Students in UMB’s pipeline educational program continue their annual summer programming with a completely virtual curriculum in the wake of COVID-19.
After logging into the video conferencing site Google Classroom, TaShara Bailey, PhD, MA, the STEM curriculum director and director of programs for the UMB CURE Scholars Program, smiled into her web camera and said, “OK, scholars, let’s turn on our cameras so we can say ‘hello.’ ”
And with that, her computer screen lit up with video boxes showing the faces of several dozen middle school students ready for a day of virtual summer fun.
This was the new normal for the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) CURE Scholars who normally spend the summer on UMB’s campus learning through hands-on experiments in professional laboratories. With the COVID-19 pandemic putting a stop to many summer camps and activities, the CURE Scholars had to move their usual summer of STEM to a virtual platform.