Ever since she can remember, Mary Gibson would always pepper her dad, Wesley, with questions about his work as a chemical engineer.
The Kennedy Middle School student readily accepted an opportunity to participate in CREATEng Camp at Aiken High School this week.
The South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Math is holding the camp, serving 35 rising eighth- and ninth-graders, most of them from Aiken County.
The goal is teaching students "who are motivated about engineering," said Governor's School outreach specialist Kathryn Behling. "We just want to go motivate them ... and provide this experience for them."
"We've had so much fun developing this week of exploration into engineering," said Kathryn Behling, CREATEng coordinator, in a press release. "From the daily challenges to the field trips, students will finish the week truly understanding different career options in the engineering field and the ins and outs of the engineering design process."
On Monday, the kids worked on team-building activities. They also will visit the Gordon Highway bridge on Tuesday. The following day, they will tour MTU America, a manufacturer of giant diesel engines in its Graniteville plant.
The instructors this week include two Aiken County teachers - Kishni Neville of Jackson Middle School and Michael McGhee of Busbee-Corbett Elementary-Middle School.
"I'm so excited coming in this week," McGhee said. "These are the type of students that you can give instructions to and let them run with it."
After lunch on Tuesday, the kids worked enthusiastically in trying to build spaghetti and marshmallow towers.
Most of their efforts failed badly, but that was the point, McGhee told his teams of three.
Engineering in part is about failing and continuing to find solutions through such efforts as identifying solutions, brainstorming and many other strategies, he said.
For more information, visit www.scgssm.org/createng.
Senior writer Rob Novit is the Aiken Standard's education reporter and has been with the newspaper since September 2001. He is a native of Walterboro and majored in journalism at the University of Georgia.