EXCEL offerings - including archaeology, crime-solving - expand to older kids

Whether drafting movie scripts, solving a mock crime, animating a computerized robot or digging up artifacts, teens at Sonoma State University this week are finding new ways to shake off the mindless midsummer cobwebs.

In its 23rd year teaching summer enrichment to younger students, the campus's EXCEL program expanded this year to 10th- through 12th-graders, drawing teens from Cloverdale to Mill Valley for archaeology, screenwriting, 3D animation and crime-scene sleuthing.

"A lot of students who came through our program would get to ninth grade and they'd say, 'So now what?'" EXCEL coordinator Alison Marks said. "There were no existing programs in the North Bay for this age range."

Participants in the EXCEL Academy's pilot program chose from four classes, at an average cost of $274 each. Organizers plan to expand course offerings next summer.

Aspiring archaeologists Shelby De Mello of Santa Rosa and Taylor Sink of Cloverdale joined teens Wednesday who unearthed bones, bottles, ceramic shards and shells from a dig site typically reserved for SSU instructor Mike Newland's college students.

"Every time I'm out with Mike, it branches out and I see a side of archaeology I've never seen before," said Sink, 15, who has accompanied Newland on a for-hire excavation at Fort Ross. "I seem to like it a lot more than everything else I've been exposed to."

In screenwriter Jennine Lanouette's class, eight teens huddled around a table, reading their screenplay excerpts aloud while the instructor gently chided them for "apologizing for their work."

Maria Carrillo High School sophomore Renelle McCall, an admirer of humorist David Sedaris, relishes the experimentation.

"I can't stand analytical papers, but once you get into the creative mindset, everything totally flows," said the 15-year-old Santa Rosa resident. "You can do absolutely anything you want."

At another corner of Salazar Hall, students in the crime-scene class tried the forensic analysis popularized by CBS television's hit show "CSI."

Forestville 16-year-old Alex Sternberg found himself the center of suspicion in the course's opening days, since classmates linked his fingerprints, handwriting and bite marks to the culprit in a rubber chicken kidnapping. With that hypothetical caper solved, Sternberg and classmates moved Wednesday to analyzing trash and blood-spatter patterns - using stage blood from a costume shop - for evidence.

Crime-scene investigations instructor Jason Richardson, a fifth-grade teacher in San Rafael, said students are learning the same principles real law enforcement professionals would apply.

"This is about how they do it, but with a lot fancier tools and toys," Richardson said.

Sternberg also signed up for EXCEL's 3D modeling class. Using Gmax software, a tool of video game programmers, he and his classmates are building a computerized robot and manipulating its movement through an urban landscape.

"Hopefully, this will give me the training I need so I can go back to school in the fall and put it to use in my media class," said Sternberg, who'll enter his junior year at El Molino High.

Les Adler, dean of Extended Education at SSU, praised EXCEL as a laboratory in which students can sample prospective careers, beef up their resumes and broaden their experience.

"Schools have cut back on the arts and they've cut back on all sorts of extras," he said, "and EXCEL has the capacity to provide that."