Millikin University once again teamed up with Decatur Public Schools to host Students at Millikin Academic Summer Holiday, better known as SMASH Camp, from June 5 – 30.
Throughout the camp, current and future middle school students worked side-by-side with local companies and organizations to engage in entrepreneurial practices. Those practices included making new products, creating value-added services, generating awareness around critical topics and producing artistic pieces for various audiences.
"Each year, the counselors will develop a curriculum for gifted and enrichment students," said Millikin student Brandi Marks, a senior social science secondary teaching major from Richton Park, Ill. "This summer, we partnered with the Millikin School of Education and our theme was 'how do we change the world?'"
During the first week of camp, students learned how to distinguish reality from fantasy, and through that, made avatars that were presented at the first SMASH Senior Family Night at Millikin.
"For the second and third week of camp, we talked about how to understand the world around the students and therefore change the world," said Marks. "We also learned about escape rooms and understanding how pieces of a puzzle come together in order to understand everything. The students developed their own escape rooms during the third week."
For the final week of camp, the students looked at how worldly events bring change to the world and learned about the upcoming solar eclipse on Aug. 21 as well as other solar events.
During Family Night, the campers showed their crafted escape rooms to their families which were made of cardboard and other materials. Families also had the opportunity to view the night sky through Millikin's Requarth Observatory housed on the rooftop of the Leighty-Tabor Science Center. Thirty students took part in this year's camp.
Marks, a SMASH Camp counselor, noted, "This is my third as a counselor and being able to see the students grow and learn communication skills makes it worth it. Millikin has many amazing resources to offer which makes this camp a special experience for the students."
SMASH Camp Lead Facilitator Kamie Meador says, "We want the education to be enjoyable, fun, exciting, but yet engaging in an academically aligned structure so that he does show improvement and hopefully it reflects later in scores and anything else we do."
"I hope we taught them to have good communication skills, collaborative skills, and even good listening skills," said Marks. "I think having the campers understand that and use that in their classroom every day and then furthering that into social settings is important."