{"id":166039,"date":"2026-02-15T21:41:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/166039\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T21:41:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:41:06","slug":"merit-badge-college-sparks-big-dreams-for-south-texas-scouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/166039\/","title":{"rendered":"Merit Badge College sparks big dreams for South Texas Scouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly 140 scouts took part in the hands-on learning event, exploring subjects ranging from welding and artificial intelligence to cybersecurity.<\/p>\n<p>CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Del Mar College&#8217;s Windward Campus was buzzing with energy as scouts from across South Texas gathered for the annual Merit Badge College.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 140 scouts took part in the hands-on learning event, exploring subjects ranging from welding and artificial intelligence to cybersecurity, emergency preparedness and personal fitness all while earning merit badges.<\/p>\n<p>But organizers say the day is about more than just badges. It&#8217;s about opening doors to future possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Scoutmaster Mike Jones said the experience often leaves a lasting impact on students.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By going into these classes as a youth a lot of them have come back to study this as their major field&#8230; so many of these kids on their way home they talk to their parents about higher education for the first time. and so bringing them onto a college campus, exposing them to a college instructor really gets rid of some of that mysticisms and really puts more of an excitement of opportunity,&#8221; said Jones.<\/p>\n<p>The event continues a long-standing scouting tradition of planting seeds of curiosity, leadership and lifelong learning in the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 140 scouts took part in the hands-on learning event, exploring subjects ranging from welding and artificial intelligence&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-166039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}