Group of first-year Illinois students met in aerospace summer camp

When the fall semester began last year, Brian Woodard recognized eight names on the in-coming first-year student roster.  They had all participated in an aerospace engineering summer camp he led in 2024. He immediately requested that the six who were in the aerospace program be placed in the introductory to aerospace class he was teaching.

“We’ve, of course, had other campers who applied and were accepted into the aerospace program at Illinois, but I thought it was pretty remarkable that so many students from the same one-week camp session were now first-year students here,” Woodard said. “Because they knew each other from camp, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to keep them together, at least in one class, as a kind of camp-cohort.”

Two of the eight students from the 2024 camp are in other disciplines. He also noted that two other current aerospace students had been in his camp in the summer of ’23.

Woodard, who earned all three of his degrees from Illinois, has served as one of the directors of the aerospace camps since 2011, the year before he completed his PhD. His primary job in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is as an assistant dean for undergraduate programs, but with the booming enrollment aerospace has been experiencing, more sections of AE100 were added so he was tapped to lead one of them this year.

The EAGER camp, the one his freshmen cohort came from, is one he particularly makes time to lead every summer.  It is a mission-driven camp led by Engineers Aiming for Gender Equity & Representation in STEM majors and careers.

“The EAGER camp aims to support and empower traditionally excluded populations in STEM,” Woodard said. “We provide a safe environment to build a community as we help the students empower one another to be confident in their exploration of STEM.”

One of the 2024 EAGER campers was Emma Klempir. She said her high school counselor suggested she look at University of Illinois summer camps.

“I found information on the University of Illinois WYSE website,” Klempir said. “I decided on the EAGER camp because it provided an environment geared toward girls and gender minorities, which was something I’d never experienced before in my STEM classes.”

Klempir learned a lot about the field of aerospace engineering that she didn’t know before.

“I was surprised by the number of different, interesting topics that make up aerospace,” she said. “It's not limited to planes or rockets, and there's a variety in what you can study, like orbital mechanics, aerodynamics or materials. Also, it was great to see the number of alumni and graduate students who loved talking about their experiences here and how it helped them in their work after they graduated.”

When asked about her experience so far at U. of I., she talked about the computer-aided design final project from AE 140.

“My CAD project was the SpaceX Falcon 1,” she said. “It was so rewarding to see the final product after all of the time and effort put into it. It was also a bonding experience with other freshmen because we were all in the Talbot computer lab the last few weeks of first semester working on our different projects together.”

Registration for the EAGER camp session as well as two other aerospace-focused camps is now available.

Aerospace Engineering Camp [*EAGER] is held from July 5 to July 11 for high school students in 10^th through 12^th grades, with a residential or commuter option.

Illinois Aerospace Institute is open to students in 9^th through 12^th grades and is residential only. Students can register for one of two identical sessions that are scheduled for July 12 through July 18 and July 26 through August 1.

EAGER and the Illinois Aerospace Institute camps are part of the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Program offered by The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.