For many high school students, choosing an engineering discipline is a guess made before ever setting foot in a lab. The School of Engineering (SOE) Summer Camp at LAU aims to close that gap, and this year’s edition offered a preview of what that can lead to: four former campers, now LAU students, returned as ushers guiding this year’s participants as they had once been guided.

Elsa Mouallem arrived at the camp already set on engineering, but unsure which branch to pursue. “I was interested in Chemical Engineering,” she said. “However, during the camp, I was introduced to the different fields of engineering and got to experience projects and activities that helped me understand what each field involved.”

Hands-on work with wing design and a robotic arm pointed her toward Mechanical Engineering, and the professors she met convinced her that the Byblos campus was the right fit. “The camp gave me a sense of the engineering community at LAU,” she said, adding that it also gave her lifelong friendships, including the ushers who inspired her to volunteer this year.

Nai Herro attended the camp twice, in 2024 and 2025, and was on the first-place winning teams both times. “Winning made me even more confident in my decision and made the whole experience even more memorable,” she said.

The mechanical engineering workshops and manufacturing lab won her over completely: “I love hands-on projects and seeing an idea turn into something real.” She first attended as a Grade 10 student and returned in Grade 11; today, she is a freshman Mechanical Engineering student who credits the friendships she built with SOE ushers for easing her transition to university life.

For Yorgo Jreij, the camp answered a broader question. “I was always STEM-oriented, but I didn’t know what discipline suited me best,” he said. Building and testing an airplane wing and assembling a robotic gripper helped him narrow his interests, while LAU’s campus and faculty sealed his decision. He, too, served as an usher, with the hope to “convey the same experience” to this year’s campers.

Beyond exposure to different fields, the camp’s team competition added a further incentive for top performers, rewarding winning teams with prizes, including scholarship opportunities that can carry into their college decision. For a student such as Herro, that recognition compounded the confidence the hands-on projects had already built.

Tia Maroun Habka and Sophie Mitri, who also attended the 2023 camp before enrolling at LAU, joined their peers as ushers this past summer.

Habka, long drawn to aerospace, arrived fairly certain about Mechanical Engineering, and the camp confirmed that choice while giving her a first look at LAU’s labs and faculty. Returning as an usher, she was eager to encourage more high school students, especially girls, to see themselves in the field. “I had once been the student looking at LAU and wondering if I could see myself there; this time, I was helping someone else imagine that possibility,” she said.

Mitri came to the camp knowing she wanted to study engineering, but not which specialty. Industrial Engineering didn’t stand out to her at first, but its focus on improving entire systems, rather than a single product or structure, eventually won her over, and she is now pursuing the major at LAU. “The Summer Camp did not simply reinforce my interest in engineering; it helped me understand what kind of engineer I wanted to become,” she said.