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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - Launching rockets, programming robots, building towers, it could be part of a high tech engineering firm, but for 20 grade school students, this was summer camp.
“I like that I can learn about science,” said Autum Evans, a grade school student from Indianapolis. “I’m usually not that into it, but they make it fun here.”
Evans and 19 other students participated in the first summer camp to introduce the STARBASE Indiana program to the Indianapolis area. The camp was held at the Lawrence Armory, in Lawrence, Ind.
STARBASE is a nationwide Department of Defense program that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, to fifth graders.
The program has been operating for almost three years in Fort Wayne, Ind., and it is now expanding to Indianapolis.
“We are so excited for the opportunity to do this here in Indianapolis,” said Libby Snider, whose daughter Hannah participated in the program. The Sniders live in Planfield, Ind. “My husband flies A-10’s in Fort Wayne, and we heard about the program, but we couldn’t feasibly make it up there.”
Students in central Indiana should have a better chance to participate.
“We want people to know it’s coming your way,” said Scott Liebhauser, director of STARBASE Indiana.
Liebhauser said the program runs 5-day summer camps for individual students, and teachers bring their class for five hours, once a week for five weeks during the school year.
“It’s not a field trip, we are part of the school year and add to the standards for the state and nationally, and it’s hands-on which the children learn best, “ said Liebhauser.
“We know there is a huge shortfall in the STEM areas and we need engineers in Indiana and nationwide, so we want to build interest early,” said Liebhauser.
“For our first camp, I think things went awesome,” said Brande Morgan, deputy director for STARBASE. “We took our 5-day program and pieced it into a 3-day program, and the kids seem to be really loving it.”
Morgan will run the Indianapolis STARBASE at Stout Field during the school year.
“It’s a free program,” said Liebhauser. “Schools provide transportation and lunch, and we do the rest.”
STARBASE Indianapolis expects to graduate approximately 800 students during the school year and another hundred during the summer and expects that number to grow in the future.
“The kids are enthusiastic,” said Liebhauser. “We’ve seen it with the 2,000 we’ve graduated in Fort Wayne, and we know it will be just as exciting here when we open.”
To find out more about the program, visit www.starbasein.org.
| Date Taken: | 07.11.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 08.13.2014 16:38 |
| Story ID: | 139237 |
| Location: | INDIANAPOLIS, IN, US |
| Web Views: | 82 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, STARBASE lands in Indy, by Lorne Neff, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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