Astronaut visits students attending his OSU science camp

By KYLE ODEGARD


Gazette-Times reporter

The Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp at Oregon State University hosted a special guest on Wednesday — Dr. Bernard Harris Jr. himself.

He’s the first black astronaut to walk in space, but the students found him down-to-earth. He mingled and chatted with the middle-school students as they performed science experiments and ate lunch. He also signed autographs.

“It’s amazing. I’ve never seen an actual astronaut,” said Adam Case of Medford, who is scheduled to start the eighth grade in the fall. Case also was excited to learn about engineering, because he hopes to build buildings someday.

Harris said that science education is key for the future of the United States, but that most kids only get the basics in school. The students attending the two-week summer camp receive a concentrated dose of science and learn how science applies to everyday life.

“The lessons will be deeper,” said the 52-year-old Houston resident. “It’s not learning the lessons for a test. That’s really not the way learning takes place.”

Forty-eight middle school students from across Oregon are attending the camp, which is being held at OSU for the second year.

Many adolescents were thrilled to be on campus and staying in the dorms.

“It makes you feel like you’re in college, kind of,” said Daniel Garcia-Archundia of Woodburn, who is going into eighth grade and wants to be a doctor, maybe a pediatrician.

Garcia-Archundia said his favorite thing about the camp was the food. “But all the teachers are really cool and fun,” he added.

The lucky 48 science camp students were chosen out of more than 400 applicants, said local camp director Robin Galloway, a 4-H youth development agent for the OSU Extension Service.

“We picked kids who we think are going to really benefit,” she said.

The cost of the OSU camp is covered by an $80,000 grant from the ExxonMobil Foundation and the Harris Foundation, and participants don’t have to pay fees. The Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp is available at 25 colleges throughout the nation. In 2007, OSU’s edition was named the best by the Harris Foundation. Harris visited Corvallis last year as well. This summer, he plans to attend 20 of the 25 camps.

At Corvallis, engineering staff and science and math education master’s degree students help teach the lessons for the camp. The SMILE Program at OSU, which aims to expose minority and low-income students to sciences, helped to determine the curriculum.

A focal point of this summer’s science camp is the goal of travel to Mars and establishing some kind of space station there.

Although all the students are interested in science, some said they have other careers in mind, such as becoming a pop singer or a professional soccer player.

When he was a child, Harris was interested in astronomy because of the success of the United States’ space program. “I also like helping people, so I was naturally drawn to being a medical doctor,” he said. He was selected to become a NASA astronaut in 1990 and took his first trip to space three years later. On his second mission, he took his historic space walk.

Harris still advises several NASA boards, but his main job is as CEO and managing partner of Vesalius Ventures, which invests in medical devices and technology. Running the Harris Foundation, which he founded, almost amounts to a second full-time job, he said.