Registration is open for middle schoolers to participate in Enviropods, a free summer program where students track floods, map landslides and chase storms.
Following sessions in Hopkinsville and Owensboro earlier this summer, the program is scheduled to visit Hazard, Frankfort and Somerset in July. The three-day camp is open to Kentucky residents entering seventh or eighth grade this fall.
Funded by the KY NSF EPSCoR CLIMBS project and in collaboration with the University of Kentucky, Enviropods is limited to 20 students per session.
"Kentucky is very geographically diverse, and that means that there's going to be different hazards depending on where you are in the state," said Summer Brown, director of the program and senior lecturer in the UK College of Arts and Sciences Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Students get hands-on experience with modern technology, including flying drones to create three-dimensional surface maps and ground heat maps. Participants also engage in engineering activities like building river gauges from magnetic door alarms and storm chasing through VR headsets.
Many students live in or near areas that have been recently affected by natural disasters, especially tornadoes and floods, so the program includes curriculum to provide students with a better understanding of environmental hazards and their causes.
"Just trying to give them a sense of normalcy is what everybody is trying to do," Brown said. "It gives them a more scientific, educational explanation as to why things around us have happened."
Czarena Crofcheck, Ph.D., co-PI of outreach for the CLIMBS project and a professor in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering, said the program is vital for statewide engagement.
"Enviropods is a key part of our effort to educate people across the Commonwealth about the science behind climate resilience," Crofcheck said. "By bringing these tools to local libraries, we are motivating students to care about these issues in their daily lives and recruiting a future workforce that will strengthen Kentucky."
"The CLIMBS project allows Kentucky to transition from reacting to disasters toward building proactive resilience," said Rodney Andrews, Ph.D., director of the UK Center for Applied Energy Research. "We are dedicated to being good stewards of this funding by ensuring our research yields tangible outcomes for local communities and helps Kentuckians help themselves."
Lunch and snacks are provided for all participants. The remaining 2026 dates and locations are:
- July 14-16: Perry County (Hazard)
- July 21-23: Franklin County (Frankfort)
- July 28-30: Pulaski County (Somerset)
