The academic pace slows a bit in the summertime at Arizona State University, but the energy level stays high as thousands of young people come to campus for camp.
Middle schoolers sleep in the residence halls, little kids hit golf balls at Karsten Golf Course and teenagers on the brink of life decisions can take college-level courses, learning to start businesses, create smartphone applications and become published authors.
This summer, nearly 4,500 young people will attend more than 30 summer programs at the Polytechnic, Downtown Phoenix, West and Tempe campuses. It's part of ASU's mission to serve its surrounding communities and expand access to education.
Some of the camps are designed to inspire teens who might not see college in their futures. The Fleischer Scholars, Cesar Chavez Leadership Institute and Hunnicutt Future Educators Academy, among others, bring high school students to ASU to not only visualize themselves on campus, but also to learn leadership skills and find personal insight.
“We give them an opportunity to be here overnight, and we expose them to college life and they say ‘Wow, I can picture myself here,’ ” said Connie Pangrazi, the assistant dean of academics at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, which sponsors the Hunnicutt camp.
Some camps focus on the academic experience. The 500 Barrett Summer Scholars draw high-achieving seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders who compete for a spot in the program, where they take electives in journalism, nursing, sustainability and other subjects. Other sessions teach Chinese, digital culture, video games, archeology, writing, accounting, math and art.
ASU offers several sports camps for kids, who can use the university’s top-notch facilities, and children with special needs can attend sessions run by expert faculty and staff members.
One of the best parts of the camp experience for older teens is the chance to interact with current ASU students who are peer mentors. The college students talk about how they paid for college, decided on a major and dealt with loneliness.
Samuel De La Ossa, a sophomore majoring in business communications, was the lead mentor in the Fleischer Scholars camp, sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business. He had been a Fleischer Scholar himself when he was in high school.
“The biggest thing I want them to take away is that they have a friend. This is a Fleischer family,” said De La Ossa. “It works. We’re able to break through to these juniors and make sure they’re not nervous and give them the resources they need.”
Klain Benally, an American Indian studies major and a Navajo, was a peer mentor at the Inspire Academy camp for Native American teenagers. He said that Native American youth have many cultural and social hurdles to overcome when transitioning from high school to college.
“There is a culture shock, no doubt about it,” Benally said. “One of our goals is to teach students about college, the steps they need to take, and how to connect with one another once they are here.”
Explore some of the many camps on offer at ASU this summer in the gallery below.
-
Summer Health Institute
Student Jonathan Olivares finds out you can ultrasound an eyeball during a demonstration with Teresa Wu during the Summer Health Institute on July 12. The program, held at the Downtown Phoenix campus, aims to expose high school students to a variety of health professions before they get to college.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Nate Wade, College of Health Solutions senior director of academic services, instructs high school student Nicole Gehret on how to intubate a patient during the Summer Health Institute. Read more.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Solar Energy Camp
Carlos Nunez, 15, of Tempe, double-checks the instruction manual to make sure he has properly connected his panels at the Solar Energy Camp on the Polytechnic campus on July 13. Six high school students collected data about photovoltaic panels' tilt angle, direction, cloud coverage and dust covering.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Carlos Nunez and other members of Solar Energy Camp adjust the angle of their panels on the Polytechnic campus on July 13. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Thunderbird Summer Global Experience
Sejal Shanbhag works on a presentation with her partners, Justin Rudick and Bradley Lehmann. The West campus program includes low-cost or free initiatives that are intended to engage the community with ASU. Read more.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
The Art of Invention
Amy Chen, 16, of Chandler, watches Jannie Nam, 15, of Phoenix, add a new layer to their tower made of cards and clips during "The Art of Invention: Design Thinking and Creative Problem Solving." The camp helps students develop the skills to get ideas out of their heads and into the real world.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Catherine Schwartzmann, 15, of Chandler, holds a pose, supported by cardboard structures, similar to a drawn stick-figure drawing during "The Art of Invention: Design Thinking and Creative Problem Solving" at Chandler Innovation Center, on July 18. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Camp Crave
