Pre-college programs at CEED
I would say that the purpose of CEED is to help create or foster an interest in engineering. Many of them come in with very stereotypical ideas. They’ve never heard of industrial and systems engineering. They don’t know that mining and minerals engineering or material science is something you can do. So we really want them to understand all the different types of engineering that are available. At the middle school level, we do have our Imagination Drone Camp, where the students build, fly and take home a drone. Our middle school Imagination Camps, the design project is going to be focused on an electrical and computer engineering project, where they build something like a Game Boy or a digital camera from scratch, including soldering all the components on and doing some coding. At the eighth and ninth grade level, we have Cyber Spark that we coordinate with the NSI and the Hume Center, and that one is really focused on all aspects of cybersecurity, why it’s important, how to do it. At the upper high school level, we work with the Electrical and Computer Engineering department on the Upwards Camp that is specifically focused on microelectronics, chip manufacturing, electronic devices. Almost all of our programs are going to contain some kind of engineering design project over the course of the camp. Failure is part of what is going to happen and what we want them to experience. It’s what do you do when you fail? How to get through it? What are the next steps? So that iterative cycle of engineering design process is really important to us as well. We also want them to make connections: peers who have similar experiences or similar interests. We want them to connect with the undergraduate students that staff our camps. You meet professors or current students that are in engineering. You have people to talk to or look up to or ask questions. There’ve been references or written letters of recommendation for me for jobs or internships. I was fully involved with the CEED summer camps this past summer, where I worked on three different camps. I was an RHA or an RA. So I was helping the students right after, you know, their instruction times. They got to develop various skills, such as project based learning, team collaboration, and presenting their work. That’s something that we do very often in college and even later on afterwards. We want them to experience college life. So most of our camps are residential. They’re living in the dorms. They are eating in the dining hall. They learn how to navigate the bus system. By the time they get to high school, a lot of what we do is supporting them in that college prep application space. It provides that sense of community and that sense of belonging. They know that once they get here, they’re also going to continue to be supported through the CEED office, as well as many of the other resources that we have available here on campus.
Category:campus experienceVideo duration:3:31Pre-college programs at CEEDBy:
Date published:3Aug2026Video views:9
Interested in engineering but don’t know where to start? Explore what Virginia Tech Engineering can offer middle school and high school students through through the pre-college programs at the Center for Engineering Excellence and Discovery (CEED). Designed for lots of age groups and skill levels, these programs provide opportunities to explore engineering, develop new skills, and prepare for future academic and career success.
Learn more here: https://go.vt.edu/urSL1
