The Central Texas College (CTC) Continuing Education department is offering scholarships for a new robotics and coding camp in the College for Kids program this summer. CTC was one of 10 schools awarded the Governor's Summer Merit Program grant through the Texas Workforce Commission to provide scholarships to historically underserved students, 14 to 21 years of age, interested in pursuing a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) career. The purpose of the grant is to improve Texas middle school and high school students’ familiarity and experience with post-secondary educational opportunities leading to STEM careers while developing collaboration among workforce development programs, colleges, universities and Texas middle and high schools.
Forty scholarships will be available to be used specifically for the new LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Robotics and Coding Camp to be held in June and July. It is designed to teach students about computer integrated manufacturing. “The coding camp will incorporate the use of LEGO® equipment and technology,” said Sarah Mylcraine, coordinator – community enrichment programs for CTC’s Continuing Education department. “The LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 sets are engaging educational tools which help develop and enhance a student’s 21st century thinking skills.”
In each camp, students will study text-based programming with MicroPython, a version of one of the world’s most popular programming languages. Students will design and build programmable robots to solve problems within a STEM context, understand and use input and output devices and gain first-hand experience with forming and testing hypotheses.
Mylcraine said, “With Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, students will learn how industrial robots control production processes and use programming algorithms to make the robots efficient and safe. Students will also build robots using real life manufacturing examples to perform specific tasks.”
Twenty scholarships will be offered to students aged 14 to 16 for the camp June 21 25. Another 20 scholarships will be for students 17 to 21 years of age for the camp July 19-23. The online scholarship application is open May 3-28 at <https://www.ctcd.edu/students/continuing-education/college-for-kids/>.
A complete list of College for Kids courses, as well as other Continuing Education classes, is now available online at <www.ctcd.edu/ce>. Inquiries about the camp, other College for Kids classes or registration can be directed to CTC at 254-526-1586.