Questions to ask for starting camps at a college or university
- Is there anyone on campus that already offers summer camps? Can you use them to handle advertising and registration? If you are doing it yourselves then who will handle the e-mail and phone questions from parents? How will you handle registration? We use SurveyMonkey, but it may be possible to use Google Forms. How will you accept payments? We use an on-line system for accepting credit card payments, but they do charge a fee for that use. You might check out using pay pal.
- What is the cost of day-care in the area? We have found that we can charge $100 more a week than quality day-care for elementary and middle school students. When deciding what to charge will you give a discount for multiple children from the same family? Will you refund the money up to so many weeks before?
- Where can you hold the camps? How many students can you fit into the room with an instructor and helpers? Where can you have campers dropped off and picked up? Where can parents park for coming to pick up kids late or for coming to the parent show the last day? What will you do in case of bad weather?
- Check with your legal department to make sure that they approve your camp forms. What will your deadline be for forms to be turned in?
- Can you do at least one afternoon of recreation on campus? How much does it cost per student?
- How will you handle lunch? At Georgia Tech we include lunch in the camp and give the students cards to use to buy their lunch at the student center. We put 8 a day on the cards for elementary and middle school students and 10 a day on the cards for high school students. We also have pizza the last day instead in our extra room for the summer camps.
- Do you need to get local IRB approval to administer the pre and post attitude surveys and content knowledge assessments?
- How many computers are available for use? Can the computers run the software you plan on using? Who do you contact if you have a problem with the computers? What user-ids and passwords will you use?
- Can you install free software on the computers (like Scratch, Alice, Snap, and Media Computation)?
- How will you handle drop-off and pick-up? Will the parents bring the kids to the room? Are kids allowed to walk to school and home? Make sure this is specified on a permission sheet. Who is allowed to pick up the kids? Who is not allowed to pick up the kids?
- Will you offer any extended hours for an extra fee? What will you do if a parent is late? Be sure to get phone numbers for parents and at least one additional emergency contact.
- What will your acceptance policy be? At Georgia Tech we don't promise that it is first come first served. We try to accept more girls, more under-represented minorities, and more first time students.
- Will you bend your age requirements for a camp to allow a parent to send multiple kids to the same camp?
- How will you handle kids that require medication during the camp?
- How will you deal with first aid issues?
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