STEM-focused summer camps

The Ohio Supercomputer Center’s Summer Institute and Young Women’s Summer Institute offer Ohio middle and high school students hands-on experience in STEM

The Ohio Supercomputer Center returned to in-person experiences this year for its Summer Institute, a computer science-focused summer camp for Ohio teens, and Young Women’s Summer Institute, a STEM-focused summer camp for Ohio middle school girls. Students gain real-world, hands-on experience in the practice of science and experience a taste of college life in the dorms at The Ohio State University.

In the two-week Summer Institute (SI), 15 students divided into three groups to work together to complete hands-on projects studying the psychology of choice, identification of comets and software engineering.

Students from the Summer Institute, a computer science-focused summer camp for Ohio teens

“The kids came into this knowing nothing about those three fields, nothing about those projects,” said Alan Chalker, director of the Summer Institute and director of strategic programs at OSC “Two weeks later, they gave 15–20-minute presentations to their parents about all the details of these projects, showing code, explaining the justification and causation. These are real things that we and our clients do every day. These aren’t toy problems; they were operating with real data, real images, real webpages and real supercomputers.”

It always is better when you see someone like you in that field so that you know that you could do that too.

SI students also toured OSC’s data center in the State of Ohio Supercomputer Center and scientific research centers at Ohio State including Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging and the Center for Automotive Research, interacting directly with scientists in the industry.

Real-world scientific projects are also the hallmark of the one-week Young Women’s Summer Institute (YWSI) in which girls entering 7th and 8th grade learn the intricacies of watersheds, test local water quality, and analyze data to synthesize comprehensive research findings within their groups. Emphasizing experiential learning, YWSI students go on field trips to Big Darby Creek, Chadwick Arboretum and the Byrd Center, interacting with women who have made their careers in science.

Students from the Young Women’s Summer Institute, a STEM-focused summer camp for Ohio middle school girls

“I think that by seeing women in the STEM field, the girls can see themselves as possibly being able to do that as well,” said Tori Cook, YWSI teacher and seventh grade science teacher at Lebanon Middle School in Westerville, Ohio. “It always is better when you see someone like you in that field so that you know that you could do that too.”