Wanted: young explorers with open minds and creative ideas who love to be outside. This camp is for kids who like to ask questions, use tools, explore nature and make discoveries. Immersed in our student research forest, we’ll learn how to keep a field journal, make observations, collect data and ask scientific questions.

Can middle graders really do forestry research, with no previous experience? Heck yeah! In my years working with youth, I’ve found them highly capable of grasping scientific concepts, using sensitive equipment, accurately recording data, and asking fascinating, thoughtful questions.

I started a student research forest because I believe young people bring a perspective that can benefit the body of scientific knowledge. Will their results end up in the next issue of Nature? Probably not, but you never know where an unusual research question with surprising results may eventually lead in the iterative process of scientific research.

This experience will consist of two parts.  Part one will be a crash course in field science research methods as we learn to use the tools available to us while exploring the site and establishing field notebooks. We’ll discuss the nature of science, how to ask a research question, and practice using tools like a digital dissolved oxygen monitor, clinometer, increment borer, and a 1-meter plot square.

Mid-week we’ll transition to part two and brainstorm potential research questions, then divide into teams to explore the best of them. Groups will design their experiment, collect data, and finally analyze and share our results. Methodologies, data, and results will be published on the Bear Creek Wilderness Research Forest website.

The Bear Creek Wilderness is an undeveloped site without running water or electricity.  Students will need to bring their own lunches, snacks and water bottles, as well as anything else they might need for the day.

Registration opens once I hear from six interested families.

“The intellectual’s spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts.” – Edward Said