INGENIOUS SUMMER CAMP IN LEUVEN, WITH SEPARATE GIRLS’ GROUP

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

Even in corona times, ‘going to camp’ is spontaneously associated with playing games, romping around in the woods and meadows, and crackling campfires. The Engineers’ Summer Camp at Group T Campus has been held for the fifth time with growing success. From 5 to 10 July 2021, 27 young participants indulged in science and technology. Almost half were girls.

Getting young people interested in science, technology and engineering. That is what camp leaders Yuri Cauwerts and Karen Vanderloock of the Electronics-ICT department are aiming for. What started modestly in 2017 with a group of ten children aged 10 to 12, grew into a camp of 27 10- to 14-year-olds, split into a boys’ group and a girls’ team. At the same time, the number of activities also increased, other enthusiastic colleagues joined in and, in collaboration with Sporty, a package of twelve sports and games was introduced into the programme, ranging from gymnastics and speedminton to baseball and rope skipping. “A healthy scientific-technical mind also requires a good physical condition, especially for young people in full development,” confirms Yuri. “The formula still does the trick. In no time, the 2021 summer camp was full.”

Riddle

Karen lists the main ingredients of the STEM program. “Our offer included building mechanical structures with Lego, such as gear transmission, lever constructions and measuring slopes, colouring washcloths with Indigo in the Chemistry lab, soldering a pcb for a sound detector in the Electronics lab, making a dance mat with raspberry pi and finally examining bacteria with a microscope in the Biochemistry lab.”

“There was a red wire running through all the week’s activities,” Yuri continued. “It consisted of solving a riddle to open a cryptex with a hidden key. On the last day, the participants found a supply of corn, which they used to make popcorn in the afternoon”.

Gender

In the first editions of the summer camp, it was almost exclusively boys who were in action. That has changed completely now. The organizers have spared no effort to attract girls. That much, so they even set up a special girls’ group.

“The girls’ camp is an attempt to address the gender imbalance in engineering education,” says Karen. “Research shows that girls at a young age are indeed interested in science and technology, but often lose that interest from the age of 12. One reason for this is that parents talk relatively little to their daughters about technology-related subjects. Moreover, there are still too few role models for young girls to emulate. By choosing the age group 10 to 14 years, we aim precisely at this critical phase.

Karen has the following to say about the separate girls’ group: “If we had just opened up two ordinary groups as we did at the start of the initiative, they would have been filled initially with boys. Since we started reserving a group for girls two years ago, the picture has changed completely. Working together with boys at that age clearly has a barrier effect, that is the reality.”

The organisers also varied the activities and assignments sufficiently, so they did not appear to be an exclusively boys’ affair. According to Karen, the presence of female coaches and facilitators also helped the girls feel more at ease. “If we can encourage the girls to develop their STEM skills in this way, this is a factor that should be taken into account in future activities,” concludes Karen.

Yves Persoons