Krysten Seefeldt, a CAPP Chemistry student at Campbellsport High School, was one of eleven students that took a field trip to UW Oshkosh to do a lab. “To be honest, I was kind of scared that I would break the $26,000 scale we had to use, and that I would mess something up,” Seefeldt said. The part Seefeldt liked most about the lab was painting with the paint they made earlier that day, but the worst part was the smell of the egg yolk that was used to make a couple of the paints. “I felt the lab was a lot of fun, and very beneficial. After the lab we got to go out to eat and bond with our chem class. It was a blast.”
Students of the CAPP Chemistry class took a field trip to UW Oshkosh May 20, 2010 to perform a lab using UW Oshkosh’s facility. It gave the students a feel of how a lab at a college differs from labs here at Campbellsport, and also to meet the professors who teach the course at the university, and use equipment that the chemistry class does not have here.
During this lab students mixed different bindings with different pigments to make different types of paint, and see which ones worked best. They also had to figure out how many unpaired electrons were in different metals, and determine if they were high spin or low spin.
Stephanie Ballard, chemistry teacher at Campbellsport High School, has been taking students to UW Oshkosh for twelve years now. “This benefits the students because they get to use equipment that they would not otherwise have access to, and they also get to spend a day on a college campus and get a taste of what is in store for them next year,” Ballard said. “There are no costs involved besides the cost of the bus. The students are invited to the facility under no charge since they have paid tuition for the class.”
Another student of the CAPP Chemistry class is Tim Twohig. Twohig felt the best part of the lab was the distilled water sink, which is something completely different than what the chemistry class has here with their distilled water bottles. “It’s different performing the labs here because we have more equipment and everything there is all locked up,” Twohig said. “I would tell next year’s students to be careful not to break the machine and that Taco Bell seats are a lot harder than they look.”
Every class in the CAPP Chem program does this. It is not necessarily required, but one of the strong suggestions for the CAPP program is to bring the students to the campus for a day. It is very beneficial for the students, and they are able to compare the different lab setups between a high school lab and a college lab.