For Parents & Familes: Our Approach

The University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Engineering founded Camp Badger Exploring Engineering^® in 1998. Experience has taught us that the best way to help young people understand engineering is through a combination of field trips, job site visits, hands-on activities, and small group discussions. Each day, campers will have the opportunity to speak with engineering students and professionals about their experiences.

Campers are fully supervised. They will eat their meals at a university cafeteria and live in an undergraduate residence hall on campus. We have adult counselors in the residence halls all night long, and during the day our program counselors supervise campers and share in their educational experiences. From the time your camper arrives on Sunday afternoon until they leave the following Saturday morning, we keep them very busy!

Activities

In past years our campers have:

• visited an 11-story construction site, the Kohl Center, a fusion reactor, a biomedical engineering research lab, a bicycle manufacturing plant and an electric power plant
• participated in a video conference call with NASA rocket scientists
• created telescopes and looked through the University of Wisconsin’s telescope
• observed fossils and gems at the UW Geology Museum
• explored the cockpit of an F-16 and the inside of a UW experimental car
• toured behind the scenes of a state-of-the-art bowling alley

Above all, they have had a lot of fun and learned what engineers contribute to the world.