On a recent summer morning in a Pinellas County classroom, students huddled and hunched over various components and technology to create a product of their own design.
These middle schoolers spent three days building from the ground up, applying the principles of engineering design and computational thinking. It is a similar summer scene in classrooms across Florida, including a June engineering camp at Fort King Middle School in Marion County.
For many students in seven Florida school districts, this is their first time thinking of themselves as engineers. And if the University of Florida’s EQuIPD program continues its successful web of engineering camps, it won’t be the last for these students and many others throughout the state.
The EQuIPD Grant program, based in UF’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, or MSE, and led by Instructional Professor Nancy Ruzycki, Ph.D., builds and hosts a suite of programs serving K-12 students across Florida. Short for Engaged Quality Instruction through Professional Development, EQuIPD encompasses professional development courses for teachers, afterschool programs, contests and summer programs designed to bring engineering education to communities where it might otherwise be out of reach.
EQuIPD camp themes include Superhero City, The Race to Space, Energy Explorers, Hurricane and Weather Prediction with AI, AI and Agriculture, Sports Data Analytics and Build a Musical Chatbot in Python.
“Within these camps, students use technology like BBC Micro:bits, Arduino boards and sensor kits to build out real engineering solutions to problems — for example, a multitool to measure planetary conditions on a new planet or making a superhero sidekick using Micro:bits and sensors,” Ruzycki said. “Within the Energy Explorers camp, students learn to understand how devices load the grid through modeling them with LEDs and circuit boards.“
For student-facing programs, EQuIPD employs a mentorship model that pairs K–12 students with STEM undergraduate mentors from multiple Florida universities, fostering meaningful connections through their closeness in age and perspective as learners.
EQuIPD research shows this mentorship model inspires students to pursue further STEM opportunities and see themselves as future engineers. The program partners with donors, from MathWorks and Duke Energy to private donors like Arnold Goldberg and Bud and Kim Deffebach.
Summers present an opportune time for universities to connect with future engineers through outreach, and UF seizes this opportunity by working with districts across the state to run one- to two-week day camps in their schools. EQuIPD works with school districts to host camps at their schools, giving their teachers experience with practical engineering pedagogy while also giving the undergraduate mentors experience teaching and working with kids.
Participating campers go through a scaffolded engineering curriculum suited for their grade level, building up over the week while undergoing an engineering design challenge, creating a camp-themed product synthesizing core concepts.
Though each camp tackles a different theme, all five of EQuIPD’s camp families share the same hands-on, design-driven approach:
- Powering the Community Energy Explorers covers fundamental energy generation and power distribution; students build circuit models.
- Rural Scholars serves schools in rural areas; students combine technology and agriculture to build smart farming technology.
- Goldberg Gator Engineering Explorers has students learn programming frameworks while exploring hardware engineering through BBC Micro:bits.
- MathWorks AI Summer Camp has students use MATLAB’s AI capabilities to aggregate data and build predictive models across topics such as AI and agriculture, sports and music analytics, and hurricane/weather prediction.
- Python AI High School Camp has students develop — using Python — a fully functional chatbot trained on lyrics from their favorite songs.
Research published through the American Society for Engineering Education suggests EQuIPD’s summer camps do more than teach engineering — they change the way students see themselves.
Survey data collected across the Goldberg Gator Engineering Explorers program found that the proportion of students who strongly identified as scientists or engineers nearly doubled over the course of the camp, rising from 28% on day one to 55% on day four. Students also reported increased confidence in understanding and engaging with STEM activities.
Another indicator showed that students who believed STEM would play a role in their future careers grew from 64% to 72%, suggesting that for many campers, a single summer with EQuIPD can reshape their vision of the future.
EQuIPD has reached over 800 students through its summer camps serving districts across the state. This summer, the program is hosting more than 20 camps in Duval, Marion, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Pinellas and Santa Rosa counties.
Many districts have returned year after year since EQuIPD camps debuted, a testament to the lasting impact EQuIPD’s experiential learning model has on students and teachers alike.
With each summer, EQuIPD’s work with underserved communities broadens, building a foundation of engineering knowledge and STEM identity in students across Florida. For those who have passed through the camps, the experience is more than a week of summer programming. It is a key moment that may alter the rest of their lives. To learn more about EQuIPD and its programs, visit equipd.mse.ufl.edu.
The program is supported, in part, by Duke Energy’s statewide Energy Education and Universities focus strategy.
“Your work exemplifies these qualities, and we are confident that this investment will help accelerate meaningful progress and long-term community benefit,” Loretta Murray, Duke Energy Florida’s foundation manager, wrote in a letter to UF announcing this year’s grant. She noted Duke supports the program because it demonstrates strong leadership and measurable outcomes.
