Denise Newsome and Paige Johnston were the heroes of the pandemic-driven 2020 FSU-PC Nuclear Medicine and Science Camp.
Even after the disruptions of the spring 2020 semester, they crafted a four-day online (but hands-on!) experience for nineteen campers from the Florida Panhandle. They worked tirelessly with the FSU-PC IT and HR staffers so that our middle and high school campers could control gamma-ray spectrometers from home.
They meticulously assembled equipment boxes that camper families picked up on the first morning of the camp. The boxes included radiation monitors, radioactive sources, gamma-ray absorber sets and more. And then they led our campers through a series of activities using these resources that kept the campers engaged, even as the frustrations of pandemic isolation could have overwhelmed everything.
Denise and Paige have become stars in my nuclear physics world. They were featured in an invited talk on the camp given at the American Physical Society’s virtual national April Meeting. In February, they conducted a workshop for teachers in Texas who are offering three nuclear camps this summer. They have played important roles in reviews of the CENTAUR consortium, which provides support for the camps. CENTAUR is based at Texas A&M University and is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
And they did all of these things during the 2020-21 school year while teaching high school science and playing important leadership roles at the Deane Bozeman School, a public K-12 school located in rural northern Bay County, Florida. Like everybody else, Bay County has suffered through the COVID pandemic. But the county also took the brunt of Category 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018. The impact of the double catastrophe is now showing up in Bay County’s state test scores, which are worse than in the state at large. And in some ways, Bozeman has been hit harder than many of the other Bay County schools.
Denise and Paige have also been a bright light in my own life during a year that could have been very dark, indeed.
This summer, Denise and Paige are leading two Nuclear Medicine and Science Camps. The first is a face-to-face camp being held on the FSU-PC campus that will serve Bay County students. That camp will be held July 12-15.
The second camp will be a virtual version and will be held July 19-22. The campers are all from Seminole County. The equipment boxes, which are crucial for the camp experience, will be driven down to Seminole High School in Sanford, where they will be distributed to camper families. I will pick those boxes up in person in Sanford on July 22.
But both of those camps will be led by Denise and Paige. The campers and their families are in wonderful hands.
Bridge to Tomorrow 