STEAM Camp
Jump-start your imagination.
Mercersburg Summer STEAM Camp takes students to the front lines of the Maker Revolution as they learn by doing. Engineering, programming, 3D printing, textiles, and metal fabrication are all featured in this immersion into the essentials of Making in the 21st century. Mercersburg Summer’s STEAM program will focus on collaborative learning in the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.
Students will jump into the creative process by taking their own idea and turning it into a creation made by their hands. Students will be given challenges designed to provoke creative thinking and problem solving. Through the important process of design, development, testing, and troubleshooting, students will learn resilience and self-confidence. By the end of the camp, we want to promote a new growth mindset in our young students—one that sees challenges as opportunities and ideas as potential realities.
Meet the Director
Andy Brown joined Mercersburg Academy in 2019 as a member of the math faculty before being appointed assistant dean of students in 2023 and dean of students for community life in 2024. In addition to robotics, he has taught Maker’s Lab, Application Design, Open Topic, and Foundations of Technology. He enjoys challenging students to improve their problem-solving skills while learning the technical aspects of robotics.
Before coming to Mercersburg, Andy taught, created, and led technology education courses and programs at various schools that covered such topics as engineering, aviation, wood manufacturing, metal manufacturing, graphic design, architectural drawing, 3D modeling, 3D printing, and robotics.
Andy received a bachelor’s degree in technology education from Millersville University and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Hood College in Frederick, MD. In addition to serving as a faculty member, he is the Class of 2026 grade dean. Andy and his wife, Nicole (who works as assistant director of library services at Mercersburg), have two sons.
Program Overview
The STEAM program has been designed to give younger students a glimpse into the kinds of work that seniors at Mercersburg Academy complete during the senior capstone Springboard experience. Springboard is Mercersburg’s one-year capstone program that features course options such as Rapid Application Development, 3D Design, The Global Food Chain, Entrepreneurship, and Maker’s Lab. Drawing on the ideas of Challenge-Based Learning, all students are required to delve into a challenge or project that they define and create. Though on a smaller scale, the Summer STEAM campers will learn via the same model as Mercersburg’s seniors.
A Typical Day
8-8:30 a.m.
Breakfast
9-11:30 a.m.
Work stations
12-12:45 p.m.
Lunch
1-4 p.m.
Work stations
4:15-5:15 p.m.
Supervised free time
5:30-6:15 p.m.
Dinner
6:30-9 p.m.
Evening activity (pool party, movie night, ice cream social, games, etc.)
9:15-10 p.m.
Dorm and Lights Out