Inside Trees: Summer Camp and Remote Learning for Increasing Awareness and Enrollment in Bio-Based Materials Degree Programs

The bio-based materials industry, which includes bio-based fuels, materials, and chemicals, is expanding and providing new career opportunities that are not well known by today's entering college students. In addition, the related undergraduate degree programs are neither gender nor ethnically representative of current U.S. demographics. A program model framework called Inside Trees was developed and tested in this project for an in-person summer camp and remote learning modules to help raise awareness and form a pipeline between high school students and future enrollment in higher-educational degree programs. To gain a better understanding of logistics, a prototype summer camp was delivered to 12 students, 10 of whom were women, 3 were first-generation college students, 1 was African American, and 1 was Hispanic/Latino. Three students who attended the Inside Trees summer camp enrolled at Virginia Tech University the following year. Content and activities from the summer camp were later converted into digital learning modules that could be used with a summer camp or as separate teaching/learning units. Review of supporting literature and informal student feedback indicates that a summer camp program that includes experiential learning, a positive experience in nature, support through the higher-educational academic program, multiple disciplines, and career opportunities shows good potential to be an effective pipeline to increase diversity in the bio-based industry. It is suggested that the Inside Trees model curriculum and framework could be adapted by other universities or organizations for achievement of institution-specific goals toward improved awareness and enrollment of underrepresented students.