Camps provide a substantial opportunity for youth to develop important life skills. Identifying and training staff on critical competencies are essential to achieving the desired outcomes for camp participants. The purpose of this study was to determine the most critical competencies of the 4-H residential camp staff for achieving high staff…

Perhaps one of the most formalized ways that 4-H has fostered agricultural innovation and practical education has been through their outdoor youth education program, more commonly known as 4-H Camp. Although 4-H Camps were first created for local clubs, camping events soon expanded to the state and national levels. In fact, three years after…

Background: Summer camp is an experiential learning setting that supports youth development. Due to high fees, youth from low-income backgrounds often have fewer opportunities to attend. Subsequently, there is little literature about these youth's camp experiences. Purpose: This research examined growth and the characteristics supporting growth in…

Background: Summer camps engage millions of youth in enrichment opportunities during the summertime while employing a substantial young adult workforce to provide high-quality programs and services to camp participants. Workplace fatigue has been implicated in camp-related injury and illness events, yet few studies have targeted fatigue among camp…

The prevalence of mental health issues among youth, with nearly half meeting diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder and suicide being a leading cause of death, underscores the urgency for effective intervention (National Institute of Mental Health, 2023). Summer camps, hosting millions of children annually, are urged by the American Camp…

This dissertation examines the impact of outdoor learning, including constructivist theories on student development in natural resource curricula. It highlights the importance of experiential, hands-on learning that connects students with nature. This approach challenges traditional methods by exploring active participation and sensory-rich…

Sport-based positive youth development programs focus on life skill development and transfer. However, few long-term follow-up studies examine life skill transfer and application of skills from the perspective of sport-based positive youth development participants who are now young adults. To explore long-term skill development, transfer, and…

During recent decades, educational reform in the U.S. has favored standards-driven curricula with the purpose of improving education. However, national assessments have not demonstrated significant improvements in educational outcomes, especially among economically disadvantaged and minoritized populations. To mitigate these outcomes,…

Organized out-of-school time (OST) activities can provide youth with developmentally enriching experiences. Summer camp is one such activity, offering opportunities for positive youth development and, in some cases, promoting socioemotional learning, character development, resilience, and academic and career-related outcomes (Garst et al., 2011;…

Praise in the context of behavior-specific encouragement, positive reinforcement, and recognition may provide a linkage in positive youth development to teen leaders' feelings of contribution and motivation at 4-H Camp. Existing literature on praise in academic settings, combined with literature related to positive youth development, organized…

This dissertation examines the impact of Skyhawks Sports Academy camps on youth participants' social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies using an intrinsic case study approach. The study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative data were gathered through SEL competency surveys administered on the first and fifth days of…

This study examines the use of critical community-building--using dialogue as a collective to support, listen to, ask questions, and assist each other in thinking in critical ways--to support resettled youths' writing during a summer writing camp. Through encouraging the youth to use their home languages, by celebrating their cultures, honoring…

Cultural humility is a framework for engaging in self-reflection, self-critique, and reflective practice to cultivate respectful relationships and understand power and privilege. Using duoethnography, we applied cultural humility to our youth work at summer camp and in a social skills group for Autistic youth. Our integrative analysis shows how…

This study seeks to understand the daily violence endured by queer youth. We use Queer Battle Fatigue, Ahmed's cultural politics of emotion, and STEM identity theories to make meaning of youth's experience. We draw from audio recordings and transcriptions of 15 queer youth over the course of a summer and fall LGBTQ + maker camp in a rural town in…

What do we know about camps and COVID-19? About as much as we know about the virus itself, which is that it is universal, it is catastrophic, and it is forcing us to bend and shift in ways we never expected. We don't yet know the full impact of COVID-19 on camps, although preliminary findings from a series of studies conducted by the American Camp…