Budding computer programmers got a taste of ASU's engineering school at a summer camp on the Tempe campus last week.
Campers learned how to program and compete with robots while gaining exposure to various programs at the Ira A Fulton Schools of Engineering. A feature of ASU summers since 2006, 70 percent of the camp's participants who are now college-age are Sun Devils, according to a graduate student research project.
Program director Yinong Chen, an engineering professor, said the camp used robots, which most kids are interested in, to stimulate interest in computer science.
"The key in teaching this is to link the concept and the principle to a hands-on part," he said. "If we just teach the concept, they won't be as motivated."
The 47 participants spent part of each day in lectures about computer science and then programmed their robots in teams of three.
They teams had to navigate their bots via remote control through a maze to collect balls, program the robot to travel through the maze by itself, and use a robot to push another team’s bot out of a ring.
Ben Marflitt, a 14-year-old participant from Gilbert, said he participated in the 7Up camp for 7th and 8th graders last year.
"It's a lot of fun," he said. "It's nice to be able to work with people, because it can be kind of frustrating working alone."
Sydney Wallace, 14, and her brother Xavier, 13, traveled from Texas to participate in the camp this year. Their parents, ASU alumni, chose to travel to Arizona this summer and last summer so the siblings could participate in both the 7Up and 9Up camps.
The siblings worked together in a team, and placed 5th out of the 16 teams in their first challenge, but were determined to do better.
Sydney said she liked the 9Up camp a little more than the previous year's 7Up camp because it was more advanced and complex.
"I really like the challenge of trying to outdo yourself," she said.
Both Wallace siblings said the camp helped them decide that they want to go to ASU. Chen said this was common among many camp participants.
One of these students, computer systems engineering and business freshman Sami Mian, taught at the camp this year. Mian first attended the camp after his sophomore year of high school, when the president of his school's FIRST Robotics Competition suggested it to him.
Mian returned as a volunteer instructor the next summer and is this year one of five paid student instructors. His status as a Flinn scholar requires him to participate in study abroad programs during most of the next few summers, so he doesn't believe he'll be able to teach again, but he said he wants to come back to give a guest lecture if he can.
"The impact this camp has on students is quite big," he said. "It's the first time many of the kids are exposed to the engineering process, and you learn how to program and deal with issues by working as a team, which is really important in engineering."
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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