Summer camps benefit thousands of students

08/13

Many of the summer programs TI sponsored were geared toward women or underrepresented minorities. As in past years, TI partnered with a number of nonprofits and universities to get more of these students interested in STEM. Click here to see a slideshow.

Here are some of the camps TI has sponsored and supported this year:

• High school juniors and seniors from three Dallas ISD high schools visited TI in July as part of the Future Focus camp, sponsored by the Dallas Regional Chamber and Accenture.  Students from Madison, Lincoln and Pinkston high schools enjoyed a tour of the Kilby Labs and heard inspirational remarks from TI Senior Vice President Art George. This two week career-readiness program emphasized core workforce skills, career options and experiential learning to help students be successful in college, career and life.

• TI's Education Technology business hosted a group of 45 local, 8th grade students who are part of the local After-School All-Stars Program. The week of July 22-26 the students from the Oak Cliff and South Dallas neighborhoods spent a week on the Paul Quinn College campus, eating in the cafeterias, sleeping in the dorms and taking classes in a college setting. On one of the days these "All-Stars" visited the TI campus, toured the Jack Kilby Lab and learned the math behind baseball with their new TI-Nspire CX graphing calculators.

• Fifty-six African-American elementary and middle school students experienced innovation firsthand by attending a Summer Science Institute at TI's Santa Clara, Calif., site.  TI partnered with the Greene Scholars Program to offer the annual, hands-on learning event to create excitement about STEM among the high-achieving 8- to 14-year-old scholars.  Throughout the week, the students worked directly with a team of TI engineers who volunteered their time and ideas for activities that explored innovation, technology and sports science.

• TI also participated in Fair Park Live!, a two-day career exploration event for about 1,500 Dallas ISD students in Dallas' Fair Park.  The company partnered with Big Thought and other local corporations and universities. TI volunteers helped the students experience technology firsthand, showing off a solar cell robot, a saltwater cell car and an electronic circuit that powers a "flying saucer."

• TI sponsored Senior/Ambassador Week for the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas' "College Journey" which exposes girls to engineering at a camp at the University of Texas at Dallas. During the five-day workshop, the girls experienced living in a college resident hall, and were exposed to college prep courses and a campus tour. While being mentored by successful STEM professionals, the Girl Scouts were also introduced to computer programming, robotics, environmental engineering, biology and anatomy. 

• Texas Instruments, together with distribution partner Avnet and Microsoft, sponsored the InnVision Summer Adventure Camp for homeless children.  The 10-week program provided 200 children grades kindergarten – 8th grades with traditional camp activities including games, sports, arts and music.  In addition, the camp focused on STEM skills including hands-on science experiments, nature explorations and field trips to NASA and other nearby science and technology museums.  To celebrate a successful summer program, TI and Avnet volunteers participated with the campers in a picnic at a nearby nature preserve.  TI also made arrangements for all 200 campers to receive backpacks and supplies through the Family Giving Tree Back to School Drive.

• The High Tech High Heels (HTHH) program, which was originally started by TI executive women with their own money, has funded a summer physics camp for high school girls over the past 11 years.  The summer camps have reached over 830 girls and the data shows that after attending the camp they are more likely to score better on their pre-AP physics end of course, more likely to take the AP Physics exam and are passing the Advanced Placement (AP) exam at a higher rate than girls of similar background that did not attend the camp.
  
  TI and the TI Foundation have helped support the HTHH's girls' AP physics camps for the Dallas and Plano ISDs.  This year 70 girls from 10 different high schools in Dallas ISD who signed up for the two-week day camp at the Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School received an introduction to physics, a refresher on math and a field trip for the students to TI's Forest Lane headquarters.  At TI they heard from women engineers, including a panel of four co-op students who shared their pathway to their careers, their motivations in choosing their career and the benefits of working in a STEM field.  Students also participated at TI in a "visioneering" project and brainstormed the features of the living room of the future.

• Texas Instruments and Family Giving Tree recently hosted "STEM in the Schoolyard" for Downtown College Prep (DCP) students in California. The event marked the culmination of the Downtown College Prep Alum Rock's Summer Bridge Program for incoming, low-income 6th grade students.