STEM camp challenges students to solve real-world problems

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campus experience 1:52 STEM camp challenges students to solve real-world problems

By:

Clark Dehart

8 Aug 2025 261

The Science Education program within the School of Education hosts a STEM summer camp for middle school students called World Changers Robotics Camp. The program features a case study on a town in Nigeria, where campers must use STEM skills to model a solution to the town's lack of reliable electricity infrastructure.

The essence of this camp is to introduce students to global awareness. I am from Nigeria and there is this special place in Lagos, Nigeria called Makoko. Makoko is a floating village. We want the students from the U.S. to look at the lifestyle of the people and try to build electrical grid to address their challenges on the fourth day they come up with a robotic solution that also adds on to the electrical grid element it is a line following robot so some of them use it for taxis in the village others use it for trash collection and sanitation and they present their entire model and project design to the firm to be selected for the task that has been given. So the science education program in the School of Education has worked collaboratively with the College Access Collaborative since its inception in 2016. Over the years we provide discipline-specific expertise. We create curricula and deliver content by engaging students in authentic and query-based experiences that encompass the integration of engineering design. So this generally is to promote awareness and help the students to see themselves as problem solvers. One thing that I would want all campers to distill into themselves is what authentic STEM experiences in the real world look like and we want them to be world changers using their knowledge. Thank you.

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