Science Education Takes A Quantum Leap In The Silicon Valley

July 30, 2011 - PRLog -- Educators, Michael Finnegan Ph.D. and Ryan Nurmela, have brought their science education company QuantumCamp from Berkeley into Mountain View, the heart of the Silicon Valley. Together, they are changing the way Bay Area parents are thinking about math and science education in the classroom. QuantumCamp is unique in its mission in that it offers high-end science courses such as Quantum Physics, Calculus, and Computer Engineering for middle school students by focusing learning through the lens of the activity rather than through lecture or textbook.

In an era of vanishing elementary school science programs and diminishing middle school science budgets, QuantumCamp is bucking the trend by doubling the amount of time spent on hands-on science activities. A recent study put out by the Lawrence Hall of Science determined that many California students are perhaps receiving less than 40 hours of science instruction for the entire academic year; if book time is taken into consideration, then there are students receiving less than 20 hours of hands-on science per year. QuantumCamp offers elementary school students 60 hours of hands-on science per year, and well over 90 hours of hands-on science for middle schoolers. “It’s like a college for middle school,” Finnegan says, “students can pick the classes that they want to take... if students wanted more than 90 hours of science, they could have it.”

Finnegan and Nurmela believe that students are far more capable than the current educational system believes they are. After 500 students, they know that they are right. Middle School students in the Bay Area have been flocking to them for the past year since they opened their first campus in downtown Berkeley. Students come for the science and math and stay for the quality of experience and teaching. “It’s not just the level of science that we are doing,” says Nurmela. “It’s the methodology we employ. Science and even mathematics are best learned through real examples. When a student sees something first hand they don’t ask ‘Why do I have to know this?’ That was always a question I hated answering in public schools. Knowledge should be obvious.” Says a former student, “After taking the first QuantumCamp I felt much more confident in not only coming to logical conclusions on my own, but also dealing with science in general. I am looking forward to enrolling in QuantumCamp 2.”

QuantumCampus has few competitors if any. The only other groups offering content at anywhere near their level are Schmahl Science and the Lawrence Hall of Science. But these science camps and workshops aren’t packaging the concepts in the same way as
QuantumCamp and students are leaving wowed but parents are concerned about how much they’ve really learned. The founders, Finnegan and Nurmela, claim that an idea or concept only takes form in the presence of other similar related ideas. The reason that parents are sending their children to QuantumCamp is that their children are leaving with a deep understanding of the key concepts that constitute the science they are learning.

QuantumCamp is offering both week long summer camps and year long after school curriculum for Silicon Valley students in mathematics and science. Students don’t have to be geniuses to take their courses, they need only be open to learning.

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QuantumCamp was founded in 2009 by Michael Finnegan Ph.D. and Ryan Nurmela, two former middle school teachers. They offer courses in mathematics and science for grades 6-10 and science for grades K-5. Courses are offered as either summer camps or quarter-long classes. They have locations in Berkeley and Mountain View.