Boeing Camp Motivates Engineers of the Future

The elementary school pupils look like typical kids at camp. On a hot summer’s day, they busily brighten sombreros with colorful paint and glitter.

But wait. Those aren’t sombreros. They’re Saturn hats. The round middle is the planet and the wide brim the planet’s atmosphere.

For the last three weeks, 340 students from all over Southern California descended on Anaheim Union High School District’s Oxford Academy in Cypress to attend the Boeing Co.’s ninth annual Explore Engineering Summer Science Camp. From 6:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. for three consecutive Fridays and Saturdays, the students in grades kindergarten through 12 participated in workshops chosen from among 13 subjects.

Under the tutelage of Boeing engineers, scientists and other volunteers, they studied astronomy, electronics, environmental science and how to design a colony on Mars. They learned the physics of flight, the difference between resistance and capacitance and how torque affects gear rotation. They set up aquariums with self-designed ecosystems. They built model Mars colonies and Mars Rovers to travel over the planet’s bumpy terrain. And they experimented with finding materials appropriate for building on the red planet.

This is the first year Oxford has hosted the camp. The camp lost its home at Boeing’s Downey facility when the company closed that operation last year.

Despite the technical subject matter and a variety of academic backgrounds, a tour of the camp reveals students enthusiastically engaged. Most take advantage of optional math classes held in the mornings before the official camp begins at 9 a.m.

Boeing volunteers say the kids need role models to help them envision career paths. “Most of us tinkered in our garages as kids. Now we get paid to do it,” said Jerry Blackburn, a project manager for the Huntington Beach facility.

Blackburn teaches an advanced workshop where high school students design the infrastructure for a Mars colony in the year 2030. The students have designed a transportation system, considered what type of government they want and how they can provide appropriate living conditions for the colony. At the end of the three weeks, “we want them to feel tired, but feel good about learning,” said Blackburn.

Unlike other science camps where only a select group of students participates, attending Boeing’s camp requires nothing more than a timely application. The camp has expanded from 82 students in 1992, but still has more students apply than it can accept. Thus students are taken on a first-come first-served basis.

While preparing for an exhibition, four girls sit at a table carefully considering where to place Legos on their model Mars Rover. The Rover will have to withstand the rough terrain of Mars built in another workshop upstairs.

Their instructors, Paul Stallings and Jason Reinsvold, have attended the science camp for seven years, the last three team-teaching the Mars Rover workshop.

Stallings and Reinsvold have both decided to major in science--one as a computer scientist, the other as an engineer--and they attribute their interest to the Boeing camp. In his younger years, Stallings said, he didn’t understand all the concepts taught.

“But when I got into physics, it was like a lightbulb. It put me ahead of the other students.”

Judy Silber can be reached at (714) 966-5988.