Building Relationships for a Lifetime at SAME’s STEM Engineering & Construction Camps

How one camp mentor is helping to guide a new generation of engineers and discovering inspiration along the way.

It takes a certain type of person to take a week off from their job, spend 14 hours on a cramped trans-Pacific flight, and spend the next five days volunteering with students you’ve never met before. Thankfully though, Trinity Batton is just that kind of person.

As an Air Force Civil Engineer in Guam, Trinity jumped at the opportunity to become a camp mentor at one of SAME’s STEM Engineering & Construction Camps, one of the cornerstone programs supported by the SAME Foundation. As an active member of the Guam Post, Trinity was eager to share her experience as a civil engineer with a new generation of STEM students. Within a few hours of her arrival at the U.S. Air Force Academy Camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., Trinity was hooked. 

“The camps hold an extra special place in my heart, because they were the first place where I really got to flesh out my passion for working with students and my passion for sharing STEM knowledge and building those connections,” she said.

An Unforgettable Week

For over 20 years, SAME’s STEM camps have attracted juniors, seniors, and rising sophomores from high schools across the country who are eager to discover the possibilities in STEM and engineering careers and connect with STEM professionals from industry and the military.

Held in conjunction with the military services, the camps offer a unique perspective for students by being hosted on installations, letting them see military engineers up close and work alongside them with a schedule packed full of hands-on activities.

At the Air Force Academy Camp, reveille is called at 0600. The campers are fed and beginning their first task by 0700, and the pace doesn’t often let up until 2200. Challenges come one after another. Concrete beam design, building, and testing; cardboard boat construction and racing; tours through the university research labs and wind tunnels; presentations by industry experts; and field trips fill each day, all with barely a break in between.

“Nobody has trouble falling asleep at STEM camp,” Batton said, laughing. “There’s always a new challenge, and just when you start to get tired, something else wakes you up again!”

Constant and varied engineering challenges is what the camp is all about. Students may arrive shy and uncertain but quickly begin to find their footing within a day or two and bond with their team, or “flight” as they are called at the Air Force Academy Camp. Between the field trips and broken concrete beams, students begin to get involved and ask questions about their experiences. Aspiring civil engineers light up at a construction challenge, while the aerospace students refuse to leave the wind tunnel lab on campus, and many of the campers pepper the Air Force Academy cadet—one assigned to each flight—with questions about the academy’s application process.

Building Relationships

Each flight is made up of competitive, high-achieving students who are accustomed to working on their own and standing out as an individual. As a volunteer mentor, Batton uses her considerable engineering skills to guide students in technical aspects of the week and leans on her real-world practical experience to help them function as a team.

“Everyone wants to shine,” Batton said. “But the camp is designed so that teamwork is essential. So you have to get these students to rethink their strategy, to come at it like a teammate rather than like a leader.”

Guiding her flight into a cohesive team has Batton wearing different hats throughout the week. She plays the coach, the teacher, and sometimes the big sister.

“I’m not always talking to them as a parent or as a teacher,” she said. “I’m talking to them as somebody who’s not so far removed from where they are. Knowing what it feels like to be in their spot. Sometimes that means being the person who taps the quiet kid on the shoulder and saying, ‘hey, what do you think?’”

Within two or three days, friendships within the flights are forming, personalities are beginning to shine through, and teamwork begins to crystallize. “Some were best friends by day four!” Batton said. These relationships carry on long after the camp ends; Batton and the students stay in touch for years. One of her favorite memories came from when one of her previous campers was accepted into the Air Force Academy and the announcement spread in the flight’s group chat. Congratulations poured in.

“We only knew them a week, but their success is our success,” she said. “We’re all friends for life!”

Supporting the Mission

Beyond connecting students and building friendships, the STEM Engineering & Construction Camps serve a vital need to foster engineering leadership for the nation, the SAME Foundation’s compelling purpose. Many students arrive at the camps unaware of the full scope of career opportunities offered within the STEM fields. The camps program helps students learn about the Civil Engineer Corps, RED HORSE, and the extraordinary range of uniformed and civil technical and scientific roles that are possible, in addition to possibilities in private industry.

“I think as far as getting more kids who may be interested in the military, may be interested in STEM — let’s marry those two,” she said. “Let’s show them the beauty of both. Then you have a higher demographic wanting to go into those STEM military career fields. This is absolutely building toward national readiness.”

It’s All in the Motto

The camps approach their learning through experience principle with a motto that seems counterintuitive: “Build then Design.” While that may seem backwards, Batton explains it’s on purpose. “We let the kids have the opportunity to explore engineering concepts hands-on. Because they’ve seen them in action, they will be able to understand on a deeper level what they’re reading in their textbooks,” she said.

Today, as a high school algebra teacher, Batton applies the same lessons to her classroom that she learned as a mentor. “I understand that I need to show them the real-world application now so the formula makes sense,” she said. “If we give no context, the lesson means nothing.”

Her love of mentoring and teaching is evident in her enthusiasm for sharing her knowledge with the next generation.

“I don’t know that I would be doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t had these opportunities with SAME. I will always love the camps for that.”

A Dedicated Mentor

Batton is applying for her third year of becoming a mentor and hopes to share her skills at multiple camps this summer—especially now that the travel will be more manageable through the financial support offered by the SAME Foundation’s Camps Mentoring Program.

For a student considering STEM camps, her message is simple: “If you want to have the most exciting week of your life, come to camp.”

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