8 STEM Programs for Your Teen this Summer

The school year is ending and if your high school student loves STEM, you need to move quickly to nail a spot in a chemistry camp, high school summer medical program, game-design summer camp, or another science, technology, engineering or math summer program.

How do you find the right STEM summer camp for teens? Consider the program’s focus, its mentors and teachers, cost and financial aid, and how its curriculum or activities might boost the STEM skills your teen needs. For instance, is the program focused in the lab or out in the field? Does it rely on group projects? Is it relevant to your teen’s interests, such as sustainability or infectious diseases? Is this an opportunity for your child to test out life away from home?

Check out these examples of summer STEM programs:

• The Boston Leadership Institute, runs day and overnight one-to-three-week summer programs at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Mass. Courses include biological, chemistry, and biomedical research; forensics; STEM entrepreneurship; and even sports statistics. FYI: The program offers pick up from Boston’s Logan Airport.

• Emory University Summer Pre-College Program in Atlanta, Ga., offers a summer STEM program for rising high school juniors and seniors. There are two- or three-week noncredit programs and a six-week credit program. This summer, students can study voter behavior, neuroscience and forensics, among other topics. FYI: 90 percent of students in the noncredit courses live on campus.

• ID Tech Camps offers one-to-two-week camps in three different formats on campuses all over the country focused on coding, game design, robotics, 3-D design, app development and even filmmaking. FYI: ID Tech also runs Alexa Cafe tech camps just for girls.

• NUVU Studio in Cambridge, Mass., is all about robots this summer: interactive toys, fashion and wearable technology, farming machines, surgical robots, automated pets, firefighting cyborgs, even programmable chefs. The program is two weeks long and accommodates day and overnight students. FYI: Coaches include artists, entrepreneurs, researchers and MIT and Harvard Ph.D. candidates.

• University of Pennsylvania Summer Programs offers a three-week engineering summer camp as well as other camps and academies focused on topics ranging from archaeology to sports business management. FYI: Students enrolled in the six-week pre-college program can earn college credit.

• University of Vermont Summer Academy will offer high school students courses this summer in engineering, and medicine and bioscience. Students spend two weeks taking courses on campus and then two weeks working online. FYI: There are day and residential options.

• Summer Discovery runs summer programs at the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as other college campuses. The Boulder campus offers a four-week summer STEM Research program as well as nine STEM Academies that are each three weeks long and cover topics like the brain and “creative chemistry.” FYI: The research option covers techniques and communication as well as mentoring on specific projects.