Science-U Residential Camps
Science-U offers a residential option for many of our high school camps! This option is especially useful and popular for those campers from out of the State College area. See below for details on how to make your campus stay enjoyable!
Housing Arrangements: Our campers stay overnight in campus residential halls. The university housing department decides which residence hall, and it can vary from year to year. Most often the rooms are traditional doubles, and campers will have a roommate of the same gender, close to their age. Girls and boys are separated either by adjacent buildings or by floors of the same building. Bathrooms are on the same floor, but not in the rooms. The campers who came last time as resident campers really enjoyed the “residential life” experience!
Dining: Campers eat together in one of the campus dining halls. Three meals a day are provided. The dining hall serves a variety of meals that include vegetarian and gluten free options.
Supervision: Evening Mentors supervise the campers from 4:00 pm to 9:00 am. We hire both male and female Evening Mentors (2 of each), and they stay in the dorms with the resident campers. Like all of our daytime staff, our Evening Mentors have all required clearances and background checks and at least one of each gender is over 21 years old. Our resident campers are supervised at all times, and they are not allowed to go anywhere unless their Mentors are with them. The Evening Mentors pick up the resident campers from the camp at the end of each day and escort them to dinner, the residential hall, and any planned evening activities. After establishing "lights-out" around 11 pm and a good night's sleep, the Evening Mentors escort the campers to breakfast and then sign them into camp the next morning. Curriculum Mentors supervise campers during the day at camp.
Evening Activities: Resident campers enjoy evening activities together as a group. They may go to a swimming pool, possibly attend State College Spikes baseball games, have scavenger hunts, play games, have movie nights, or go shopping downtown. Campers have also attended special Penn State events that coincided with their week at camp.
Costs: The resident camp fee includes all meals, room-and-board, and evening activities. The only items your child might want to purchase with his or her own money would be additional snacks (extra from what is provided daily) and/or souvenirs.
For more information, please see Information for Parents from the Penn State Office of Ethics and Compliance.
Registration for the 2025 camp season will open on February 5, 2025, at noon. To streamline the registration process, families can create an account with our new registration system, CampDoc, in advance. Login or create an account with CampDoc HERE.