Camps on Campus
by Debbie Conner
Associate Vice President for University Relations
You may wonder what’s going on around campus when you see group after group of middle school and high school students walking from place to place, often in matching T-shirts. This is the season when our campus does double duty as a summer camp.
Hosting summer camps on the Coastal Carolina University campus is a growing phenomenon that offers many benefits—to the University as well as to the campers. By providing hospitality to large groups of pre-college age students, we are providing a “campus visit” to hundreds of prospective students from across the state and nation each summer. Also, summer camps add to our bottom line. In 2010 we hosted 39 camps—24 of them were affiliated with CCU and 15 were external. They generated a total of $231,465.76—welcome revenue at a time when state higher education budgets are strained.
Many of the camps that are held annually are athletic camps offering instruction in baseball, volleyball, men and women’s basketball, football, soccer, wrestling and track and field. Some of these are organized by our excellent coaching staffs; others are sponsored by top-notch national organizations that contract space on our campus.
The majority of camps are academic in nature. CCU offers the increasingly popular Summer Arts Programs, in conjunction with Horry County Schools, with instruction in theatre, music and visual arts. The CCU Mini Summer Youth program is organized through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The Office of Student Activities offers CINO Quest, a leadership seminar for incoming freshmen. Each One, Teach One, an entrepreneurship program administered by the Wall College of Business, includes a day camp for middle and high school students. Other academic camps include the Clemson Enrichment Reading Program and Clemson’s Camp Invention.
The University also contracts space for various religious camps for youth and offers housing for various outside academies such as the AP Institute and USC teacher workshops. Some of the camps are day camps and some require overnight stays in campus residence halls.
For more information on camps, contact Judy Hawkins in the Office of Conference Services 843-349-3432.
