New collaborative camp offering coming to Austin Peay this summer
By: Colby Wilson February 21, 2024
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Austin Peay State University’s College of STEM has a unique offering coming to campus from June 24-28 —a collaborative camp for students interested in the inner workings of a laboratory, with the goal of inspiring enthusiasm for the fields of chemistry and biology.
Lab Explorer Camp is a joint effort between the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biology, run by Dr. Manisha Gupte (biology) and Dr. Anuradha Pathiranage (chemistry). Designed for incoming sixth and seventh graders, the full-day, weeklong camp is designed to engage students in a series of daily sessions that promise an exhilarating exploration of scientific wonders this summer.
Each morning during the camp, students will engage in their daily chemistry activities. Planned events include experiments such as acid-based volcanoes and potions with acid-based indicators, polymer chemistry activities with slime and silly putty, exploring color-changing molecules with tie-dye chemistry and creating models of atoms and molecules.
Afternoons will be dedicated to biology. Students will learn their way around the cell with a building activity, discover everything there is to know about microscopes and the different types used by the scientific community, build a DNA double-helix, extract DNA from strawberries and assemble a skeleton model with all 206 bones.
At the end of the week, each student will be allowed to showcase their presentations and enhance their scientific communication skills with their peers.
The camp runs from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. each day and costs $300 for the week, including supplies, snacks and lunches.
In addition to Lab Explorer camp, Space Explorer Camp — the full-day, weeklong day camp focused on space exploration and astronomy that began last summer — is back again from June 10-14. The Department of Computer Science also has multiple coding camps available throughout the summer.
For more information or to register for any of the camps, visit the College of STEM’s summer camps webpage.