to do robotics and engineering," said Marie Vergamini, an adjunct faculty member in the School of World Studies who led an anthropology-based camp session - Monkey Business: The Science of Our Primate Cousins - for middle-schoolers. She said the VCU student's experience allowed "the camper to be able to see themselves going here, studying these topics and not viewing college as scary or stressful."

For high school students interested in genealogy, the Department of African American Studies hosted its second year of the Gabriel Summer Scholars Institute. Attendees visited significant African American sites in Richmond and explored resources in locations such as the Library of Virginia and the VCU Libraries Special Collections and Archives.

Appomattox Regional Governor's School rising sophomore R'ajarie Jefferson connected with her ancestors by conducting genealogical research on sites such as Ancestry.com.

"I learned a lot about how to find my family," Jefferson said. "I feel a lot more in tune with everyone around me because I understand my culture a lot more and the process of how we got to where we are today."

Attendees of the Gabriel Summer Scholars Institute visited significant African American sites in Richmond and explored resources in locations such as the Library of Virginia and the VCU Libraries Special Collections and Archives. (Contributed image)