aa r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . e d - ph ] J a n Education and Heritage in the era of Big Data in AstronomyProceedings IAU Symposium No. 367, 2021R.M. Ros, B. Garcia, S. Gullberg, J. Moldon & P. Rojo, eds. © The AstroCamp Pro ject
C. J. A. P. Martins
Centro de Astrof´ısica, Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugalemail:
Abstract.
This contribution describes the concept, main structure and goals, and some high-lighted outcomes, of the AstroCamp—an international academic excellence program in the fieldof astronomy and physics created in 2012 and organized by Centro de Astrof´ısica da Universi-dade do Porto (CAUP) together with the Paredes de Coura municipality and several nationaland international partners.
Keywords.
Pre-university education, International programs, Academic excellence programs
1. Introduction
The AstroCamp is an academic excellence program in astronomy and physics createdby the author in 2012 and organized by CAUP with the Paredes de Coura municipalityand other partners—including, since 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO).It is intended for students in the last 3 years of pre-university education. Initially it wasrestricted to students living and studying in Portugal, but it now accepts applicationsfrom (in the 2020 and 2021 editions) 42 eligible countries, in Europe and the Americas.The three main Astrocamp goals are to promote scientific knowledge, with high-qualitytraining in a secluded and tranquil setting, to stimulate student curiosity and skillsof critical thinking, team work and group responsibility, and to stimulate interactionsbetween students with different backgrounds and life experiences but common interests.AstroCampers are selected according to their motivation, academic merit and poten-tial. As a point of principle the camp is free for students living in Portugal, and for foreignstudents the costs (if they exist) are a maximum of 400 Euro. In recent years about halfof the applicants have been foreign. In common with other academic excellence programs,AstroCamp typically attracts more applications from girls than from boys.
2. Structure and logistics
The core of the AstroCamp is a two-week residential camp, held in mid-August atthe Centre for Environmental Education of the Corno de Bico protected landscape, inthe Paredes de Coura municipality (in the north of Portugal). Due to COVID-19 the2020 edition was a hybrid one, with students living in Portugal in residence as usual andstudents living in other countries joining through a set on online collaboration tools.Participation by invitation, after an application (in April) and a selection phase in-cluding an interview in English (at the end of May). There are no quotas of any kind,so academic merit and potential are the only selection criteria. In the 9 editions from2012 to 2020 a total of 118 students (67 girls and 51 boys, from 14 countries) have beenselected to participate. Basic statistics of the camp participants are in Table 1.The core AstroCamp scientific activity are two courses, each with 10x90min classes anda two-hour written exam. Course lecturers must have a PhD and be currently active inresearch. (A pre-approved list of courses is proposed to the students, and they can then1 C. J. A. P. Martins
Table 1.
Basic statistics on 2012-2020 AstroCamp participants.
Accepted Students Years 2012-2015 Years 2016-2020
Portuguese 100% 54%Foreign 0% 46%10 th Grade 24% 34%11 th Grade 52% 45%12 th Grade 24% 21%Boys 47% 41%Girls 53% 59%
Notes:
In the first four editions, only Portuguese students were eligible. The middle part usesthe Portuguese names for the last three years of pre-university education. choose the ones they prefer to take.) Other activities are observational and high-levelscientific programming projects (in Python or Matlab), stargazing sessions, Zoom chatswith foreign researchers and selected documentaries. There are also community serviceprojects and public talks, hiking (including an overnight one) and other recreationalactivities. Finally there are post-camp research and mentorship projects.An example of a community service activity is the Solar System Hiking Trail. This isone of only 16 (in Europe) scales model of the Solar System, that is accurate both interms of sizes and distances of the objects, which was developed during the first fourAstroCamps, and officially opened on 13 August 2016.The camp is fully residential: students, teachers and camp monitors (former Astro-Camp students now doing university degrees) work and live together for 14 days. Bychoice the students have no internet access (and only have their mobile phones for verylimited periods) to maximize their interactions with their peers and to enable them tofocus on learning at a much faster pace than in their normal school classes.
3. Highlights of Outcomes
The scientific excellence of the camp can be illustrated by the fact that work done inthe camp computational project has been included in several peer-reviewed publications,three recent examples being Alves et al. (2017), Alves et al. (2018) and Faria et al. (2019).Post-camp student debriefings and follow-up activities (including an annual alumnilunch and an alumni weekend during the camp) demonstrate its impact. As an example,at the time of writing, 5 of the 10 students of the 2012 editions are doing PhDs in sciencetopics, in the universities of Aveiro, Cambridge (two of them), Edinburgh and Minho.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by FEDER-COMPETE2020, and Portuguese FCT funds, un-der project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028987 and PTDC/FIS-AST/28987/2017. The As-troCamp is supported by Funda¸c˜ao Millenium bcp, Ciˆencia Viva, U.Porto and ESO.
References
Alves, C.S., Silva, T.A., Martins, C.J.A.P., & Leite, A.C.O. 2017,
Phys. Lett. B , 770, 93Alves, C.S., Leite, A.C.O., Martins, C.J.A.P., Silva, T.A., Berge, S.A. & Silva, B.S.A. 2018,
Phys. Rev. D , 97, 023522Faria, M.C.F., Martins, C.J.A.P., Chiti, F., & Silva, B.S.A. 2019,