Summer at the CAT's means learning, exploring and fun!

This year the program boasted an enrollment of about 525 kids, and would have been even more if policy allowed, according to SCA director Julie Bryan.

“I’ve been helping to run this program for the past eight summers,” said Bryan. “It definitely started off small but has gotten bigger each year.”

“We try to keep the classes small, somewhere between 10 to 15 kids, while some of them go as high as eighteen. This year a pretty good amount of people actually couldn’t get in because the classes filled so quickly.”

The summer career academies, which also had classes running out of CAT Brandywine and Pierce Middle School, offers an array of technical and career education classes that are also available at Center for Arts & Technology and the Chester County Technical College High School during the regular school year. The academies are designed to give students a hands-on introduction to a variety of professions and to get middle school students to start thinking about what it is they would like to be when they enter the work force, and then to give them the opportunity to explore that career while at the same time having some fun.

“Some of the most popular classes we offer are game design, web design, culinary arts, and cosmetology. But we also offer classes like journalism, and LEGO® robotics.”

Classes are taught by CAT instructors as well as professionals from the local business community. For example, Spring City Chief of Police Dee Sherman uses her own vacation time to teach two investigative criminal science classes at the Summer Career Academies.

“I love it here,” said Chief Sherman. “It’s so much fun. I’m a firm believer that you have to do what you’re passionate about. I’ve been in law enforcement for 28 years and it’s not only my profession but it’s my passion.
“So I get to come here and not only impart knowledge, but passion to these kids. And when they actually get to do things, and get hands on, they get much more involved.”

Sherman had plenty of activities planned for her kids, including evidence collection, fingerprinting, crime scene sketching, and she even had K9 units from two different townships come and demonstrate drug and bomb sniffing.
“Next year, I want to try and get a county detective to come out and bring a forensic van so that kids can see all the cool instruments, what I call ‘toys’, the detectives use on a daily basis. I want to keep coming here and working with the kids every year.”

Frank Radford, an Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) certified mechanic and CAT Pickering automotive service technology instructor, also offers a week of his time during the summer to teach auto mechanics and collision technology.
“We’ve gotten into just about everything this week, from changing brake pads and rotors, to running compression checks and rotating the tires,” said Radford.

“It’s amazing though, the kids in the afternoon asked me about one of the cars on the racks that we hadn’t done anything with, so I cut them loose on it. Before I knew it they’d put the radiator in and hooked up all the horns and some of the electronics.”

Radford is not the only one to notice the breadth of knowledge and ability growing in his students. Andrew Jacobs, the electrical occupations instructor at CAT Pickering, had nothing but the highest praises for his students, former and future.

“Telecommunications and electrical programs are always a bit of a tough sell,” said Jacobs. “There’s a lot of hard work, and a lot of thought that goes into learning about telephone systems and wiring. My classes never really fill up until the last minute, but it seems to work out because I always end up with the most exceptional students.”

Jacobs considers telecommunications to be of growing interest to the students in the area, but recognizes that the trend in enrollment is cyclical: “I spend one week a summer doing what I like with kids who are truly exceptional. If I can get one kid out of the summer group to sign up here at CAT Pickering, I get to work with that kid for the next four years.

“And not only do I get to work with them, but that student will be a leader in the classroom, in the program, and in the community. Those students really like this and have a passion for it, and their passion pushes me, and I respond.”

One of the most interesting courses offered this summer was GETTbotics, a follow up to the 2008 Girls Exploring Tomorrow’s Technology (GETT). The Innovative Technology Action Group, or ITAG, sponsors the GETT program, which is an industry partnership managed by the Chester County Economic Development Council and funded by the Workforce Investment Board that encourages girls to explore technology.

“We started off the week by talking to the girls about what robots are and what programming is and then began doing some basic building,” said GETTbotics instructor Linda McElvenny, a computer literacy teacher at Peirce Middle School in the West Chester Area School District. “Then we had the girls open the (LEGO® Mindstorm) kits and had them follow the instructions, build the robots, and do some simple programming.

“After they’d built the robots, we had girls move to the computers and start doing more advanced programming, so they could get the robots to respond to sound or light or touch.”

After the girls finished building and programming the robots, they began discussing what types of careers were available in the field of robotics and engineering, which couldn’t have played better into the hands of the visiting WHYY representatives, who came on the last day of camp to run a focus group for their new career information website, Our World Interactive.

“We’re still developing our site, so we’re hoping the girls and their parents can give us some good feedback about what they like and don’t like so we can make alterations to meet their needs,” said Jessica Brock, a researcher for the site.

WHYY has already run focus groups at Great Valley High School, and in the Philadelphia area, and has more planned at the Julian Krinsky Camp in Haverford, and the 3E Institute in Phoenixville.

“The site is really just a career information guide for students, specifically girls, but we definitely want it to be available to both girls and boys. Our focus is on STEM careers, or science, technology, engineering and math, but we do cover all subjects.”

“We try to give the kids a realistic idea of what it takes to reach certain careers, and if they don’t know what career path they want to follow we can show them what careers are out there.”

So it would seem that WHYY and the Summer Career Academies have the same goal: to give students a head start on choosing a career path, and learning the specifics required to attain that goal and hopefully to let them also have a whole lot of fun while doing it!

By Calvin Setar