Kat Hanson (left), 16, and Evan Kessler, 14, both of Bowling Green, make a Rube Goldberg machine Thursday.

Tricia Thompson said back home in Owensboro, she’s the 15-year-old kid who sits quietly in the back of the Owensboro Catholic High School classes and helps people with their homework.

However, at VAMPY, she’s quiet no longer.

A rising sophomore, Tricia recently attended the summer program for Verbally and Mathematically Precocious Youth, or VAMPY, at Western Kentucky University, one of 219 campers who explored topics they had an interest in and made social connections with campers from across America and the world who think like they do. The three-week camp ended Saturday.

The campers included students from 47 school districts in the commonwealth and students from Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin and the nations of China and Saudi Arabia. Tuition for 2014 VAMPY was $2,700.

Julia Link Roberts, the Mahurin professor of Gifted Studies and the executive director of the Center for Gifted Studies and the Carol Martin Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science, said VAMPY is in its 31st year and continues its goal of teaching young people that learning is an enjoyable process.

Since 1984, the Center for Gifted Studies, through a cooperative agreement with the Duke University Talent Identification Program, provides a summer vacation experience for seventh-, eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders. The students spend three weeks living on campus and studying one topic in depth. Choices this year included advanced investigations in chemistry, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, presidential politics, “Problems You Have Never Solved Before” and “Teenagers on Film,” among others. 

Tricia took a chemistry class this year after taking a physics class last year.

“You get to see the inner workings of how the world around us changes,” she said.

Back home, she said, it is tough to connect with people. But at VAMPY, she finds a connection with kids who also know the answers to the difficult questions in class.

“It’s my home,” said Clara Pozgay, 15, a rising sophomore at Nelson County High School in Bloomfield, of her third-straight VAMPY summer. “It’s the place where I fit in the most. I don’t have to worry about fitting in.”

Clara was taking chemistry class taught by Susan Morgan, a chemistry teacher at Bowling Green High School. Morgan, a VAMPY teacher for about a decade, was a student in VAMPY’s predecessor and is a 1981 Warren Central High School graduate.

“There are others like them. They realize that they are not alone,” Morgan said. “Here, they are just a face in the crowd.”

The kids are an intellectual challenge for Morgan.

“I start preparing for VAMPY in the winter and the spring. It is so enjoyable,” Morgan said. “They want to be in class. I cover more material in three weeks than a whole school year at BGHS.”

Jacob McDavid, 15, a rising sophomore at East Carter High School in Grayson, said he took VAMPY to expand his chemistry knowledge. “I like working with proportions and properties of each solution,” he said.

Each student had a different reason for attending.

“I enjoy the experience of meeting new people,” said Simon Heimbrock, 15, a rising sophomore at Highlands Latin School in Louisville. “I want to broaden my horizons.”

Clara, who took astronomy and physics during her first two VAMPY summers, is comforted to sit in class, knowing that the other students want to be there as well.

All three students said the living situation at VAMPY has provided several lasting relationships summer to summer. The teens do the typical summer camp things, too, such as shaving cream in pillows and the like. One prank involved pasting several photos of actor Nicholas Cage in a student’s room.

Bowling Green resident and teacher Victoria Richer said the acceptance that the kids feel at VAMPY is key. Richer, 19, is a a student at Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technology College and a 2013 BGHS graduate.

Richer is both a teacher and a friend, working with the students in both the living situation and in the classroom.

“I get to know them,” Richer said. “I can have fun with them and also sit with them one-on-one. I never give them the answer. You have to push them. They know that they know it, but just don’t know that they know it.”