Suisun City, CA – August 14th, 2019
Suisun City and ENGIE have partnered together to give local youth hands-on exposure to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) principles and job skills that will fuel future careers in the clean energy economy.

First to sixth graders in Suisun City Recreation, Parks, and Marina Department’s Summer Day Camp program recently learned to make “Marker Robots.” The kids experimented with wiring a motor to batteries, attaching legs (colored ink markers) to the plastic-cup bodies, and adding counter-weights so the devices spun around to make designs on paper.

The education partnership between Suisun City and ENGIE will continue beyond the summer camp program and include the after school program in the coming school year.

ENGIE is augmenting the summer and after-school programs as part of the comprehensive energy-saving program ENGIE is currently building for the City, including replacing streetlights city-wide to new energy-saving LEDs, replacing indoor and outdoor lighting with LEDs at all city facilities, installing solar PV parking shade canopies at three sites, upgrading the sports field lighting at Heritage Park and Lambrecht Sports Complex. ENGIE trained all Summer Camp facilitators on five different STEAM activities that fit into the weekly themes of the Summer Camp. For instance, the week of the field trip to the Lawrence Hall of Science, campers learned about and explored with solar panels. Campers powered different loads like lights and motors, wired the panels in different ways, and measured their electrical output. The week of the visit to the Sacramento Zoo, campers will create small creatures from UV reactive beads, then design and build habitats that will provide their creatures (which represent cold blooded animals) with what they need to live – including areas to absorb the sun’s energy, areas to cool off in the shade, etc. In addition to these examples, other STEAM activities include designing and building roller coasters, and making Rube Goldberg machines.

Suisun City Recreation, Parks, and Marina Department’s Summer Day Camp program is an all-day camp for incoming first graders to incoming sixth graders. Camp staff facilitate numerous group games, outdoor activities, and STEM projects throughout each day, topped off with a weekly field trip to regional science and other fun landmarks such as the Lawrence Hall of Science, Rockin’ Jump, Oakland Athletics baseball games, and the Sacramento Zoo.

Mayor Lori Wilson stated, “The kids were able to learn while having fun with our summer camp program. We hope this will pique their interest in STEAM careers and, for some, it may just be the spark needed to motivate them to choose it as a career.” “We are pleased to have the collaboration with ENGIE, our clean energy industry partner, in providing the hands-on activities for our STEAM campers,” added City Manager Greg Folsom.