ESCC hosts Camp Weevil

One hundred and seventy-nine children from the Wiregrass area converged on Enterprise State Community College June 18-21 for Camp Weevil 2012.

Formerly know as Youth or Kiddie College, the camp has been a tradition at ESCC for over 25 years.

Enterprise, Ozark,Geneva, New Brockton, Daleville, Kinston, Chancellor, and Elba were a few of the cities represented by this year’s Camp Weevil participants.

Camp Weevil offered several fun and informative classes including: ode to a cookie, detective weevils, messy labs, rocket science, CSI Weevil, wild about art, Zumba, “It’s Showtime,” young aviators and many more.

Each camper selected three choruses to take during the four-day camp.

Anne Kelley Spence, who facilitated this year’s camp, said that it’s been wonderful.

“The first day was a little hectic, but they seem to have really really enjoyed it,” Spence said. “It’s been great.”

Spence said a few of the camp’s teachers work at ESCC, but most of the Camp Weevil staff was made up of teachers within the Enterprise City School system.

“We’ve also had a few alumni come back to help teach a few classes,” Spence said. “We also have about 13 volunteers from Fort Rucker who volunteered to help with a couple of courses.”

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Laine Stahr, the head volunteer from Fort Rucker, said he and the other volunteers were facilitating the rocket science and young aviators courses.

“My neighbor is over the aviation program at the Ozark campus and I mentioned to him that some of us were wanting to do some volunteer work and he suggested Camp Weevil,” Stahr said. “There’s 13 of us, most are active military.” 

Spence said Stahr and the rest of the volunteers not only taught the courses but provided the materials as well.

“The rockets we use are from Quest Aerospace,” Stahr said. “The kids have to cut out their own fins, assemble the rocks and they get to launch them on the last day.”

Stahr said the students in his classes also get to paint and name their rockets.

“They’re having a ball,” he said. “I can’t wait till they actually get to launch their rockets.”

Spence said she’s glad that ESCC was able to partner with Fort Rucker.

“We want to keep working with them in the future,” Spence said. “We’re working together on staring a supply drive for the local schools and we eventually want to have an aviation camp similar to Camp Weevil in the future.”

Across campus, Anne Light and a group of her friends were working to find fossils in their messy labs class.

“This is my favorite class,” Light said. “You get to get messy.”

The students were looking through wet clay to try and find sharks teeth and other fossils and they were wearing a good bit of their project.

Nine-year-old James Stigers of Daleville said his favorite course was “It’s Showtime,” a choral course taught by recent ESCC graduate Seth McCollough.

“We’re singing and learning about singing notes,” Stigers said. “I like singing and Seth makes it fun.”

Stigers joined the rest of his classmates for a performance on the final day of Camp Weevil June 21.

Among the tunes performed was the “Camp Weevil Song” composed by ESCC’s own Ken Thomas.

Deidre Frith, Director of Marketing & Media Relations, said ESCC wants to pull the community into Camp Weevil, and encourages everyone in grades 2-6 to participate next summer.

“It’s a great way to get your kids involved with something fun this summer, and because it’s at the college you know you’re going to get a good quality education thrown in there.”