OVER 150 year 9 and 10 students from South Gippsland and Bass Coast schools attended a Science and Engineering Challenge Day on Wednesday, June 11.
Held by the University of Newcastle, at the Korumburra Indoor Recreation Centre, the event was part of the nationwide STEM outreach program designed to inspire high school students to pursue careers in science and engineering.
Pitted against other schools from the local region, the students worked in small teams to tackle a range of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) challenges from electrical network distribution, building design, aeronautic design and code-breaking.
These hands-on activities challenged the students to solve real-world problems, fostering teamwork, critical thinking, and creativity.
Tom Holman, Science Coordinator at Foster Secondary College said the event had been beneficial for their students, particularly those thinking about careers in the field.
“There’s a range of STEM-related activities that expose the students to a range of scenarios and they get to work in teams to achieve a positive outcome,” explained Tom.
“Certainly, the students that we have here are all thinking along the path of engineering and science. So, this will just give them further skills to develop in those areas.”
Foster Secondary College students Kyan and Archie are thinking about careers in engineering and the event opened up what subjects they might consider taking on.
“I might like to do biology,” said Kyan, who plans on working in the engineering field, with the event also being helpful in this respect.
“It did reinforce that I might like to do engineering in the future.”
The final exercise for the day was testing the bridges that the students built and Kyan and Archie stated they considered the important elements when building it.
“We didn’t go for looks, we went for practicality,” they said, and even more importantly, “It’s been good fun, we’ve enjoyed it.”
As the student groups completed activities across the day they accumulated points and after winning many of the individual competitions, the Leongatha Secondary School students came out as the champions.
Depending on other Victorian school scores, they may be eligible to go to the state finals in September.
The Science and Engineering Challenge (SEC) has been running for 25 years by the University of Newcastle (UN) and its mission is to inspire more young people to make a difference in the world by choosing a career in science and engineering.
Over the last decade surveys done by the UN reveal that 32 per cent of students indicated that participation in the SEC influenced their decision to enrol in maths in senior high school, while it was 35 per cent for chemistry and 52 per cent for physics.
While 31 per cent of students enrolled in the engineering or science faculties, indicated that participation in the SEC influenced their decision to study these disciplines at university.
