Photos by Ralph Freso
Most summer tech camps promise time with gadgets and games. Grand Canyon University’s Tech and Innovator Days go a step further, using its final camp session to turn a quiet summer classroom into a mini research conference, where high school students design studies, collect data and learn what it feels like to do college-caliber work years before graduation.
Hosted by the College of Engineering and Technology as a hands-on pipeline into STEM fields, the series draws high schoolers to GCU’s campus for one- and two-day camps in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, engineering design and game development. Wednesday’s Research Ready camp finished the lineup by guiding teens through real research questions, lab tours and a chance to learn from professors in the same classrooms GCU undergraduates use.
By midafternoon, the Cyber Center of Excellence had notebooks and whiteboards filled with questions on electric vehicle batteries, sports injury trackers, assistive technology and social media. The goal was that every student leaves with the skeleton of a research poster.
“These students don’t always have access to the things that we can provide at a university,” said Dr. Robert Loy, assistant dean of the college’s technology division. “We have a cyber center, we’ve got the engineering labs. Here, you’ve got dedicated people with a background and education in these fields that can bring the college-level experience.”
For Suhana Chand, an incoming junior at Basis Peoria, the hook was clear: access to real professors and researchers. Along with Loy, the Research Ready camp was facilitated by Dr. Cori Araza, GCU’s executive director of K12 Services and Solutions, and Jenny Kuban from the university’s Office of Research and Grants.
“I really like the emphasis on getting us connected to professors, which I don’t generally see at other camps,” said Chand. “I’m so happy that GCU has a clear opportunity to get connected and learn in person. It is really cool.”
Chand plans to study mechanical engineering in college. She already has a head start. Her current project, which had the eyes and attention of GCU’s faculty on Wednesday, focuses on battery systems for electric vehicles, especially the safety problem known as thermal runaway, when a lithium-ion battery fails and can catch fire. Earlier this year, she built machine learning models to predict failures. Now she wants to explore coatings on battery anodes to prevent them. From the camp’s morning discussion, she walked away with a tighter research question.
Michael Kapler, a Desert Mountain High School student and baseball player, spent the day exploring sports equipment and sports medicine, taking notes on smart watches, player trackers and ways to monitor fatigue to reduce injuries.
“It’s good to get an early start on this stuff,” he said. “I’d like to be an engineer developing sports equipment for companies like Nike, Adidas or Under Armor. I wanted to go to this camp to research what is possible. GCU is great because it has so many different options for students to study. It is at the top of my list.”
This is the first year the tech and innovator camps have been fully college-led, with the department designing curriculum and hosting the event. That shift, knit together with the guidance of Araza, allowed teaching experiences for undergraduates and tours of working research labs.
The high schoolers received a behind-the-scenes tour of GCU’s technology building from pre-med students, including stops in the microcellular and cadaver labs.
“It has been a successful model. These camps have allowed us to see that students at the high school level want this type of camp environment. They want applied engineering, applied technology, applied research. And it’s a pipeline to GCU,” said Araza. “I love that we’re finishing off the Tech and Innovator camps with a research workshop, because it allows students to go, ‘OK, now I know what I want to do — I’m going to research it.’ That looks great on a resume at the high-school level.”
GCU senior writer Jason Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected]
