Bioengineering Global Health: Design and Implementation of a Summer Day Camp for High School Students

Summer camps present opportunities for students to expand their knowledge of science and engineering principles and applications, acquire hands-on experience in laboratory techniques, and increase interest in pursuing college degrees and careers in science and engineering. Although many engineering summer camps for high school students are offered throughout the country, few are focused specifically on bioengineering. In this paper, we present our approach to designing a summer day camp for rising 9 and 10 graders that is unique in its focus on bioengineering and use of a global health theme. We chose global health because it is an intriguing topic that appeals to students from all backgrounds and is accessible to students with variable previous exposure to science and engineering topics. Furthermore, global health applications clearly demonstrate important bioengineering design principles and showcase the positive impact bioengineers make on society. These considerations are especially important for students from groups that are under-represented in science and engineering. To our knowledge, this is the only currently available summer camp in which high school students explore bioengineering in the context of global health. The curriculum for the one-week program consisted of short lectures, team-based problem solving activities, research lab tours, and an interactive information session with current bioengineering undergraduates at the University of Washington (UW). Topics included the engineering design process, molecular biology of infectious disease, synthetic biology, drug delivery in HIV treatment, and low-cost point-of-care diagnostics. Students were encouraged to have informal conversations with undergraduate and graduate student guest instructors during lunch. As a culminating end-of-camp activity, students worked in teams to design solutions to current problems in global health and presented their projects to peers and guests. Students provided both quantitative and qualitative assessment of the camp through preand post-camp surveys. Student assessment data indicate that the camp was effective in increasing students’ self-assessed knowledge about science and engineering and the bioengineering field, and the camp increased the participants’ desire to attend college at the host institution in the future. Students enjoyed the team project of designing a solution to a problem in global health. As student assessment indicates that the camp was an enjoyable and effective learning experience, this camp will serve as a model for future offerings. Introduction Summer outreach camps provide pre-college students with the opportunities to explore a wide variety of fields and to investigate potential college major and career options. These programs help expose and attract students to science and engineering disciplines and can serve as effective recruiting tools. Previously implemented summer camps focused on science and engineering fields have been shown to be successful in significantly enhancing student recruitment,