BATON ROUGE - Over the past two weeks, the Southern University Agriculture Center has been abuzz with the inaugural "Hip Hop to Gen Z Camp", catering to students in grades 6-12.

Aimed at offering an immersive learning experience, the camp delved into sound engineering, songwriting, filmmaking, and disc jockeying, with each session led by industry experts.

The students got the opportunity to connect their experiences to STEM. Dr. Rani Whitfield, Southern's Vice Chairman of Supervisors, says what the kids have learned in the past two weeks is not what you think.

"We are about educating our young people to teach them about potential careers in medicine; agriculture particularly, so we want them to know there is more to this genre of music than just the lyrics themselves." Whitfield said.

Dr. Whitfield believes the camp inspired kids and was more than just a career changer. 

"We want kids to come to school and learn about the arts and sciences and now some of my students are considering careers in the arts," Whitfield said. "People can be stereotyping them, saying African American people only want to play basketball or football, and we now have students saying, 'I don't think I want to do sports when I get out of high school, I think I want to learn how to work a TV show.'"

WBRZ caught up with some of the kids who spent the past two weeks at the camp and all could describe their experience as nothing but a good time. 

"Very fun and exciting to learn all the genres of hip hop; I made some new friends, learned some new things I didn't know I could do, and got better at things I could and there's a lot of respect here it's a great experience," one of the participants told WBRZ.

Looking ahead, the Agriculture Center anticipates expanding the camp's reach, aiming to double the number of students in the following year.