By Jonathan Morales

2023年6月13日

A 3D printing course in the University 图书馆’s new makerspace and a program to help participants outline their personal and professional goals headline 萨克拉门托 State’s 2023 summer enrichment programs for local middle and high school students.

夏季青年学院将于6月20日开始，让参与者探索潜在的职业并体验大学校园生活。

The series of weeklong “academies” – 12 for seventh- through 10th-graders and 13 for high schoolers – expose students to fields such as creative writing, forensics, coding, engineering, and teaching.

The goal is to provide students a place to explore their interests or try something new, said Anna Keck, interim director of Academic and Professional Programs with 囊状态’s 继续教育学院 (CCE), which runs Summer Youth Academies.

"We don't have grades,” Keck said. “This is pretty low risk, gives them a safe space to explore a topic, maybe something they don't have available at their school or for whatever reason they don't feel comfortable engaging in at their school out of fear they’re not going to be successful.”

When the StingerStudio创客空间于今年3月开业, Keck and her colleagues knew it could be a good fit for Summer Youth Academies. CCE与图书馆合作，为高中生增加了3D打印课程。 Participants will design, print, and test a “stomp rocket” – a rocket that is launched by stomping on an attached air pump.

“That element, the hands-on exploration, is really at the heart of our Summer Youth Academies in general,” Keck said.

同样面向高中生的“职业愿景学院”是一门新型课程。 它将帮助学生发现自己的核心价值、优势和兴趣，并制定评估专业和职业道路的计划，而不是专注于特定的职业领域或技能。

It’s an area Keck said was missing from the usual offerings.

“There might be kids out there who think, ‘I don’t know if I'm into welding, I don't know if I'm into data science, but I know what things bring me fulfillment,’” she said.

夏季青年学院是一个新的伞形项目，由两个长期存在的Sac州立大学夏季项目合并而成，高中学生夏季学院和学术人才搜索，一个面向年轻学生的项目。 In combining the programs, and removing the latter’s placement exams, CCE aims to make them more accessible.

奖学金由捐赠提供，确保没有学生因为经济成本而被拒之门外。

Accessibility plays a big role in the other aspect of Summer Youth Academies’ mission: helping more of the region’s young people see themselves as future college students. 凯克说，CCE在萨克拉门托地区开展外展活动，特别是在代表性不足的学校。

“Some students, there’s this perception that college is for the elite, that it’s not something they’re ever going to consider,” she said. “And so, two things are really important. One is getting them in that environment where they can see, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm actually really good at coding, and I never knew that, because I never really had the opportunity to work on this.’ And then the other is getting them on a college campus, or at least within the college setting.”

“That's huge for us, whether they go to 囊状态 or not. That's where our heart is, to get kids to see that they have opportunities for their future.”

For more information, 访问暑期青年学院网站.