Some 34 students from seven Georgetown schools underwent a fun-packed two weeks math camp at Queen’s College (QC).
This was the fifth annual summer math institute, commonly called the math camp, hosted by the school and it returned after a two-year hiatus, due to COVID-19.
The students of Queen’s College, Bishops High School, St Roses High, St Stanislaus College, Richard Ishmael and Tutorial were taught various topics and learned of the importance of the subject in daily activities for two weeks.
During the closing ceremony on Friday, the students were encouraged to take the information they learned back into their classrooms when the school year commences in September.
Speaking during the brief closing ceremony, two participants shared their experiences and extended gratitude to the school for hosting the camp.
Micah Gobardhan, a student from St Rose’s High school said at first he didn’t want to spend his vacation in school but he is happy he attended the camp.
“They taught us things that I didn’t think we would learn about, they taught us how to apply math, how to break situations down so that we can solve them easily,” Gobardhan said.
He noted that when students are learning “we just take the formulas and cram them. That’s why students find math hard. They don’t apply [the subject], they don’t break it down [and] find the reason… in this camp, we learned how to break things down, we learned how to prove stuff. We learned how to make equations for ourselves and how math is applied in our careers.
“That to me is very special and I’m really thankful that they actually invited other schools.”
He extended thanks to the coordinator and his parents.
Meanwhile, Maliha Rajkumar, a student of Queen’s College said, “when I first heard of the math camp, I thought: why would I spend half of my summer coming to school to do math? Eventually, I gave it some more thought and I decided that maybe I should give it a shot.”
She did not regret it.
“The first day it was quite intimidating. I was not familiar with the software. I didn’t have my own computer and the big words and numbers were kind of scary.”
After the second day, she said, “The days just kept getting better. We had field trips, guest speakers, early morning gaming and overall a lot of fun. We were exposed to a variety of career paths lot in not only the math aspect but also STEM as a whole,” the student said.
The programme was led by QC Alumnus and holder of a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, Cleveland Waddell, who said the students were very excited and willing to learn.
“As a mathematician, you come you teach some math, but the other things are needed to drive the programme forward,” Waddell said, he added, “We didn’t go online because we think the field trips are a very important part of the math camp. Math is sort of the glue of all the sciences but it’s used in every aspect of our lives. We want to give the kids exposure to all of that.”
Meanwhile the camp coordinator, Shifiera Surujballi said she joined this year’s programme because she was impressed by the work and the fact that students from other schools aside from QC were involved.
This year’s program is made possible through generous sponsorships from alumnus Dr. Edris Kamal Dookie and family, Metallica Commodities Corporation, R.S.E.L Guyana Inc., E-Networks and friends of Queen’s College.
