Field trips are an essential part of the program...whether it's leadership and teamwork learned during a ropes course, physics experimentation at a water park or looking into the depths of ecological activity at the Eno River State Park, valuable lessons are learned and typically boring topics become engaging and interactive experiences. When not in the field, the everyday classroom lessons are far from monotonous. The Summer Institute lasts for five weeks. The first two instructional weeks of the program are designated as "First Block", the "Third Week" is solid field trips and the "Second Block" consists of two more instructional weeks. Each period of the day focuses on one specific subject; for example, First Block for the second-years presented a schedule of Electronics, Chemistry, Earth Science and Math 2/Computers.

In Electronics, we focused on circuitry, constructing OR, NOR, AND and NAND logic gates to test the main theories of binary math. Along the way, we discovered the uses of conductors, resistors, capacitors, diodes, LED's(light-emitting diodes), transistors, grounding terminals and positive power buses. Building an increasingly complex circuit, we conquered the day-to-day wiring and power flow problems, eventually emerging with a functional piece of equipment. Aside from a few occasions that left the room smelling like burnt rubber or dead fish (odd how simple plastic and metal can create exotic and noxious fumes in seconds), we were overall successful in our task and emerged with a much greater understanding of how both everyday appliances and complex machines function.

In Chemistry, we explored the branch of Biochemistry, engineering genetic chimeras: E. coli bacteria that are resistant to certain types of antibiotics and can glow under ultraviolet light with the aid of a "borrowed" jellyfish gene. It took several tries, but by the end of the session all of the teams had achieved success in their hybridized organisms. Although almost 50 pages of procedural text first appeared to present a daunting task, we all soon got into the project and breezed through the procedure...whether asking for the "transformation solution," testing our creations with UV light to determine if they would glow, or learning how to use a spectrophotometer, the often Jekyll-and-Hyde-sounding projects always proved to be exciting and educational.

Next in my schedule came Earth Science. A mix of geology, astronomy, oceanography and meteorology, this class taught us basic skills needed for our field studies. Stretching from the top of the Eno River down to the coast at Shackleford Banks, we studied river channels, water flow and scientific analysis, eventually culminating in our calculating the volume of the Eno & Neuse rivers by means of velocity, depth and width measurements taken every 20 miles. Other classroom explorations included searching through 5 million-year-old fossils from Aurora, NC. A variety of sharks teeth, shells, corals and other organisms proved to us the diversity of sea life that was residing around our area long before we came on the scene. With most of us having lived on our dear planet for around 15 years, we all thought we were pretty knowledgeable about the ground beneath our feet...it's amazing how little we really knew.

And last (but of course not least), here's a picture of our Computer Programming teacher, Joey. Including myself, three students composed our HTML class, leaving our regular 4th period Math class to compose our web pages over the course of 8 days. Some of our varied lessons included HTML (HyperText Markup Language) structure such as lists, tables, images, graphics, color and format, how to Adobe Photoshop, understanding the operating system of a Power Mac and operating a digital camera. All of our other work is easily visible on this page, so read and enjoy!