While most Cal Poly students were home for the summer, or jetting across the globe on adventures, a new group of students came to campus.
They’re slightly shorter than traditional Cal Poly students, and most of them don’t have driver’s licenses or even facial hair yet. They’re children of all ages who participate in a variety of different Cal Poly summer programs geared toward elementary, middle and high school students.
Trekking about campus
Some of the youngest of these summer students are those enrolled in the Cal Poly Trekkers program, run by Associated Students, Inc.’s Children’s Center. The Trekkers program combines field trips and socialization with on-campus activities such as swim lessons and campus hikes to create a laid-back day camp, Children’s Center director Tonya Iversen said.
“What we try to do is make it sort of like a relaxation, have fun kind of summer camp,” Iversen said.
This summer, Trekkers took swim lessons at the Recreation Center, screen-printed shirts with graphic communication students and participated in a track day at the Sports Complex — “all those kinds of things that you used to do when you were a kid,” Iversen said.
The Children’s Center holds the Cal Poly Trekkers program every summer as a way to keep enrollment up, as well as give older children a memorable summer experience, Iversen said.
Cal Poly students taking summer courses did notice the groups of elementary school children about campus, but no more than they usually notice Children’s Center children when they’re out for walks during the school year, Iversen said.
EPIC engineering adventures
Trekkers weren’t the oldest children on campus this summer, though. Middle school and high school students also visited Cal Poly for the College of Engineering’s EPIC (Engineering Possibilities in College) Summer Camp.
Camp counselors, which are engineering students who volunteer, take groups of campers through Cal Poly’s different engineering labs to introduce them to different engineering concepts and uses, camp counselor and aerospace engineering sophomore Megan Buck said.
“Our basic hope for it was just to introduce them to engineering,” Buck said.
While middle school campers were given a general overview of engineering, high school campers could enroll in general labs, or in different groups based on different focuses of engineering, from aerospace engineering to robotics.
Buck’s campers, a group of middle school students, participated in labs that included programming a robot and building a hovercraft. Some labs appealed more to campers than others, she said, but all labs were geared toward broadening students’ knowledge of engineering.
“It’s to show kids who maybe wouldn’t have thought of engineering or what the possibilities are,” Buck said.
Training for the season
While some kids came to Cal Poly for academics, others came for the athletics.
Every year, high school athletes come to Cal Poly to hone their sports skills and check out the campus at Cal Poly athletics’ summer training camps, baseball head coach Larry Lee said.
“We use it as a recruiting tool to get potential prospects on campus, on our field, and we get to interact with them,” Lee said.
Though not all camp attendees will attend Cal Poly for college, the camp allows coaches to get to know those who will, while also offering help to all the high school athletes who attend, Lee said.
During the three-day camp, coaches learn what each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses are, and help them improve, Lee said.
“Our goal as a staff is to make sure that they take with them info that will help them become better baseball players,” he said.
Other high school athletes attend Cal Poly’s summer softball or football camps, which also strive to recruit potential Mustangs and help young athletes improve.
The purpose of Cal Poly athletics’ summer football camp is to help players with skill development and expose them to Cal Poly and Cal Poly athletics, football assistant coach Saga Tuitele said.
Athletes also get to watch highlight videos and speak with the coaches, Tuitele said. At the end of the camp, they get the opportunity to visit the rest of Cal Poly’s facilities.