A local center for higher education and its partners are expanding the annual robotics camps offered to minorities.
Purdue Polytechnic Columbus has just finished the second week of these camps, which are being held at the airpark campus in the Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence.
“I would love to see a lot of these young people end up in STEM fields, maybe robotics, for careers,” said camp instructor and former PPC director Joe Fuehne. “If we can convince some of them or at least give some of them a perspective that this is something you could do as a career, then I think that would be terrific.”
About 40 students participated in this week’s camp, which was geared toward the African American and biracial community, he said. The first camp, which ran a week prior, was focused on the Latino community, and about 30 students participated.
Next week, organizers will debut a new, advanced robotics camp, with both communities invited and about 12 to 14 students expected to participate.
“It’s software that will be more industrial, something that the students might actually use or see if they went to work for somebody who was programming robots,” said Fuehne. “The beginning camps are fine, and they give students a feel for what it is like and programming, what that means and trying to put different commands together to accomplish something. But the advanced camp is definitely more industrial.”
The final day of the advanced camp includes a showcase for parents to see what students have worked on over the course of the week.
During the basic robotics camps, on the other hand, students build robots with Lego bricks and use “fairly simple” programming software, said Fuehne. The week culminates with challenges from the For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Lego League, and parents are invited to watch the competition during the final hour of camp on Friday.
For parent Isheka Randon, the camp presented a way to keep her daughter’s mind active, while also allowing her to meet new people and have a good time.
“She’s been very excited, and that’s all she talks about,” said Randon.
Yidyuth Loganath Siva, 11, said that attending this week’s camp has given him a lot of experience in robotics and taught him about having to use trial and error during the coding process.
“You don’t always get it right the first time,” he said.
Yidyuth and other students said that they enjoyed the social aspect of camp.
“I like to meet new people, and the programming’s really fun,” said 13-year-old Romin Peck.
Paris Prescott, 9, has enjoyed making new friends, as well as building robots and putting them into action.
Columbus City Councilman Jerone Wood, whose sons attended the camp, said that it provides kids a unique summer experience, an opportunity to learn, and a way to get out of their shell.
“I wish it was around when I was little,” he said.
The camps are free and made possible by a number of organizations, said Fuehne. This includes the Community Education Coalition and TuFuturo Latino, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, the African American Fund of Bartholomew County and the Heritage Fund, the African American Pastors Alliance, Paths to Success of Bartholomew County, the Indiana Next Generation Manufacturing Competitiveness Center, the Sunrise Rotary Club of Columbus and Purdue Polytechnic Columbus.
This is the third year of the African American camp and roughly the fourth or fifth year of the Latino camp, Fuehne said.
“I’ve had camps for 15 years that were open to the general public, and they were usually about $50 per camper to come and participate,” he said. “And we never had anybody from the Latino or the African-American or the biracial communities actually participate in those camps. And so the thought was we need to do that … We’re having trouble finding employees, we’re having trouble finding people — here’s two groups of people who we’ve typically not engaged for these types of careers, and so we need to try to do that.”
Paths to Success member Lori Thompson said it’s been “fantastic” to see the African American camp grow over the past couple of years. In 2021, about 20 students attended, and only two were girls.
This year, about 60 kids signed up for the camp in just two weeks, but only 30 spots were available. Fuehne agreed to expand the capacity up to 40, and organizers also reached out to the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. to see if they had similar programs that some of the kids could attend.
Thompson estimated that about 14 of the 36 students at this week’s camp were girls.
“If you would ask many kids, before they started learning about this camp, what an engineer was, they would probably tell you that it’s the person that drives the train,” she said. “They didn’t really know a whole lot about what engineering was. And we recognize that there are not very many African American students in the STEM fields, and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be, because we have shown the kids that they are quite capable and they can do the work.”
