Summer camp options expand at Camp Rilea

Julia Eastham, The Daily Astorian, Ore.
·2 min read

WARRENTON — Over the past five years, the Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center’s former schoolhouse has transformed into a place for students to explore the world through science.

Since 2019, Jeremy Hand, the site director at the STARBASE Camp Rilea STEAM Program, has worked to provide students with interactive learning experiences.

Camp

Jeremy Hand is the site director at the STARBASE Camp Rilea STEAM Program.

Hand is better known by students as “Mr. Electric.” Prior to becoming site director in 2023, he taught STEAM education — science, technology, engineering, art and math — courses at Camp Rilea.

The former instructor works alongside three others to bring the program to life. Hand said that during his four years teaching he enjoyed introducing students to topics such as chromatography and geocaching.

“It’s more fun in the classroom teaching kids, I’ve learned that. The kids are a super rewarding part of the job. It’s not as rewarding to look at numbers,” Hand said.

During the school year, the program connects with students to provide them with STEAM lessons once a week over a five-week period.

In the summer, the program hosts summer camps, which provide free interactive lessons based in STEAM curriculum.

As site director, Hand has overseen the expansion of the program’s courses and summer camps. This includes a new summer camp for older students and a summer camp with a focus in the arts.

The new summer camp will be the first time the learning program will provide an opportunity for high school and middle school students to work with electric vehicles.

“We’ve never actually ran a summer camp where we allowed high school grades. We usually did it from third, fourth and fifth-through-eighth (grade), where there are other groupings, but this year we want to try this,” Hand said.

The four-day electric vehicle workshop will run two times this summer, with camps in July and in August. The program is available for students in seventh-through-12th grade with an interest to learn more about constructing electric bikes, scooters and go-karts.

“They’re going to be building electric vehicles over the course of the four days, starting off small. It makes it easy to make stuff, like just a scooter … and then by the fourth day, we want them to have essentially a dirt bike,” Hand said.

The other new summer camp being brought to Camp Rilea is the STEAM with a capital “A” camp. The camp is available for students in third-to-fifth grade, and allows for students to learn more about art and science through building fractal sculptures and art photons.