Published: June 29, 2009 08:12 am      

Camp encourages students to pursue science careers

MADISONVILLE — Endia Shepherd carefully used a pencil to push the Christmas light base into place.

The plastic pieces kept wires from moving as the 13-year-old and other members of her group at the Governor’s Minority Student College Preparation Program built a traffic light at the Brown Badgett Sr. Energy and Advanced Technology Center. They used red, green and yellow Christmas lights and other materials.

Putting together the electrical components was easy “after (the instructor) showed us,” said 11-year-old William Rorer.

The students first built a control logic board for the traffic light, said instructor Joey Jones, coordinator of Madisonville Community College’s advanced industrial integrated technology program.

“The car pulls up, the green light comes on, then sequences through,” Jones said.

The camp, which is in about its 10th year here, has 21 participants. They are enrolled in middle school or fifth grade.

At the start of the two-week camp, 10 local participants spent two days at Murray State University with children from other locations. The camp then spent three days focused on crime scene investigation, before switching to building a traffic light.

“Of course, its focus is on STEM — science, technology, engineering and math,” said MCC Director of Cultural Diversity James Bowles said. “We’re trying to prepare them for possible careers in those areas. ... We do not have enough people focusing on those kinds of careers.”

For the crime scene investigation, students were given a list of six missing persons. They then used the length of a humerus bone — the upper arm — to identify whose bone had been found in the MCC woods.

“They had to collect the evidence,” Bowles said. “You do scientific observation. You have to write things down.

“They really got into it. They were really excited.”

The project is a collaboration among the Council on Postsecondary Education, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, and the James Larmouth and Jesse Stuart Family Resource Youth Service Centers in the Hopkins County Schools.

“We’re just trying to keep them on the college preparation track,” Bowles said. “We’re trying to get them interested in college at an early age.”

Rorer is already convinced.

“I’m hoping to be a doctor,” he said.