RMC ACADEMY
  • Home
  • Summer Camp
    • Register
    • Schedule
    • Instructors
    • Curriculum
    • Camp Counselors
    • Reviews
    • Photos
    • Past Years >
      • 2024 >
        • Schedule
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
        • Camp Counselors
      • 2023 >
        • Schedule 2023
        • Instructors 2023
        • Curriculum 2023
        • Camp Counselors 2023
      • 2022 >
        • Schedule 2022
        • Instructors 2022
        • Curriculum 2022
        • Camp Counselors 2022
      • 2020 >
        • Camp Counselors
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
      • 2019 >
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
        • Camp Counselors
        • Schedule
        • Photos
  • Winter Camp
    • Instructors 2023
    • Winter Camp 2022 >
      • Instructors 2022
    • Winter Camp 2021 >
      • Instructors 2021
  • RMC Academy, LLC
  • Contact

Curriculum


On this page: Mathematics, USACO, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Business for Youth, Writing, Debate, Python, and Photography
Mathematics (Geometry & Number Theory)
General Information: 
Students will take an assessment prior to the camp and will be grouped into 2 groups: Pythagoras group and Fermat group. The Pythagoras group will cover teaching material similar to the AMC8 level. The Fermat group will cover teaching material similar to the AMC10/12 level. Both groups will take combinatorics and number theory courses, each for 5 lectures (2 hours each) in week 1 afternoon.
Geometry
Dr. Pavlo Pylyavskyy will lead the Geometry course. Both the Pythagoras and Fermat groups will cover the most fundamental topics in geometry, such as angle chasing and similar triangles. Students will work in groups to solve practice problems, and solutions will be discussed with the whole class.
Number Theory
Mr. Alexander Zhu will lead the Number Theory course. Number theory is the mathematical study of integers; it is one of the major areas of mathematics. For this course, students will be split into two levels based on their existing knowledge: Pythagoras Level and Fermat Level. Topics include
  • Divisibility and remainders
  • Congruence and digits
  • Prime numbers
  • ​Diophantine equations

Business for Youth
The complete M4Y program is designed especially for students from Grade 7 to 12, which aims to help students systematically build fundamentals of business operations and applications, promote collaboration with other team members, improve negotiation skills, understand advertising and marketing in a consumer-driven market, analyze business operations, design business strategy, and master their business tools and skill sets. 

Dr. Jingwei Meng will lead this class. M001 and B001 are both the core courses of the M4Y program, focusing on understanding of business concepts and tools used in marketing through online simulations, case studies, 1-on-1 meetings, group discussion, and personal evaluation. This class has 6 lectures (4 hours each) in week 2 afternoons.
This summer session of “MBA for Youth” Program (M4Y) will focus on fundamental knowledge of marketing including product promotion, product display, and personal presentation skills. The content will be an extended version of the M001 (Advertisement and Presentation Skills) class and a review of B001 (Business Concepts). The students will learn how to design a simple marketing campaign for a business and identify key features to promote specific products.
  • Key features of advertisement
  • Company organization
  • Product features and value proposition
  • Customers and markets
  • Business risks and competitors
  • Product promotion and display
  • Design of marketing campaign
  • Personal presentation skills
  • Project management
  • Case studies

Honors Chemistry
Mr. Chuck Wheeler Handlon will lead the Chemistry course. This course is designed to introduce high school-level chemistry to students with little to no background in the subject. Chemistry is the study of matter and energy. Each day students will explore an aspect of matter on the particulate and macroscopic level as well as the interactions of matter and energy. This class has 5 lectures (3 hours each) in week 1 mornings.
Topics will include:
  • The nature and structure of the atom. Scientific evidence for atomic structure and how electromagnetic energy (light) illuminates modern atomic theory.
  • Macroscopic physical properties of matter and the Kinetic Molecular Theory. The Gas Laws and their application in building a carbon dioxide powered “launcher.” 
  • Macroscopic chemical properties of matter and chemical reactions. Identification of a “mystery drug” using chemical reactions.
  • Applications of chemistry in colorful ways. Using chromatography to separate the dyes in markers and to create “tie dyed paper.” Using natural plant dyes as an acid / base indicator. 
  • The interaction of matter and energy. Chemical reactions that release and absorb energy and their applications.
  • Factors impacting the rate (speed) of chemical reactions. “How Fast Are You?” an activity in which students attempt to control a chemical reaction to hit a target time.

