Summer Camps and Programs Offer a Look at College Life At the end of the spring semester, as students begin thinking about what they’ll do during the summer or about summer classes, the West Hills College Coalinga campus goes through a noticeable change: the college students one might typically see in the halls get replaced by a crowd that’s a bit younger. Each summer, West Hills College Coalinga hosts free summer camps and programs that serve nearly 200 local students and ensures that their summer is spent learning about math, science, technology, agriculture careers and taking college level classes. WHCC offers The Wonderful Agriculture Career Camp, which is sponsored by The Wonderful Company, for students entering 8th grade, the Chevron Fun Physical Science Camp for 2nd through 6th graders, and the Upward Bound Program for high school students. However, the camps do more than just keeping the minds of local students
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West Hills magazine
moving during the long summer months: they also create an atmosphere of life-long learning and a college-going culture for students as young as seven and all the way through high school. “We never use the term ‘if you go to college’,” said Lupe Espinoza, Director of Special Grant Programs at WHCC and a coordinator of the Wonderful Ag Career Camp. “It’s ‘when you go to college.’ What these camps do is to make it tangible and make the idea of a future in college real. They give them that exposure to college culture at an early age and set that mindset.” The Wonderful Agriculture Career Camp is hosted at the WHCC Farm of the Future and allows