RIT's Center for Bioscience Education and Technology keeps kids active with summer bioscience camp
4/25/2013
The Center for Bioscience Education & Technology (CBET) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) strives to keep young kids’ minds active during the summer with bioscience camp.
The summer camp promotes bioscience exploration for middle and high school students, grades 6 to 11. The students can choose from medical science theme camps to study the world the way biologists do.
“We started with just a couple of camps in the beginning, now there are eight
week-long sessions,” Doug Merrill, professor at RIT and director of CBET said. “[The camp’s] success allowed us to add more sessions.”
The bioscience camp aims to make science fun and inviting for the youth. One session is called Solving Crimes with DNA: Facts, Fiction and Television.
“Some students want to do more than video games and sports camp,” Merrill said.
Each session caps the enrollment class at 12 students. The camp tries to limit the amount of students in each class to make sure each student gets a substantial amount of attention.
Merrill also said that there are specific classes where it is vital for students to work under attentive supervision.
“It’s a very new program so a lot of this depends upon word of mouth,” Merrill said.
Merrill added that many students hear about the camp from older siblings and/or family members who have gone to the camp.
Some students have even traveled from outside the state to attend camp sessions, staying with family members in the area. Some visiting families decided to live in a hotel for a week so their children attend a session.
“We plan to stay local, but there are a lot of colleges across central New York that probably have the same idea,” Merrill said.