Dr. Stacey Camp, Dr. Lynne Goldstein (Anthropology), and Dr. Leigh Graves Wolf (College of Education) with the Archaeology STEM Camp Pilot Project will use a grant from Science and Society at State (S3)  to run a two-day archaeology camp this June for 15 International Baccalaureate (IB) high school students on Michigan State University’s campus. Founded in 1968, the International Baccalaureate is a non-profit educational foundation that offers internationally respected curricula and programming. IB programs are growing in popularity, representing 90,000 students worldwide. All IB students are required to conduct research for and complete ad 4,000 word “extended essay.” This pilot project will provide a unique hands-on experiential opportunity for IB students to learn about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and archaeology. It will also allow students to gather data for their extended essay requirement.

Dr. Stacey Camp, Dr. Lynne Goldstein, and Dr. Leigh Wolf (College of Education) initiated their collaboration in October of 2017 after Dr. Goldstein was contacted by a local school district with requests to develop a targeted archaeology outreach program. Additionally, university administration expressed support for the development of an ongoing program to connect the MSU Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) to secondary school students. CAP had worked with schools in the past to present workshops and demonstrations, but they wanted to develop an ongoing long-term program to provide both a participatory experience for high school students and an interdisciplinary research opportunity for the project team members.

While archaeology is not always considered a STEM discipline, archaeologists use principles and approaches from geometry, geography, geology, various physical sciences, botany, and zoology to study the past. Archaeologists also study landscapes, use engineering equipment and GIS, do various kinds of digital work, and we identify artifacts, plant and animal remains, and study soils.

Team Leader
Stacey L. Camp, Department of Anthropology, College of Social Science

Team Members
Leigh Graves Wolf, College of Education

Lynne Goldstein, Department of Anthropology, College of Social Science

Science and Society at State (S3), is an interdisciplinary research institution offering financial support for scholarship across disciplines at Michigan State University. Their mission is to promote interdisciplinary research and education that utilizes methods, approaches, and scholarship from STEM, the health sciences, and science studies (studies of science using methods and scholarship from the humanities and/or social sciences).

Click here to read the Spring 2018 newsletter.