Over a Dozen Kids Build and Engineer Robots at HSU’s Robotic Camp

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ARCATA (KIEM) – Over at HSU, middle school kids are putting their minds to the test! By building robots!

It’s summer vacation and most kids would be outside at the beach or traveling. But instead, these kids are learning about robots.

“I think learning about robots is a lot more fun that being in school” said Robotics Camp Counselor Mathilda Kerwin. “Lots of the kids thinks it’s really fun, we get to do really interesting stuff.”

But it’s not made to be your typical classroom.

“When we do have to teach things we try to keep it brief and try to help the kids individually so that they learn how to tackle programming issues on their own,” said Kerwin.

All day, these kids figure out how to make their robots move using coding, Legos, and teamwork.

“They spend all day trying to make their robot work trying to accomplish this task and the first time they get to do it, it’s really exciting,” said Kerwin.

The camp inspires kids to pursue a career in STEM.

“I like engineering,” said seventh grader Makai O’Rourke. “My uncle was in the Air Force in Saudi Arabia and he was a mechanic”.

Robotics camp helps challenges his mind.

“I like puzzles, like really hard puzzles like Rubik cubes,” said Makai.

For a young girl like Jessica Lamas, she was inspired to look further into what coding and engineering would be like together.

“We did coding in eighth grade for math and it was really interesting for me and so it made me want to look deeper into it,” ninth grader Jessica Lamas.

She hopes that other girls will one day try their hand at engineering.

“Not a lot of girls are interested or would be interested, or are too scared,” says Jessica, “I kind of feel like we’re strong women and so we should decide what we want to do.”