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Acting Without a Net
A summer intensive course that’s fun and informative. Students will study and explore courses in acting, comedy improvisation, and voice and speech for the stage that provide serious training and are appropriate for any level of experience. This course is hands-on and filled with performance opportunities. Professional training in a positive atmosphere will culminate in a public performance recital.

African-American History from 1865 to the Present
This course is an introduction to African American history from 1865 to the present, emphasizing the role of black leaders, the struggle against oppression, and the evolution of race relations. Themes treated in the course will include: successes and failures of Reconstruction; the rise of Jim Crow segregation and the age of lynching; black leadership at the turn of the century; blacks’ participation in world War I; the Harlem Renaissance and the 1920s; the effects of the Depression and New Deal on African Americans; World War II and African Americans; the 1960s and the rise of black power; Vietnam; the rise of hip hop in the 1970s; the conservative thrust of the 1980s; and contemporary developments of the late twentieth Century. Students in this course will gain a basic knowledge of this time period and will develop the ability to think critically about historical issues.

Industrial Engineering: Robocamp
In the field of robotics, different engineering disciplines come together to create machines that can perform a variety of tasks, from manufacturing to exploring Mars. This hands-on course will provide students a basic knowledge about robots, numerous applications, and impacts of robot technology. The course intends to inspire students to stimulate interest and pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like, science- and engineering-based robotics laboratory environment. In this 3-week program students will design, build, program and test mobile robots made out of LEGO parts, sensors and controllers.

Inventor’s Workshop
Wanted: Students ready to put their thinking caps on and passionately explore all options. If you’ve said to yourself, “I have an idea for a great product!” then this is the class for you. In this course, students will work as a group to come up with a new product to develop or an existing product to improve on. We will be a working research team that will investigate all aspects of bringing a product to market: cost, marketability, impact on the environment and feasibility of the product. We will contact companies all over the country to talk with business people, engineers and manufacturers as we gather the information we need to make our product a reality. By the end of the three week-course, we’ll have a prototype of our product to show to the rest of the camp.

Mathematical Expeditions
Be prepared to glimpse a world of mathematics way beyond what you’ve seen in the classroom! Through a variety of activities, you will encounter mathematics from multiple perspectives: numerical, visual, structural, historical, philosophical, and practical. Certainly intriguing and often entertaining, topics may include geometry, topology, cryptography, game theory, and probability. (Students choosing this course must have completed at least algebra 1 by the end of the current school year. Completion of both algebra 1 and geometry is preferred).

Millionaire 101: How to Get Insanely Rich
This course will teach you the essentials of personal finance. You will learn how to set a professional image (including preparation of business cards, resumes, and goals), prioritize need and wants (how to afford that cool iPod, or maybe Ferrari), the beauty (and horror) of compounding interested (the time value of money), insurance, checking and savings accounts, wise (and unwise) use of credit, savings bonds, and a basic introduction to intermediate-to long-term investing (stocks, bonds, and mutual funds). As part of the course, you will develop your own financial plan and simulated investment portfolio. Using real-time information from the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and the internet, you will create and monitor the performance of your simulated wealth. Best of all you will learn to apply some of the best ideas about wealth accumulation while avoiding the most common pitfalls, and have terrific fun while doing it!

Playing with Shakespeare: Studying, Acting, Writing Creatively
There's nothing more fun for a good student to play with during the summer than one of Shakespeare's comedies. In this course, we'll work with Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” to understand what a comedy is and why it's funny. We'll engage in improvisational theatre and theatre games to help us understand the play, and we'll write some fiction, poetry, and drama to support our understanding. During the course, we'll interact with the cast and director of a professional production of “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” and we'll see their work as the course closes.

Psychology and the Law
This course takes ideas from psychology and applies them to help us understand and improve the criminal justice system. For instance, if you were to witness a mugging, how well do you think you'd be able to remember what the mugger looked like? Could you correctly pick him or her out of a lineup? Would you confess to a crime you didn't commit? If you were on a jury, would you be able to sift through the evidence and make the right decision? How often does the insanity defense work? Does the death penalty really deter crime? These are all questions that psychology and the law answers. In this three-week course, you'll learn about all of these topics and many others. You'll meet professionals in law enforcement, criminal law, lie detection and other areas and see how they apply ideas from psychology in their work. You will get to watch a videotaped trial and decide guilt or innocence like an actual juror. You'll witness a non-violent staged crime and get to see how good of a witness you would be. Students will also design and carry out their own studies on psychology and the law. In the process you'll learn that the criminal justice system can be improved by using the scientific method.

Space and Planetary Sciences - Exploring Mars
Explore the red planet. Find out about what conditions are like on the surface of Mars – Is there water? Can life exist on Mars? If so, what kind? How can we get rock samples back to Earth? Find out about the instrumentation we need. Learn more about missions to Mars, past and future – Viking, Odyssey, Mars Exploration rovers, Phoenix, Mars Science Laboratory. Plan a mission, design an instrument.

Space and Planetary Sciences - Space Rocks!
Where do space rocks come from? Do they fall to Earth? How do we know they are space rocks? Are they dangerous? In this class you’ll find out about meteorites, asteroids, and comets; learn more about the origins of our solar system and space missions to bring back extraterrestrial samples to Earth; and design a sample collector.