This camp emphasizes the importance of healthy living, from sustainability to fine dining. Here, Megan Marlin (left) and Sasha Sende make a roasted red pepper aioli June 6 on the Downtown Phoenix campus. After a classroom lesson on a chosen topic, each day ends in the more-than-5,000-square-foot ASU test kitchen, where campers create and eat meals.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Kent Moody, kitchen coordinator for the ASU Nutrition Program, gets a little help squeezing a lemon from student Gretchen Rostad during Camp Crave, hosted by the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion in the College of Health Solutions. Read more.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Inspire
This inaugural Native American camp is designed to be a fun, holistic experience to help build college readiness and a new pathway to ASU. Shalee Allison, 15, tests her group's chain-reaction STEAM machine June 21 at the Polytechnic campus. The camp featured indigenous reading and writing workshops, lab tours, career talks and motivational speeches.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
The more than 70 high schoolers at Inspire show some ASU spirit during a June 21 talk by Waylon Pahona, a member of the Hopi tribe who founded the group Healthy Active Natives. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
APACE Academy
High schoolers get to test their mettle during a mock trial at the APACE (Asian Pacific Advocacy, Culture and Education) Academy, where plantiff's attorney Emerald Elanzo, 15, shows R.J. Anmontha, 17, evidence. Phoenix lawyers prepped the high schoolers for trial, giving them a glimpse into a career as an attorney.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Defense attorneys (from left) Marc Flom, 16, Dwayne Lanwe, 16, and Randy Oshiro, 15, plan strategy in the mock trial that concluded the APACE Academy, which focused on Asian-American and Pacific Islander culture and contemporary issues, as well as civic engagement. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Barrett Summer Scholars
Some 500 academically talented students took part in this camp, living in dorms and taking college-level coursework, including lab exercises on grocery-store botany June 27 on the Polytechnic campus. The selective camp — applicants must have high grade-point averages and be recommended by a teacher — is sponsored by Barrett, the Honors College.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Arjun Phull (left), 13, goes for a closer look, while Dermot Broderick, 14, examines a part of their Golden Fleece during Barrett Summer Scholars program on June 27. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Cesar E. Chavez Leadership Institute
Learning how to speak — and listen — in public is just one of the leadership skills high school students cover in this competitive camp. Here, Vanessa Strait Constandse holds up her friend Maria Hill during a team-building chant June 6 in Tempe. The camp promotes three concepts — education, civic engagement and community service.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Students from around the state crack up during a vocal exercise in which they hold an "Ahhh" as long as they can during the Cesar E. Chavez Leadership Institute on June 6 at the Memorial Union in Tempe. Read more.
Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
-
Science in the City
ASU's lab made up several stops for this day camp organized by the Phoenix Union High School District to bring science alive for middle schoolers. At a lab on the Downtown Phoenix campus, campers are introduced to forensic science as they figure out how a skeleton was "stolen" from a locked cabinet.
Photo by Maureen Roen/ASU College of Letters and Sciences
-
Science in City students draw renditions of what fiber samples taken from three lab employees looked like under the microscope and then determine which best matched fibers collected at the crime scene. Read more.
Photo by Maureen Roen/ASU College of Letters and Sciences
-
Young Adult Writing Program (YAWP)
Juniper Shutters, 8, writes down the thoughts she had while standing on the University Drive bridge June 27 during YAWP, a two-week summer youth writing camp sponsored by the Central Arizona Writing Project within the Department of English at ASU.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
The young writers at YAWP wave to cars as they stand on the University Drive bridge June 27. The camp, held at Tempe, Polytechnic and West campuses, allowed third- through 12th-graders to explore the power of writing with such creative approaches as blues lyrics, comic books and even tweets. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Fleischer Scholars Program
Melanie Diaz talks about school clubs as she and 20 high school seniors take part in a leadership workshop at the Fleischer Scholars Program on June 16. The camp, sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business, eases the pathway to college. The students learned resume writing, study skills, college application tips and financial aid advice.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Amando Zires (second from left) and other high school seniors listen to ASU students during a Fleischer Scholars workshop June 16. The students work with 11 W.P. Carey School of Business student-mentors in the weeklong program. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
FIRST LEGO League
These weeklong camps teach the basics of robotic programming to introduce young students to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Hosted by the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, they built and programmed an autonomous robot to complete a variety of tasks ranging from simple movement to those involving logic and sensors.
