CU day campers enjoy art and science enrichment on campus

From left, Brad Slocum, 13, Josh Royce, 13, and Billy Gerding, 12, build an electronic circuit on the nanoscale using photo lithography. Participants in the University Summer Day Camp, the students were supervised in this Stocking Hall teaching laboratory by Carl Batt, Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, and Anna Waldron, director of education at Cornell's Nanobiotechnology Center. Blaine P. Friedlander Jr./Cornell News Service

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

Imagine a program in which you can participate in moot court, write and produce a play, create nano-sized electrical circuits and celebrate Dragon Day -- sans the fire. During the summer at Cornell, it's good to be a kid.

The university's recently re-designed University Summer Day Camp mixed fun and sun for 335 area young people -- from ages 4 to 13. Since late June, children dressed in red T-shirts with the camp logo scampered across the campus like a legion of army ants. They participated in theme weeks that focused on science, music, law and business, diversity, libraries, agriculture, nature, air and space, and computers.

Lynette Chappell-Williams, director of Cornell's Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality, began organizing the camp in October. Chappell-Williams and Ayanna Hughey, program manager for the diversity office, spent many long days working with several departments and programs throughout the university to develop an enriching summer experience for the children of Cornell employees.

One of the day camp's programs, called "technology week," included a collaboration with Cornell's Nanobiotechnology Center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The center is an interdisciplinary program involving life scientists, physical scientists and engineers. Some of the older kids in the program created nano-circuits using photolithography in a Stocking Hall laboratory, with guidance from Carl Batt, Cornell's Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Food Science, and Anna Waldron, director of education at the Nanobiotechnology Center. The circuits the campers created worked and turned on lights.

Lora Hine, of the Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics, organized daily live science shows during "technology week." Cornell graduate physics students and Cornell research scientist James Alexander showed how to propel a plastic bottle into the air with Alka Seltzer and water, demonstrated the properties of liquid nitrogen, and the campers saw sunspots in real time from a solar projection.

How was technology week? "It was a hit!" said Chappell-Williams. "It was really heartwarming to hear back from the parents of a 5-year-old who went home from camp talking about polymers. The child could barely pronounce the word, but knew what they were."

During "diversity week" children learned about other cultures. The campers experimented with conducting electricity and saw glass-making demonstrations during technology week. For "music, art, architecture and drama week" the kids visited Cornell's Johnson Art Museum and got a grasp of gargoyles. Chappell-Williams explained that after a field trip to the Hangar Theater, campers wrote, designed and produced a play titled "Goldilocks and the Three Hobbits."

During "business and law week," the campers put the Cat in the Hat on trial for allegedly stealing hot dogs from a campus vendor. It was the People of Whoville v. The Cat in the Hat and the mock court battle took place in Barton Hall. Campers played the parts of the defendants and accusers, attorneys, prosecutors and judge and jury, from a script written by local author Stephanie Mittman.

The campers even built a dragon similar to the ones Cornell's architecture students build every spring for Dragon Day. Except, said Chappell-Williams, "due to safety concerns the campers did not burn the dragon to the ground."

Chappell-Williams knows that young girls often are not oriented toward science. So she made sure that girls could easily participate in the day camp's science activities. "I wanted to expose them to career options," Chappell-Williams said. "It's very important that we include girls in science at a young age. In fact, after 'technology week,' one little girl told me that she really enjoyed it. That was heartening."