STERNBERG MUSEUM SCIENCE CAMPS+
I founded this program in 2013 when I first arrived at the FHSU Sternberg Museum of Natural History. In the years since, the Camps have served hundreds of students from across the United States and abroad. The program annually awards ~$20,000 in scholarship funds to assist low-income applicants. Many students have remained engaged long after they age out, joining my staff as TAs and instructors. Since its founding the students have collected multiple large fossil specimens now housed at the Sternberg Museum. Our student alumni and past staff come from all over the US, with a growing international student contingent as well. My long-term goal is a self-sustaining opportunity and resource-access engine building a community of invested former participants helping expand the operational goals as laid out below.
Opportunity Access
Creating opportunities for resource and experience access is at the core of the Sternberg Science Camps+ program. This philosophy is applied to both student-centered program design, and staff operations + training. Opportunity access may take the form of travel, skill development, network-building, as well as empowerment and validation in a supportive community. We also generate funds for Camps applicant scholarships, and program alumni professional development grants.
Peer Communities
Students and staff peer communities are a major value-added aspect of the program. Quite often staff are able to network in-program with each other, as well as visiting and collaborating external organization personnel. Students will frequently stay in touch long after their program has ended. For multi-year students, this effect is amplified as their network of peers, staff, and collaborating guest experts they've worked with grows.
Skills Training
One of the program's major goals is to give students as well as staff opportunities to learn and hone new hard and soft skills they can carry to use in the future. For students, these can take all manner of forms from basic logistics to fossil excavation and care, data and analysis skills, geologic surveying, and many more. Staff are able to build leadership and logistics management skills, as well as teaching experience using active learning pedagogical strategies.
Collaborative Development
As the Sternberg Camps+ program grows, we are looking to collaborate with additional earth and life-science education-focused organizations. These partnerships will allow us to bring our programs closer to students excited about earth and life science subjects, thus decreasing travel costs and increasing accessibility. In doing this we welcome outside organizations interested in hosting one of our programs to get in touch! We have incentivization benefit options available for discussion, and I'd be thrilled to chat with you about collaborating.
