Getting a Taste of the College Experience
By Yesenia Amaro Daily News staff writer
Posted on: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Alvaro Contreras said the 2010 4-H Teen Conference at Washington State University got him excited about college.
"It makes me want to finish high school faster so I can go to college," the soon-to-be freshman at Pasco High School said.
Contreras is among more than 400 teens from across the Washington state who are attending the conference this week at WSU. The conference began Sunday and will go through today.
The teens are getting a taste of the college experience by staying at the dormitories and attending several workshops throughout the day in classrooms and laboratories around campus.
Some of the workshops include entomology, science, television production and photography, among others. During the conference the teens also gain leadership skills.
"Those little things that look like wheat grains, those are the eggs," WSU associate entomology professor Richard Zack told the teens as they were dissecting crickets during the entomology workshop Monday morning.
Contreras was amazed.
"It's been fun to learn about the insects and touching them," he said.
Esther Lara, who also will be a freshman at Pasco High School in the fall, said the entomology workshop was her favorite.
"I've never dissected an insect or anything," she said, as she and her partner dissected their cricket. "It's interesting ... you can even hear it" cracking.
Zack, who volunteered to teach the workshop, said it was basically an introduction to entomology.
Students learned about the insect's three body parts, diseases transmitted through insects, and how insects affect humans, he said.
"Only female mosquitoes take blood meals," he told the teens during the workshop. "... Watch a mosquito land on you ... she is going to (bite you) with two needle-like structures, which will penetrate your skin. The first tube inserts saliva into you, the second tube sucks the blood ... the saliva is what causes the itching and swelling" on your skin. He said all insects have four wings, except for one group of insects that only have a pair of wings - flies.
"A true fly has one pair of wings," he told the students.
Zack said the workshop was to get the young students interested in science.
Alexia Estrada, who will be an eight-grader at Stevens Middle School in Pasco this fall, said she attended the conference because her school encourages students to be involved.
"Our school really pushes us to try to come to this kind of opportunities," she said. "They try to open our doors."
Estrada said she learned a lot from attending the conference, and she enjoyed staying at the dormitories.
"It's amazing getting to sleep in the dorms," she said. "I feel prepared" for college.
Estrada said she was thankful for the opportunity and for those individuals who helped organize the conference.
"I know they put in a lot of work," she said.
BJ Carlson, a volunteer who helped organize the conference, said a group of 20 individuals from across the state helped put it together. He said the planning for it began in the fall of 2009.
All the hard work is rewarded when the conference finally comes together, he said.
"It's rewarding when all the teens come together and learn about new stuff," he said. "We have a lot more this year. It's a really good turnout."
Yesenia Amaro can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 237, or by e-mail at yamaro@dnews.co
posted July 2010
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