Volunteering at Summer Camp for Science, Manufacturing and Engineering

Bud Wisecarver working with students.

Bishop-Wisecarver founder Bud Wisecarver has volunteered in the local academic community for decades — it's a practice he struck up in his 20s and has continued ever since. Today, in his mid-80s, he's still going strong. This week, he's donating his time as mentor at the annual Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing Summer Camp for high schoolers at Diablo Valley College here in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Dozens of kids looking to earn some college credit over the summer signed up for the weeklong camp, which gives them a chance to explore manufacturing and engineering theory and practice. In addition to Bud's time, Bishop-Wisecarver also donated aluminum extrusion for the students to use in their designs. The students are using the profile as a guide for the robots (right) they are currently building for a race held later this week.

Students are building robots
for a race held at the end of the week.

Throughout the years, about 400 students from upward of 25 local high schools have enrolled in the camp, according to organizers.

The program is organized by Diablo Valley College, the Contra Costa County Office of Education and the Contra Costa Economic Partnership. The culminating event on Friday is expected to draw more than 100 people, including parents, teachers and student peers. The hope is that by exposing kids to the fun of hands-on challenges in engineering, they be will inspired to stick with it in the academic years ahead — ultimately choosing it as a focus in trade school or college.

"High school students and their parents are often not aware of the educational training paths and job opportunities available in the building trades, construction and engineering industry sectors," the community college website reads. [ Check out other snapshots we took this week at camp ] on our Flickr wall!