Splash, a two-day enrichment experience for young students, will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 10-11 on the Stanford campus.
Registered students will fill their schedule with several one to two hour classes offered at Splash, according to the Splash Web site.
“We basically tell Stanford students and affiliates that they can teach anything they want to middle and high school students,” said Shuai Chen, a Splash administrator. “What results is a wide variety of classes, anything from complicated computer programming, the molecular details of cancer initiation, probabilistic paradoxes and essay writing to swing dancing, ASL, Rubik’s cubes, street painting with pastel chalks, juggling and building a computer from scratch.”
Through the wide variety of courses Splash offers, it attempts to make learning fun and exciting for students in seventh through 12th grade, according to Chen.
“Our goal is to teach our students that learning and education doesn’t have to be boring and based on textbooks, that it can be fun and interactive and exciting,” Chen said. “We do this by exposing our students to a wide range of classes that they normally wouldn’t get to take. We give them a ‘splash’ of those classes.”
Students who have taken Splash have shown interest in the variety of classes available.
“I try to take a variety of different classes, some for educational purposes, some just because they interest me, and it was pretty fun,” said junior Joshua Chin, past participant in Splash.
“The classes I took were either science or math oriented, but I also took random fun classes such as Chinese Instruments and Go,” said senior Michelle Tran. “The academic classes were taught in a manner similar to how college classes are taught. The other random classes were just super fun.”
Despite the material that was taught, Chin found the classes to be entertaining.
“Some of the educational classes kind of bothered me because it was a Saturday and I was taking math for 3 hours,” Chin said. “However, the teachers there managed to make the subject of each class pretty enjoyable even though the material itself was kind of dull.”
Additionally, Splash classes have spread the interest of students to different subjects.
“At first I had little to zero interest in cars, and ever since I took that class, I realized how interesting automobiles were,” Chin said. “This made me want to join the auto class at Paly.”
Similarly, Tran believes that there is a class for every kind of person and passion. “I think Splash is a wonderful program to participate in, for it caters to a broad range of interests,” Tran said. “Everyone should try it at least once!”
A Splash event is organized two times a year, once in April and another in October, and has significantly increased its number of participants since starting up in 2008, according to Chen.
“We have grown tremendously over the years,” Chen said. “Our first Splash only had 60 classes and 300 students. This year, we have 189 Stanford students and affiliates teaching 209 classes. We currently have 800 students pre-registered online, but I am hoping that 200 more will come and register on-site to make an even 1000 students.”
The registration fee is $40 for the two full days with a sibling discount of $20, and full financial aid is available through contact with [email protected], according to the Splash Web site.
A chaperone will be waiting at the University Avenue CalTrain Station for students taking public transportation to escort students to their classes, according to Chen.
Online registration is available on the Splash Web site until Wednesday night, and on-site registration is available anytime from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 and 11 at the main Stanford quad, according to Chen.