Designing Their Future: Media Arts Camp
This year marks the completion of the second annual Media Arts Camp offered through Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC) and in partnership with Agua Fria High School. The media arts camp is a summer bridge program for West Valley high school students which connect the students' artistic talent and vision with small business in the West Valley looking for assistance in marketing, advertising and web design.
The students worked in teams to develop marketing materials and also practiced their communication skills through mock interviews and holding design meetings with their clients.
Joyce Jackson, dean of academic affairs at EMCC, expressed the importance of the collaborative program. "The program provides council to students with creative talent and shows them what it means for their career," she said.
Two students returned from the program's inaugural year and created a t-shirt to recruit others to take advantage of the program. While earning credit for a communications course, the students delivered informative and persuasive speeches to the groups about why the program is beneficial to the student and to the businesses.
Feeding the Need: Culinary Arts Camp
The Culinary Studies Program at Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC) once again hosted a series of culinary workshops aimed at both high school instructors and current high school students. This is the third year that EMCC has worked in cooperation with Western Maricopa Tech Prep to provide hands-on skills to individuals interested in working in a professional kitchen.
To start the program, high school culinary instructors received training in adapting their own programs to the culinary program at EMCC, allowing students the ability to earn college credit through dual enrollment.
Following the instructor workshop, 33 high school students were broken up into two different culinary camps, each lasting two weeks. Each day was spent on a different area of culinary arts, including baking, garde manger and hot foods. Hands-on labs produced yeast breads, composed salads, fresh pastas, chilled soups, a variety of gourmet sandwiches, Asian cuisine, cake decoration, ice sculpture, and vegetable garnishing.
Both camps are an important part of the network that is being built between the programs of EMCC and West Valley High Schools.