The COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting health and safety concerns caused the cancellation of many engineering education opportunities for high school students. To expose high school students to the field of neural engineering and encourage them to pursue academic pathways in biomedical engineering, the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) at the…

Day camps are a powerful context for youth development. The American Camp Association and Leave No Trace have been integral in supporting youth development by identifying outcomes associated with participation in outdoor recreation. Recreation majors in the programming class used the camp as a service-learning component of the class that offered…

Camp scholars have designed structured curricula to engender specific outcomes and to break down the "black box" of programming. Implementation evaluation explores how well a program operates when delivered, further breaking down the black box. The purpose of this study was to explore the implementation of a new structured camp…

Low-income minority females are disproportionately affected by obesity. The relevance of summer months to weight gain is often overlooked. Some evidence suggests that summer programming, such as day camps, may offer increased opportunities for structured physical activities resulting in less weight gain. This study examined the effectiveness of…

An Electrical Engineering Summer Academy for Pre-College Students was held at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The Academy participants included students having just completed 7th to 11th grade and teachers from middle school through high school. The students and teachers participated in team-building,…

The primary purpose of the investigation discussed in this paper is to determine the perceived effectiveness of a life skills education program for youth. During an eight-week summer day camp program, youth in grades kindergarten through fifth participated in 28 hours of life skills education focusing on relating and caring. Fifteen skills were…

A simple electrical board programed to provide measurement of a nutrition day camp's objectives was fun for eight and nine year old inner-city youths to use; incorporation of pictures aided comprehension. Results indicate that the testing technique was appropriate to the clientele and the program content on the right track. (AJ)

The purpose of this manual is to educate camp directors and camp personnel regarding government-recognized standard practices and procedures followed within the camp industry. These standards also provide a basis for voluntary accreditation of camps by the American Camping Association (ACA) beyond the minimum requirements of licensing. The manual…

Camp program evaluation is useful in documenting effectiveness to funders and in assessing and monitoring campers' problem behaviors. An example from Camp Fire Boys and Girls in Des Moines, Iowa, discusses developing an evaluation, identifying program objectives, choosing an evaluation method, content of the evaluation instrument, outcome results,…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of Camp Invention, a hands-on creativity and science day camp run in partnership with about 400 schools nationwide. A survey of 17,526 campers, parents, and staff supported the positive impact of Camp Invention for both boys and girls, in urban and suburban settings, and on attitudes towards creativity,…

An introduction to the need for day camp activities and recreational facilities for the retarded precedes a discussion of the problems involved: the recreational needs must be defined along with the nature of the programs; locations must be found; the costs of transportation and salaries must be assumed and budgeted; programs must be flexible and…

Summer day camps for learning disabled elementary school students can help children to maintain and improve academic and social skills that may otherwise regress during summer vacation. Two such New Brunswick programs are described in terms of rationale, camp structure and organization, funding, student selection, staff selection, training,…

An inclusion audit looks at the messages that a camp conveys to campers, parents, and the public and evaluates whether those messages are congruent with policies of acceptance and inclusion of diversity. Elements include reviewing camp promotional materials, the camp mission statement, and the location of advertising; evaluating forms; examining…

Addresses the importance of camp evaluation, including the role of formative and summative evaluations; overviews areas of evaluation such as administration, facilities and grounds, programming, and staff; describes functions of evaluation, including human relations, technical function, and conceptual function; describes evaluation tools; and…

This article examines the unfolding of experiences in youth programs that differed in the degree of youth and adult influence over program activities. In-depth qualitative data were obtained over a three- to four-month cycle of activities in two "youth-driven" and two "adult-driven" programs for high-school-aged youth. All had been identified as…