UGA hosts summer construction camp for female high-schoolers

ATHENS -- For one week this summer, a group of female high school students came to the University of Georgia to attend a camp focused on construction. Campers drove bulldozers, learned how to make quick turns with skid steers, soldered copper pipes, and poured concrete — among many other hands-on activities.

Free to participants, the camp was hosted by the Athens Area Women in Construction organization in partnership with the UGA College of Environment and Design. Throughout their time at camp, the young women learned new skills while building items to use at home, such as coasters, jewelry boxes and bracelets.

Campers toured job sites — including the Classic Center Arena, the Sanford Stadium renovation, and the historic Holmes Hunter Academic Building — learned the concrete and electrical skills necessary to make their own lamps, took a heavy machinery class with College Pro Landscaping, and participated in a Milwaukee Tools demonstration. They were given toolkits, hardhats and other essential items that they could use both at camp and at home.

“We are teaching them that you can do this — pour your own concrete, solder pipes,” Lauren Snedeker, the program delivery manager for Meta and a founding member of Athens Women in Construction, said of the camp. “We expose them to what is out there and introduce them to successful women who do what they want to do or something similar.”

To expose the campers to a variety of professional paths related to construction, camp organizers played career bingo with the students to highlight different job paths. Over lunch, women in industry spoke to the campers about their roles in fields like historic preservation, architecture, geology and project management.

“We are excited to teach them about careers they didn’t know existed,” Melanie Ford, UGA’s senior director of construction, said. “It’s been fantastic. One girl even said that it was an experience of a lifetime when we were leaving the heavy equipment demonstration.”

“I learned different variations of engineering and saw how people got the types of jobs that I would like,” Aubrea Stores, a rising 11th-grader at Woodward Academy who is interested in pursuing a career in structural engineering, said. “It’s like going to school but actually having fun.”

Campers said they liked the hands-on opportunities, particularly learning plumbing skills and driving heavy machinery.

“I really enjoyed it,” Zykira Starks, a rising senior at Cedar Shoals High School, said. “I wish this camp could last the whole summer.”