Nationally recognized STEM summer camp coming to the University of Illinois Springfield

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield will host Camp Invention, the nation’s premier summer enrichment day camp program. The camp is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The weeklong day camp for students entering grades first through six turns the summer from ordinary to extraordinary though hands-on problem solving, collaboration, and the use of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

WHEN: June 19-23, 2017, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

WHERE: UIS Campus (Founders & University Hall)

DETAILS: Inventive young minds can exercise their creativity and use their imagination, all while learning and developing new skills they typically don’t get to use in the classroom. Children are empowered to have big ideas while they take on challenges that inspire them to question, brainstorm, work as a team and build amazing invention prototypes.

This year’s new, action-packed Camp Invention curriculum titled “LAUNCH” features several hands-on modules:

• Duct Tape Billionaire: Campers design duct tape products they can market and sell to mock investors;
• Have a Blast: Children build high-tech Bubble Blasters and compete as a team in friendly air battles that use physics to boost their advantage;
• Mission Space Makers: Teams hatch eggs, sprout living plants and grow crystal trees, all while on a mission to locate and prepare a new planet for human habitation; and
• Operation Keep Out: Campers learn to reverse engineer old machines and devices, and use their parts to create the ultimate Spy Gadget Alarm Box. 

Parents are asked to register their children by March 20, 2017 using the online form at www.campinvention.org.

The Springfield program will be led by Harshavardhan Bapat, Ph.D., UIS associate professor of chemistry. For more information, contact him at 217/206-7744 or hbapa1@uis.edu.