May 21 – The University of Texas Permian Basin will host two tech camps this summer: UNITE and ExxonMobil.
The UNITE camp will be on the first floor of the Engineering Building from June 17 to July 12. The hours are 8am to 3pm
UNITE is a four-week pre-collegiate summer experience for talented high school students hosted by the University of Texas Permian Basin College of Engineering.
It encourages students to pursue college majors and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields through a program of focused, practical, rigorous academics, enrichment and career exploration.
George Nnanna, professor of mechanical engineering, said the other camp is partially funded by ExxonMobil and will run for two weeks. It will target students in sixth through eighth grades in the first week and ninth through 11th grades in the second week.
“They have similar objectives in that the main goal is to expose the students to different aspects of the engineering discipline,” Nnanna said. “They can also explore the fundamentals of engineering, which allows them to be involved in practical applications of engineering, so this is going to provide hands-on experience. It also gives the students the opportunity to interact with engineering students and professors.”
Most classes will be taught by professors.
“As a result, it will enhance the analytical skills of the students, equip them with skills that they can use throughout their lives and also motivate them to explore career paths that they can choose,” he added.
It will help students decide if engineering is for them.
“By participating in this program and showing how math and physics are connected to engineering, they can decide if STEM is the right discipline for them. What we’ve done is expand this program beyond just engineering. We’re bringing it in professors from biological sciences, geological sciences, engineering and mathematics so they can see the relationships between science and engineering,” Nnanna said.
One of the unique features this year is that they are bringing in industry representatives to talk to the campers.
“Actually, ExxonMobil has committed to making a presentation. ProPetro has also committed. Terracon has also committed,” he said.
Students will see how they start with theory in the classroom, how they take it into practice in the laboratory, and how that translates into industry experience.
“I think it’s great exposure and a program that is much needed here in the Midland-Odessa community,” Nnanna said.
He expects 20 students for the UNITE camp and about 35 for the ExxonMobil camp.
The UNITE camp specifically targets veteran and under-resourced students who are underrepresented in STEM disciplines and women.
“It is important to note that due to the quality of our program, out of perhaps 40 institutions implementing the program, we were selected last year as one of four institutions in the country to be included in the IMA Educational Opportunity Program Block (Instructional Materials and Technology Allotment). That is a testament to the quality of the program we provide to the students,” said Nnanna.
“The other thing is for UNITE, not only do we provide those learning opportunities, the military pays the participating students a stipend of $100 per week. So for the four weeks, this means they have the opportunity to earn $400, plus the technical and scientific experience they will get from us. That’s a really great opportunity and also to be able to be involved in an industry excursion,” he added.
There will also be field trips for students.
He said they started this program in 2019 and it has been running continuously since then.
“Every year we had as many as 50 students. During COVID we had a smaller number, for example 20 students. So all told, I think this program has benefited at least 300 students,” Nnanna said.
He added that they get students from Odessa, Midland and Monahans.
They have had students from Andrews.
The camp was held virtually during COVID, giving students from Chicago and Austin the opportunity to participate.
During that period, they sent engineering kits to people’s homes and then connected with students to provide instructions on how to build the engineering experiment, run the test, and write the report.
At the end of the program, they returned the kits to UTPB.
“It was a little bit more expensive because we also have to incur the costs of transporting and delivering the kits. But that was a way to reach a wider audience,” Nnanna said.
This year the camp will focus on reactors and simulations in chemical technology.
“We will also do mechanical engineering, look at engines. We will also focus on solar energy, but also on wind energy. In the biological sciences they will do some experiments related to bioengineering and in geology (they) will focus on the relationship between geology and hydraulic fracturing,” Nnanna said.
“We will also look at water technology; how water can be treated so that it can be usefully reused. The students will also be involved in the use of advanced equipment such as scanning electron microscopy. We will teach them how it works. How we can characterize and learn the chemistry of that material using the scanning electron microscope. It will really be a great opportunity for the students,” he added.
All of this will have to do with someone from the industry giving a presentation. This could be a practicing engineer talking about the day-to-day activities in the industry so that students can see how these projects they do in camp compare to practical engineering in the field.
Theory is provided at the start of each session so that students can gain an understanding of physics and mathematics.
“Later in that session, we’ll take them into the lab. They’ll work with both students and faculty so they can conduct an experiment and then the faculty will guide them in analyzing that data so they can do their own presentation talk about the lessons learned,” says Nnanna.
They have a built-in break every day of approximately 11:30 am so students have a chance to interact and network with each other.
Nnanna said they expect to hire about nine professors and they expect to hire four engineering students for the program.
You don’t have to be particularly good at math or science to participate in the camp.
“What we’re doing is showing them that there are opportunities for them. You don’t have to be a math or physics expert to participate. We welcome all students, but if they participate we hope to spark an interest that will they’re considering engineering or biological sciences, so that’s really the main goal to ignite that passion,” Nnanna said.
He added that the industry was very supportive of the camp.
“It would be even better if we had additional funding from the sector so that, rather than limiting this to a summer programme, we could run it all year round, bringing in some students during the school days or at weekends and work with them so that there is continuous lifelong learning and exposure to technology and science,” says Nnanna.
Ultimately, he said, this will create the much-needed workforce to drive the region’s economy.
“It will also help improve the retention and graduation rates of high school students and minimize dropout rates,” Nnanna said.
