CADC Camps Expand Offerings This Summer

With 10 sessions, CADC Summer Camps have something for every future designer or builder—or just prospective Auburn student as approximately 30% of the university-sponsored camps are housed in the College.

Working with Auburn Youth Programs, an initiative of the Office of Professional and Continuing Education, the College hosted architecture, building science and landscape architecture camps and industrial design workshops. This summer, CADC also launched a new graphic design camp to expand offerings in that discipline.

Head counselor Emily Weathers grew up going to camp every summer and now gets to see the campers develop into strong, capable and independent thinkers.

“Watching them be proud of their work and create something is so inspiring,” Weathers said. “Being able to make personal connections to students who might come to Auburn is awesome.”  

In three sessions of the Architecture camp in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (APLA), campers learn how to draw blueprints and perspectives, get a history of architecture lesson and build a model of a three-story house—during which Associate Professor Christian Dagg has three goals for them.

“I want the campers to have a studio experience in a unique environment where they learn as much from their peers as they learn from me,” he said. “I also make sure they have a product at the end of the week they can put in a portfolio and that they have some fun.”

The McWhorter School of Building Science (BSCI) split campers into grade levels this year, offering sessions for 11^th and 12^th grades. The younger campers learned about construction management processes like estimating, scheduling and modeling before helping build a structure. Meanwhile, the older campers applied those skills in a construction competition, like BSCI students often do.

Associate Professor Courtney Windham led the School of Industrial and Graphic Design’s (SIGD) inaugural Graphic Design camp, which introduced students to the foundational skills of typography, image-making, posters, pattern and narrative in book design—each of which were undertaken entirely by hand.

“We want students to learn to think, see and make with their hands. It teaches them to slow down and work through ideas physically before translating them digitally,” Windham said. “This camp is a chance to show high schoolers that graphic design is a rigorous, thoughtful discipline. It is yet another way our college opens its doors to the next generation of designers before they’ve even set foot on a college campus.”

The two sessions of the Industrial Design Workshop focused on adding personal touches to industrial design objects, working to interject life into projects like cutting boards, rings, packaging stencils and sweatshirts that were bleach printed with leaves collected on a field trip to the Donald E. Davis Arboretum.

“I hope campers come away with more confidence in their ability to make,” said Associate Professor and INDD Program Chair Ben Bush, who led the sessions. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, but they have to give it a go.”

Additionally, with sponsorship from AIA Chattanooga, Robins & Morton and Seay, Seay and Litchfield, CADC held its annual Design and Construction Discovery Camp (DCDC), that gives campers exposure to each of the College’s degree programs and an array of professional possibilities available with design and construction education.

Current Environmental Design (ENVD) student Mimi Snook attended the DCDC camp when she was in high school and worked as a camp counselor this summer, guiding the next generation of CADC students.

“I really benefited from the camp because it allowed me to explore my options,” Snook said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to go to Auburn at the time, and then after camp, I only applied to Auburn because I was so sure.”