Before attending the Design, Engineering and Manufacturing Camp, seventh-grader Evelyn Bowers said she had never used a soldering iron.
“It was pretty cool to melt metal,” she said. “Once you got the hang of it, it was really fun and pretty easy to do. Just be careful not to burn yourself.”
This was the 13th annual camp, held the first week of June at Georgia Northwestern Technical College’s Whitfield Murray Campus.
Using the soldering iron to create circuitboards and miniature Jitterbug robots, Bowers was one of nearly 150 students participating in the camp this year. Middle school students in Northwest Georgia take part in activities, programs and classes revolving around STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills and career opportunities.
The camp featured first-time campers building solar-powered race cars, designing a piece of carpet, creating small “wind turbines” while learning about wind and solar energy, programming robots and attending virtual reality labs at GNTC and the Northwest Georgia College & Career Academy.
New campers also took career interest assessment tests and tours of Shaw Industries, Engineered Floors, Qcells, a Dalton Utilities water treatment plant and Mohawk Industries’ Light Lab Design Center.
Second-year campers were at Dalton State College where they created rockets and hovercrafts while taking part in specialized classes.
“This camp really stood out to me because it was all just new experiences that engaged me,” Bowers said.
Brian Cooksey, Shaw Industries’ workforce development director, said he has worked with the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce for the last 13 years to help “execute this camp on behalf of our local industry.”
“It’s been a fun week,” Cooksey said. “Over the last 13 years we’ve had right around 1,600 students from our greater Dalton area who have completed this camp. This all started when our local industry came together and, in working with the chamber, we set some objectives of why we wanted to do this camp.”
Cooksey said one major objective is to “invest in students.”
“This camp is funded by local companies in the community and it’s at no cost to the students,” he said. “We didn’t want money to be an obstacle for someone to have this opportunity, so we’ve kept this camp at no cost to our students for all 13 years and that’s because we have amazing sponsors that fund this camp every year.”
Sponsors for 2024 included Shaw Industries, the Northwest Georgia College & Career Academy, Mohawk Industries, the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, Engineered Floors, Qcells, Dalton Utilities, the Dalton-Whitfield Joint Development Authority, North Georgia EMC, Georgia Power, Marketing Alliance Group, ArrowStar LLC, the Carpet and Rug Institute, Phenix Flooring, GNTC, Believe Greater Dalton and Dalton State College.
“We also wanted to make sure students were aware of some of the STEM skills that are very important in life and what they can do as a profession,” Cooksey said. “If they enjoyed building circuitboards or learning to program robots or designing a race car, those are real, tangible skills that they can take and build a career on.
“We wanted to expose them to some of the things that they may or may not be aware of that can end up being a great career opportunity for them right here in greater Dalton because we have a lot of opportunities right here that pay really well and can challenge them. They can build an amazing career without ever having to leave this community.”
Hunter Taylor, a sixth-grade student who looks forward to attending the camp again next year, said his favorite activity was creating a solar-powered car from a K’NEX kit with representatives from Qcells.
“Harnessing the power of the sun is already pretty cool in a way,” Taylor said. “But generating it to make a car move, that’s even cooler.”
Sixth-graders Alivia Clendening and Serenity Hall agreed their experiences were “great” and shared their excitement for returning next year.
“My favorite part was probably doing the carpet designing,” said Clendening, who placed high in her group for her design, which combined three of her favorite activities.
“I designed a picture of books with flowers on top sitting on the beach with an orange and yellow sunset,” Clendening said. “I like to read with my family and we also like to go to the beach in the summer, and I like to plant with my mom.”
Hall said using the soldering iron to make the Jitterbug robots was her most memorable activity.
“It was easier than I thought it would be,” she said.
Seventh-grader Briley Worley said building the wind turbines and special catapults that shot balls of clay through the air were her favorites.
“This is the first time I’ve done anything like that,” she said. “I really enjoyed being here.”
Worley said while she hasn’t given much thought to what her future career might be, the camp has given her a few new options to consider.
“I don’t know for sure if I want to be an engineer or something in that field, but maybe,” she said. “Who knows?”
Seventh-grader Colette Taylor also placed highly in the carpet design portion of the camp with her design of a lavender field.
“I really like that I got to design carpet and it was really fun because we got to choose our image and write about why we chose it,” she said. “I really like lavender because it just brings the smell of home.”
Colette Taylor said she learned “quite a lot” about using a soldering iron and building catapults and platform towers.
“Lots of really cool stuff,” she said. “It was a really fun time.”
Following a graduation ceremony, Cooksey hosted a miniature Pinewood Derby car race in the GNTC commons area featuring cars built by first-year campers.
Cooksey said the overall focus of the camp centers on Northwest Georgia’s large manufacturing presence.
“Manufacturing is a huge part of our economy here,” he said. “We’re proud to be a manufacturing community and there are lots of different opportunities career-wise. We need folks to make things, to be our engineers, our robot programmers, our (human resources) folks, lawyers and nurses. There’s lots of opportunities in manufacturing to make a difference in peoples’ lives and to improve society. That’s why this camp exists, to lead students to the right kind of skillsets so they can be prepared for the jobs that are coming down the road.”