Photo by Nick Narducci/ASU
-
Students work in pairs to make flow charts that solve various challenges, program their robot to perform the steps, and test their logic during the girls camp session the week of July 4. Read more.
Photo by Nick Narducci/ASU
-
Veterinary High School Summer Camp
Tenth-grader Holly Hemesath (left) watches as 11th-grader Mikala Highbaugh assists in the dissection of a dogfish shark during the inaugural veterinary camp June 8 at the West campus. The camp teaches teens science, compassion and how to study, giving interested high schoolers a look at veterinary careers.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Instructor Darra Browning (center) talks to 10th-grader Char McIntosh about the cow kidney that ninth-grader Sophie Paul (left) is exploring at the Veterinary High School Summer Camp on June 8 on the West campus. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Hunnicutt Future Educators Academy
This multi-campus camp, sponsored by Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is aimed at high schoolers interested in teaching and focuses on science, technology, engineering and math (including a visit to the Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe). The campers were learning to think like engineers so that someday they can teach that way.
Photo by Alisha Gudz/ASU
-
Suny Mendez, a camper at the Hunnicutt Future Educators Academy at ASU’s Polytechnic campus, gets help from Daniel Cortez, a student teacher at the camp and a senior in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Read more.
Photo by Alisha Gudz/ASU
-
Ultimate Technology Boot Camp
Harrison Kerkhoff, 13, of Wittmann, Arizona, follows along with the instructor as they draw the head of a 3-D animation project on the Polytechnic campus on June 15. The 10-day campus program provides high school students opportunities to dive into 3-D modeling and printing, create robots and write code for games and programs.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Fiona Berk (right), 15, of Phoenix, watches Ciara Kelley, 17, of Glendale, as she morphs her 3-D animated space being at the Ultimate Technology Boot Camp program on the Polytechnic campus on June 15. The camp, during which campers live on campus, gives the students a sample of what ASU has to offer them after high school.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Rahul Puranam, 13, works on a quad copter he's building at the Ultimate Technology Boot Camp program.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Social Studies Institute
ASU has camps for teachers, too. At the STEMSS Institute, educators studied the urban heat island phenomenon and learned how to create lesson plans that combine science and geography. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
-
Central Arizona Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute For two weeks in June, 22 middle and high school teachers from throughout Phoenix convened at ASU’s Tempe campus to focus on improving their argument-writing teaching skills and creating lesson plans. Read more.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Top photo: Students examine the parts of a Madagascar Periwinkle at the Barrett Summer Scholars program on June 27. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
More Arts, humanities and education
‘A vessel for all of that feeling’: ASU poet composes libretto for 9/11 concert in Manhattan
Safiya Sinclair has always had a way with words.Her debut poetry collection, “Cannibal,” won a Whiting Award for poetry in 2016. Her 2023 memoir, “How to Say Babylon,” was described by more than one…
For this ASU alum, preserving a language means preserving a culture
Tucked into the forests of northern Minnesota lies a landscape of rolling hills, wetlands and sprawling freshwater lakes spanning more than 1,200 square miles. The Red Lake Nation, a band of Ojibwe…
ASU expands access to careers in education with new 3-year bachelor's degrees
Arizona State University is launching its first three-year bachelor's degree programs, giving education students the option of an accelerated curriculum for certain paths while maintaining the…