While some teenagers were lounging in the pool this summer, the Science, Technology, and Engineering Program (STEP) campers were building Mars rovers and operation-based drones. Now in its ninth year, the STEP Program at Georgia Tech is a free summer camp where high school students learn the engineering design process by completing task-based challenges.

This year, for the first time, the camp hosted two sessions. One in Albany, Georgia, to serve the state’s rural population, and the other on the Georgia Tech Atlanta campus. The participants in Albany were challenged to design a delivery drone, while those in Atlanta built rovers for Mars.

“I want students to walk away from this camp with confidence in their abilities, knowing that they can go to college and be engineers," said Lecturer Kelly Griendling, who leads the program and has been doing so for years.

The program is sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering (AE), Aerospace Systems Design Lab (ASDL), Georgia Space Grant Consortium, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.

Read the full story on the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering website.