Sunday, April 17, 2011

University Day

The Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program's final program wide event of the year offers it's participants an opportunity to explore college life. Each year, we've taken advantage of UC Berkeley's CAL DAY event to showcase the livelihood of the campus community. The ultimate goal was that these participants, at the ages of 14, 15, 16 whose parent's often-times don't have the time or the money to provide that extravagant college road trip that we sometimes take for granted... looking back will associate college with fun and a place they belong.

The project came together in a few quick and easy steps, taking account of the frustrations of University Day's pasts and experimenting with what I'd like to think are minor improvements.
  • We partnered with UC Berkeley's Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity that needed to fulfill a youth day service requirement that very weekend. We asked one volunteer from the organization, a real live college student, to accompany each group and answer college-related questions along the way.
  • After surveying the attendees with their discipline of interest (and entering them into my best friend Microsoft Excel), we sorted and grouped them - each group sat in on a session related to that field of study.
  • While not in session, groups competed savagely (mostly chaperones, actually) in a Scavenger Hunt that allowed them to experience elements of college life that I deemed most important to me: the college newspaper, finding a part-time job, watching a sports game or playing intramural sports, living in the dorm with roommates, joining an on campus organization, studying abroad, and comparing bookstore prices with the library.
  • The Scavenger Hunt also included an element of conversation where participants were encouraged to talk to the students around them, asking questions ranging from "what is the most valuable thing you've learned from a professor" to "can we take pictures in your dorm?"
Ultimately, the trip was a huge success! Though the participant's were hot, tired, and grumpy at the end of the day - the photos definitely captured the great time they had. Below are more details, stolen from the blog I posted on www.myeep.org.

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Over a hundred MYEEP participants woke up early last Saturday morning crossing the bay to spend a day-in-the-sun at the University of California, Berkeley’s 2011 Cal Day.
Fifteen teams, grouped by their discipline of interest, toured some of the fun activities the campus had to offer:


The group interested in architecture got a chance to watch students at work in the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) lab open house to learn how computer technology is used in design and architecture and watch a laser cutter in action.

Youth interested in art visited the Archaeological Research Facility and made illustrations of multi-colored, painted rock-art designs, helping paint a rock-art mural while learning how archaeologists record rock-art paintings in the field.

Our aspiring scientists toured UC Berkeley’s state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology labs, participated in the nutrition Olympics where they actively learned about healthy eating from nutrition experts from the Atkins Center for Weight and Health. Youth interested in engineering used mind control to move robots through EEG sensors.

MYEEP’s future business men and women hung out at the Haas School of Business courtyard interviewing representatives of undergraduate business clubs. Our mathematician participants used probability can help answer some perplexing problems like the emperor’s life-or-death proposition, crazy guy on a plane, and the classic Monty Hall problem.

The groups interested in the various humanities disciplines heard about “Life as a Psychology Major” from a panel of students, toured the award-winning campus radio station, and sat in on a lecture exploring solutions to the United States and California’s budgetary crisis.
The teams also competed in a campus-wide scavenger hunt. They searched for the perfect college organizations through the rows of tables and booths that lined the bustling Sproul Plaza and explored options in campus employment and studying abroad. Some groups befriended current students as they made their way into the residence halls to imitate dorm life while others caught the Cal Woman’s Tennis match at Hellman Tennis Center.

After reviewing the fun photos from the scavenger hunt, it has been extremely tough to select the winner. All teams did an amazing job of reaching many of the stops and collecting all the items but a congratulations is in order for Group One who completed the scavenger hunt in style with their extra creative photos! It was definitely a close one!


The winning group receives a sweatshirt from UC Berkeley and will be featured in next years flier! Great job to all the teams and a huge thank you to all the volunteer chaperones and youth leaders who really made the day possible! Check out all the event photos and the winning group’s photos.


It is our hope that youth leave the University Day feeling like they belong on a college campus and want to engage in college life. MYEEP University Day is just one of two annual program-wide field trips. To learn more about our events, check out www.myeep.org/events