On February 20th and 21st, four Brewer High School students joined 400-500 other international participants online for The Camden Conference. The Camden Conference is a forum of 12 experts, scholars, and scientists from around the world who meet annually for an informed discourse on world issues. Education programs of the Camden Conference are designed to promote knowledge, perspectives, and dialogue opportunities on world affairs with high school and college educators and their students. Several Maine high schools and colleges offer academic courses based on the annual Conference topic.
This year the forum focused on the Geopolitics of the Arctic with Iceland's former President of 20 years, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, as the keynote speaker. For the past five months, Omair Khan, Ryan Young, Emma Butterfield, and Lauryn Roy prepared themselves for this conference by reading multiple books, conducting independent research, and holding discussions on the Arctic and Antarctic global contemporary issues.
The Camden Conference also offers a competitive research-based essay contest for Maine high school students. The essay contest was created by Bill Taylor, a long-time supporter of the Conference who created this contest in 2014 to promote student research in support of his strong interest in education.