Robotics
Mr. Aiden Kronebusch will lead the Robotics class. Based on FIRST Robotics Competition's team structure and games, this class will teach fundamental concepts of engineering, team coordination, and a variety of technical skills to help students build and polish their own mini-robots. Students will be split into a number of teams, and at the end of the week each team will face off in a bracket-based competition using the robots they built.
​

This class has no prerequisites. Knowledge of mathematics, basic physics, and programming is helpful, but by no means required. All information related to using the robot kits will be taught throughout the course. TA’s will be present for any questions you may have. While this class is intended for high-school students around 9th-12th grade, there is nothing stopping those in lower grade levels from attending. This class will be limited to 18 students and has 5 lectures (4 hours each) in the afternoons of week 1.
Key Teaching Points:
  • The field of engineering and its foundations.
  • Effective team communication and coordination.
  • Critical evaluation and implementation of robot design trends.
  • Brainstorming and construction of prototypes.
  • Simple electronic systems.
  • Defining your drive team.
  • Determining competition strategy.
  • …+ a variety of smaller details such as tool handling and competition etiquette.

Honors Physics
Dr. Yi Zhou will lead the physics course. This course is designed to introduce high school-level physics to students with little to no background in the subject. Honors Physics is a course that introduces the fundamental language, ideas and tools used in the study of physics.

​Emphasis will be placed on introducing and developing concepts, skills, and methods necessary to excel in physics, thus providing the foundation for more advanced study of physics. Through in class experimental work, students will learn to understand physics concepts better. This class has 5 lectures (3 hours each) in week 1 morning.
Topics:
  • MECHANICS
    • Linear Motion
    • Newton's laws of motion
    • Momentum
    • Energy
  • HEAT
    • Temperature, Heat and Expansion
    • Heat Transfer
    • Change of Phase
    • Thermodynamics​

Topics, continued:
  • ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM
    • Electrostatics
    • Electric Current
    • Magnetism
    • Electromagnetic Induction
  • LIGHT
    • Properties of Light
    • Color
    • Reflection and Refraction
    • Light Waves

Introductory Machine Learning and AI
Prerequisites: Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry. Basics of Python or Java (variables, if/else, loops, functions) is a MUST. Students may choose to take Introduction to Python in week 1 of the AoS summer camp to get familiar with basic programming.
​
​Are you eager to gain hands-on experience with the world’s top AI tools? Do you want to learn to construct your own machine learning models, including the recognition of images? Join us this summer at AoS.
Mr. Daniel Li will be leading a 6-day class focused on Introductory Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This course includes six lectures/computer labs, each spanning 7 hours, taking place in both morning and afternoon sessions during the second week. Class limited to 28 students

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are rapidly advancing fields with applications in various domains. Language models in machine learning can generate coherent text, develop computer programs, and create prediction models. These models are widely used for recognition, detection tasks, and generative tasks like crafting high-quality images from text descriptions.

Tailored for high school students (or middle school students with strong math backgrounds), this course doesn't require college-level math or computer science concepts. While the class will briefly review Python basics, it assumes students already have a foundational understanding. (Students may choose to take Introduction to Python in week 1 of AoS summer camp to get familiar with basic programming.)

Throughout the course, students will grasp the fundamentals of constructing various neural networks and training them with data. Practical experience awaits as they train their own machine learning models using PyTorch. Additionally, students will have the unique opportunity to interact directly with some of the world's best machine learning models. This includes engaging in conversations with cutting-edge language models and generating images using state-of-the-art text-to-image models.

Topics Include:
  • Introduction to ML
  • Basic Neural Networks
  • Slope and Gradient Losses and Cross Entropy Loss
  • Gradient Descent, Stochastic Gradient Descent, Parameter Training
  • Convolutions, Convolutional Neural Network
  • GPUs
  • Language Models, Recurrent Neural Network
  • LSTM, Transformers
  • Generative models
  • DALLE 2, Chat GPT vs. Instruct GPT
  • Dataset loading, Pytorch, MLP, AWS, Basic LINUX
In the final two days, students will collaborate on a project. The task involves designing, implementing, and training a machine learning model for a specific purpose, including vision recognition and classification. Awards will be given to the team that develops the most outstanding model. This promises to be both an enjoyable and rewarding experience. This class is full of both fun and learning.

Creative Sound Design
Required Equipment:
  • Laptop with 16GB RAM GPU or Desktop with 8GB RAM GPU or M1 Mac with 8GB Memory GPU.
    • Professional monitor / headphones can be borrowed for an extra charge of $75 per pair. 
  • 14 days free trials of Pro Tools. 
  • A Cell Phone that can record sound.  ​
Mrs. Tara Gaoyang will teach the Creative Sound Design Course. This course is designed to introduce the fundamental concept of the art of sound as well as a sound designers’ perspective to the film industry. The course will briefly introduce the workflow of the film production and the key elements of the sound design art. This class has 5 lectures (4 hours each) in week 1 afternoon.

