Baltimore Students Attend Maritime Summer Camp

For a select group of high school boys, summer school is an opportunity to learn about the maritime industry.  Over the last decade, the Association of Maryland Pilots and Baltimore’s St. Ignatius Loyola Academy have partnered on the St. Ignatius Commodities Project, an innovative, interactive program designed to lay the foundation for a potential career in the maritime industry. 

While the majority of the course work covers a maritime-oriented curriculum, the focus has expanded over the past few years to include traditional subjects such as science, math, history, language arts and geography. 

The four-week program was introduced by former Maryland congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, whom the Port of Baltimore is officially named after. Bentley served in Congress from 1984 to 1995 and previously served a six-year term on the Federal Maritime Commission from 1969 to 1975.  

The students visit Fort McHenry and tour the port aboard a McAllister tugboat. They visit terminal operators, the Masonville Dredge Material Containment Facility, the 1960s-era nuclear ship NH Savannah and the WW II Liberty ship SS John W. Brown. They spend a day at the Maritime Institute of Graduate Studies-Pacific Maritime Institute (MITAGS-PMI) in nearby Linthicum, where they vicariously experience vessels operating in marine environments via tugboat- and full-mission simulators. A glimpse of life aboard a ship includes classes in MITAGS-PMI’s medical labs and patient simulators. 

At the beginning of the session each of the students is assigned a commodity imported or exported through the Port of Baltimore to study. The students research the commodity and assume the role of farmer, miner, manufacturer, producer or vessel owner working in international trade. They learn how the commodity is produced or processed, what it is used for, who the end-users are, and how it imported or exported through the Port of Baltimore, the nation’s ninth largest in terms of value of tonnage handled and number one in auto imports and container throughput. They learn the importance the Port of Baltimore plays in their lives and the lives of Marylanders.

On the final day of the program, the students – who work in teams – make formal presentations at the school detailing what they have learned and field questions from a group of panelists and guests, many of whom were directly involved in the summer program. 

St. Ignatius Loyola Academy is a tuition-free Jesuit school for middle school boys (6th through 8th grades) from low-income families. The Association of Maryland Pilots, founded in 1852, is the oldest organization of pilots in the nation.