THOMASVILLE — At Thomas University’s Camp STEMtastic, prospective scientists and engineers aren’t just getting a look at the future. They’re also learning to make a difference in the present.

Jagger Pierce, one of the campers, presented Steven Kazemekas with a prosthetic arm during the camp’s last day, a creation of Pierce’s and fellow camper Maleah Turner.

Kazemekas tried out the arm, even flexing the fingers on the hand, which was made with a 3-D printer.

“It’s comfortable,” he said. “I can go pick up stuff.”

“It’ll take some practice,” said dad Chris. “But I know he’ll get used to it.”

Steven, who will be a sixth-grader at Thomas County Middle School, had a prosthetic arm previously, courtesy of the Shriners’ Hospital, and in 2014 he was selected to attend the Wounded Warrior softball camp in Louisville, Kentucky, for a week.

His dad was astounded at what kids close to his age did for his son.

“It’s amazing,” Chris Kazemekas said. “They took a lot of time to make this. I had never seen anything like this yet. It’s great to see where they’re going.”

Pierce said they started working on the hand on a Monday, having presented the arm on the following Friday, with everyone else in the camp helping during the process.

“That was amazing,” he said of presenting the arm. “I think I pretty much changed someone else’s life.”

Pierce also said he wants to do more, “a lot more,” with the STEM path. He said he wanted to build more prosthetics to change lives and make them better.

The final week of Camp STEMtastic was on robotics and the students were rising ninth-graders. That group was the original STEMtastic class from four years ago.

For the first week of the camp this year, rising sixth-graders learned about the science of flight and for the second week, rising seventh-graders were immersed in freshwater and marine ecology. 

The camp is for students who might not otherwise be able to attend such an experience, according to April Penton, Camp STEMtastic coordinator.

“They are wonderful scientists. There are a lot of STEM camps and they are wonderful,” she said. ”But most of the people who go to them are more affluent. We wanted everybody to have a chance to do this. We went to the county and the city and asked teachers to identify students with an attitude and an aptitude.”

Along with building their own robots, the students went to the Challenger museum and took in IMAX movies. And the robots they built race, bowled and put a 21st century spin on the medieval sport of jousting.

“The world is open to them. It is not closed to them,” said robotics expert Joe Maroney, who helped instruct the class. “I’m a big follower of the XPRIZE. It’s competition through innovations. This is exactly what this is about. It opens doors. It drives innovation.”

Support from the Thomasville Antiques Show Foundation helped to launch the camp, now in its fourth year, in its early days. 

“We would never have been here without them,” Penton said. 

Thomas University also gave the camp backing and then they got “really lucky,” Penton said, as TU Vice President Dr. Grady Enlow secured funding from the Wilo Foundation. Members of the foundation board and the company officials in the U.S. visited the camp, spending an entire day with the students during the science of flight portion.

Campers also looked at the human machine, comparing parts of the body to the parts of a machine. 

Penton has aspirations for other camp offerings in the future.

“We’re going to do more things looking at our environment, how we manage sensitive lands,” she said. “We have a lot of those in Thomasville. We’re going to do anthropology and archaeology. We’re going to stretch them in different ways.”

There also will be lessons on college readiness and teaching the students how to handle their money once they are in college.

Campers also wrote thank you letters to the sponsors

“They are eager learners,” Penton said. “They just need the opportunity. So we’re giving them the opportunity.”

Editor Pat Donahue can be reached at (229) 226-2400 ext. 1806.