​
Course Concepts:
  • July 14: Introduction of  the art of sound design and set up equipment. 
  • July 15: Choose a project from the class materials and design the sound of the character. 
  • July 16: Recording and exporting.
  • July 17: Editing and adding background. 
  • July 18: Project review. ​

Honors Biology
Dr. Bing Ye and/or Ms. Zhishan Wang will lead the biology course. This course is designed to introduce high school-level biology to students with little to no background in the subject. Students will learn the fundamentals of biology and gain an understanding of how biology shapes the world around us. Through lectures and simple in-class experiments, this course will help students prepare for advanced biology classes/competitions, such as AP/IB Biology, and hopefully spark an interest in biology that continues beyond the class. This class has 6 lectures (3 hours each) in week 2 morning.
Topics covered:
​
July 16-18 by Ms. Wang:
  • Introduction to biochemistry, biological macromolecules, marker chromatography lab
  • Cellular structure and function, membrane transport, osmosis lab
  • DNA replication, gene expression and regulation, cell replication, meiosis, PTC genetics lab
July 19-20 by Dr. Ye:
  • ​The biological basis of inheritance: Genetics from Mendel to Morgan
  • “Genetic materials”: Molecular biology revolution
  • The applications of molecular biology in biotechnology

Introduction to Python
Mr. Michael Huang will lead the Introduction to Python course. Programming is an immensely powerful tool that is useful in nearly every area of education and life, and especially STEM areas. The goal of this course is to introduce the foundations of programming and to provide students with the basic skill set to use programming to solve problems. It is designed for students with little to no prior coding experience to build a foundation for them and get them excited about the possibilities this skill enables. The goal is to teach not only the technical details of coding, but also the overarching thought processes. We will intersperse lectures, active learning, and workshop components where students get practice applying what they learned. This class has 5 lectures (4 hours each) in the afternoons of week 1.
Topics Covered:
  • Variables and Datatypes (integers, booleans, strings, lists, maps, etc.
  • ​Basic I/O
  • If/Else statements
  • Control Flow (for/while loops)
  • Functions
  • Classes
  • Libraries
  • Code debugging strategies
  • Real-world applications
  • Anything else that students find interesting

Baking
 Mrs. Misha will lead a course on baking. This course is designed to introduce the fundamental concepts and practice of baking, including how to apply different types of flours, how to master the use of an oven, how to appreciate desserts, and how to bake a variety of after dinner treats. Students will learn proper planning and preparation skills to see a task through while contributing in a positive way throughout the course. The goal of this course is not only to have students acquire some basic baking skills which they can apply in their daily life, but also to practice and enhance kids’ motor functions, control, and strength. Additionally, students will be able to learn how to express their artistic skills. This class has 6 lectures (4 hours each) in week 2 afternoon. Classes limited to 20 students.
Course content:
  • July 14: Chinese Bakery
  • July 15: Chiffon cakes and cupcakes
  • July 16: Mousse cakes
  • July 17: Cookies
  • July 18: Fondant cakes
  • July 19: Cake decoration
Picture

Game Design
Mr. Arnold Gao will teach the Game Design Course. During this course, students will learn the basics of prototyping a video game through Unity, as well as touch on various essential topics such as programming and designing. This class has 6 lectures (3 hours each) in week 2 mornings.

Equipment Required: 
- Laptop or desktop computer (PC/Mac)
- Latest version of Unity

Course Concepts:
  • July 14: Introduction to Game Design/Production Workflow for Game Developers
  • July 15: Fundamentals of Design/Prototyping/Basic Programming (and how to become a self-sufficient learner)
  • July 16: Storytelling
  • July 17: Game Arts: Animation Pipeline, Level Design, Sound/Music 
  • July 18: Advanced Learning: Shaders, UI UX Design
  • July 19: Project Review

Critical Essays for the Scholastic Writing Award
Mr. Jonathan West will teach students how to write award-winning critical essays for the annual Scholastic writing competition. During the class, students will research, plan, draft, and revise a compelling persuasive essay that fits the contest criteria at artandwriting.org. The class includes 5 sessions (3 hours each) in week 1 mornings, with lectures and individual and group work. Students should already have some essay-writing experience.
Key concepts:
  • Finding, using, and citing solid sources
  • Combining evidence and reasoning effectively
  • Outlining well-organized arguments
  • Writing clear, efficient prose
  • Catching grammatical and mechanical errors
Contact Us

Social Media

  • Home
  • Summer Camp
    • Register
    • Schedule
    • Instructors
    • Curriculum
    • Camp Counselors
    • Reviews
    • Photos
    • Past Years >
      • 2024 >
        • Schedule
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
        • Camp Counselors
      • 2023 >
        • Schedule 2023
        • Instructors 2023
        • Curriculum 2023
        • Camp Counselors 2023
      • 2022 >
        • Schedule 2022
        • Instructors 2022
        • Curriculum 2022
        • Camp Counselors 2022
      • 2020 >
        • Camp Counselors
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
      • 2019 >
        • Instructors
        • Curriculum
        • Camp Counselors
        • Schedule
        • Photos
  • Winter Camp
    • Instructors 2023
    • Winter Camp 2022 >
      • Instructors 2022
    • Winter Camp 2021 >
      • Instructors 2021
  • RMC Academy, LLC
  • Contact