Posts Tagged: summer camp
Introducing our Summer Camp Intern, Taylor Woodruff
Hi! I'm Taylor Woodruff, the new summer camp intern for the Sustainable You! - Adventure Science Camp! I am 21 years old, graduated from Clear Lake High School in 2015, and am currently a student at Mendocino College. At the college, I am a tutor for Statistics and Trigonometry. I am also Secretary of Gaming Club and an active member of Anime Club! I will be transferring soon with a degree in both Allied Health and Biology. I intend to pursue Marine Biology so I can study and help conserve sharks! I love all animals and plants. If there's any outdoor activity, count me in! I grew up playing soccer, volleyball, basketball, track, snowboarding, waterskiing and barefoot skiing. Fun fact: I have been classically trained to play the flute since 5th grade. I am kind, very easy to get along with, and determined to get any task done.
The UC Hopland Research and Extension Center is such a wonderful place. Everyone has been so warm and welcoming. I had little knowledge of the area before being recommended for this internship position, but I am so glad that I was selected. There is so much beautiful property out here -- 5,300 acres! Such a wonderful place for researchers to come out. Speaking of researcher, I've gotten to meet quite a few!
I stopped in and got to ask Dr. Vardo-Zalik and her team all about what they are doing with their lizard malaria research. Being a science major myself, I was super interested and wanted to bug them as much as I could. She explained a lot to me, let me hold and identify the genders of the Western Fence Lizards, observe a vector of the malaria parasite (the Sand Fly), watch them take blood samples, and I even got to look at those samples under the microscope through oil immersion. All of it was so fascinating. She also shared with me her passion for sharks and rays, and I think that was my favorite part. :)
I also got to meet some of the Brashares lab researchers. Talking to them was interesting as well, hearing about how they plan to catch a mountain lion and put a tracking collar on it. They are going to help out during our summer camp to have the kids set trail cameras, set small mammal traps, and check the traps in the morning. Hannah Bird even showed me a lot of the pictures that have been captured on different wildlife cameras scattered around the property. There are beautiful pictures of mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, raccoons and deer.
Thanks to Alison Smith letting me know when, I was able to see the two cutest baby lambs! While preparing for an insect activity down in the creek, I got distracted by all the tadpoles! There were so many and some had already developed teeny-tiny legs. Super cute. It's also pretty fun to take a moment and watch the woodpeckers. Brook Gamble was nice enough to give me California Naturalist journal as a present on my first day. Brook, Hannah and I got to use them and try out some of the journal activities we plan to do with the campers. I also got to share with Brook an awesome video I took of a spider making a web. It might get posted on the California Naturalist instagram, so be on the lookout! :)
In order to view more of the property and get away from the computer for a bit, I was able to help out our volunteer phenologists. We went around to multiple species of trees and other plants to record a lot of data including how many leaves, how many flowers, recording post-fire data, and more. They were very kind and funny. I'm glad I got to help them out.
Planning camp has been a lot of work! Staying organized and keeping on top of my tasks has prevented me from unwanted stress. This has been a lot of fun, but I am much more excited to meet the campers and run activities with them! Thank you Hannah, for everything!
--Taylor Woodruff
4-H Sustainable You! Summer Camp
Day 5-Water Why is water important? Where does water go when you flush it down the toilet? What...
4-H Sustainable You! Summer Camp
Day 2-Land The day begins with journaling and a farm nature walk. Along the way, campers...
Land day farm nature walk
Farm nature walk
Evidence of life on the farm
Recycle Reuse Reduce
Waste watcher trash tracker updated each day
Learning about worm composting
Worm bin assembly line
Worms and more worms
Hands-on learning at its best
Worm bins to take home
Today's harvest, kale
2019 4-H Sustainable You! Summer Camp
UC HAREC began hosting 4-H Sustainable You! Summer Camp in 2014. Since then, the education staff...
tie dye activity
tie dyed camp shirts
Pondering the journal questions of the day
Planting seeds to grow indoor plants that can provide oxygen in our home environments
STEAM summer camp introduces teens to ag tech
As part of her job with the USDA, Joyce Hunter often attended meetings focused on using open data from the government to solve problems related to food and agriculture. But she noticed a distinct lack of women and young people at those open data meetings. Hunter was told there just weren't many who were interested.
“I thought to myself, well, they aren't looking in the right places,” said Hunter, an African American woman and former chief information officer at USDA. “Maybe we ought to encourage youth of different cultures and colors in order to ensure the pipeline is filled for the future. So I went to my CIO and asked her if it would be okay to set up an open data camp for youth, particularly underserved youth.”
By partnering with The Governance Lab at New York University and other agencies, Hunter organized summer camps for youth to experience science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math, or STEAM. This summer, she brought the STEAM camp concept to Sacramento. For two weeks in July, about two dozen high-school students went on field trips and engaged in STEAM-based activities as part of the California Open Data STEAM Summer Camp.
“One of the things I love about it is the kids are so curious and they're coming up with their own research questions, with their own challenges,” said Melanie Weir, a STEAM camp instructor. “They're asking questions about why agriculture is important to them. Why food is important to them.”
Adam Low, a sophomore at Franklin High School in Elk Grove, was one of the camp participants.
“I chose the water and drought group because as a Californian, we know California was most recently in a drought. And I wanted to see what this data camp could teach me about water and how it affects agriculture and other topics,” said Low.
“They're traveling all over,” Weir said. “They went to different places. They went to Russell Ranch, they saw the drones, they're really excited about it. They saw the UC Davis laboratory and the UC ANR researchers. They saw helicopters. They saw these big machines that have 35 cameras that do 3-D dimensional pictures of crops and what's out there. They also went to the Cannery and they loved hugging the chickens. They thought it was the greatest thing in the world.”
The California Open Data STEAM Summer Camp was made possible through a partnership between USDA, The Governance Lab and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.