It also provided a summer job in their field. This was a way to create our own job. We had no grants or funding and I had to find a way to pay for my education. The first year, the camps were run through the extension division. The program includes classroom lectures, lab activities and two field trips to nearby Lake Diefenbaker.
Topics range from fossilization processes to ethics of collecting to the evolution of dinosaurs.
It is multi-tiered, so kids can move up a level every year. Robson said he's learned a lot about the capabilities of kids to learn when they are interested in something. The biggest lesson I've learned is not to underestimate them. We saw that the kids who were 8 and 9 years old could take more and more. It got to the point where I can teach some things at a university level.