PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 24, No. 22, June 2, 2005

Summer camps offer academics, athletics and music

Editor's Note:
More information about UI summer camps can be found at the links below or by calling the sponsoring unit or department:

Athletic summer camps, Division of Intercollegiate Athletics

Math and engineering summer campus, College of Engineering Outreach

Illinois Summer Youth Music camps

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

June marks the beginning of summer camp season, and the playing fields, classrooms and rehearsal halls on the Urbana campus will be flooded with middle-school and high-school students eager to improve their skills in music, athletics and academics.

About 4,000 children will attend sports camps offered through the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics. DIA offers more than 50 camps this summer for individuals and teams, including cheerleading, gymnastics, football, volleyball, golf, tennis, track and field and wrestling. Many of the camps have waiting lists including boys’ basketball, which filled quickly after coach Bruce Weber led the Fighting Illini men’s team to the NCAA finals this spring.

About 1,200 budding musicians and thespians will grace Urbana’s stages and rehearsal halls as participants in Illinois Summer Youth Music camps. Now in its 57th year, ISYM hosts 16 camps in musical theater and musicianship, including choral performance, orchestral performance, chamber performance and jazz. The campers, many of whom receive partial or full scholarships from their schools, spend their time in rehearsals, private lessons and classes, and give a concert for parents on the final day of camp.

David Allen, the coordinator of outreach and public engagement for the School of Music, who was an ISYM camper in junior high and high school during the 1980s, said that today’s campers “want more than a rehearsal that leads to a concert at the end of the week, and for that reason, we have instituted classes in music technology, piano lab, conducting and composition.”

“My goal is to present the students with something that opens their eyes to some new aspects of music that they haven’t experienced or to enhance the experiences they’re already having in their school programs,” Allen said. “I was a high-school band director for eight years, and I know what we need in our school music programs and can see how through ISYM the university is able to help students not only have a great experience for seven days but can enhance what music programs throughout the country are doing by giving kids something they can take home with them.”

ISYM attracts quite a few out-of-state participants and some international campers, Allen said. This year, a camper will travel to Urbana from Taipei, Taiwan; last year, ISYM had one camper from Germany and another from Holland.

In addition to athletics and music, there also are several camps for kids who want to do some serious brain building and career exploration while having fun.

The Girls’ Adventures in Mathematics, Science and Engineering, sponsored by the College of Engineering and the Women in Engineering Program, encourages young women to pursue careers in technical fields through two weeklong camps. In the structures camp, seventh- and eighth-grade girls are exposed to basic project-related principles of physics, materials, civil engineering, aerodynamics and chemistry, which they put to the test by constructing projects built to withstand natural forces and also to meet detailed design and construction specifications. In the computer science camp, eighth- and ninth-grade girls work with computer visualization and modeling programs.

New this year is a Discover Engineering camp for high-school sophomores interested in math and science. Campers are exposed to the various disciplines in engineering and work on projects from different engineering fields. The camp is designed to help students considering careers in engineering decide if engineering is right for them and, if so, which discipline most interests them.

The College of Engineering also sponsors an Exploring Your Options camp, a weeklong program that exposes high-school juniors and seniors to the field of engineering and includes a LEGO Mindstorm Competition that involves campers building robots to navigate an obstacle course.

A wet-and-wild icebreaker on the first night of camp that also is a highlight for many campers is the “battle of the boats” competition in which teams of campers build cardboard boats and race them across a swimming pool, said Mary Weaver, coordinator of the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering program.

Young people who have stars in their eyes can learn about aerospace engineering and aviation at a weeklong camp sponsored by the department of aerospace engineering and NASA’s Illinois Space Grant Consortium. In classroom sessions, labs and demonstrations, campers design and build model rockets and gliders and go on field trips to a local remote-control airplane field and the Institute of Aviation at Willard Airport in Savoy.

About 180 children – pre-kindergarten through eighth grade – will attend day camps at Robert Allerton Park and Conference Center, Monticello. A local art teacher will instruct young artists in using various media, including sculpture and drawing, during the Allerton Artists camps; kids in the Allerton Explorers camps will learn about animals, birds and astronomy.

According to preliminary enrollment figures, the Housing Division expects to provide accommodations for about 3,600 campers this summer, said Kirsten Ruby, the assistant director of housing for marketing. Some camps house participants at privately owned residence halls near campus.

In addition to youth, the UI residence halls will house about 1,400 adults this summer who will come to campus for professional development workshops, institutes and other programs, Ruby said.

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