STEM Ambassadors Archives - Graphic Science

STEM Ambassadors during COVID-19

Posted on May 22, 2020May 25, 2021 by Kathryn Warr

During the COVID-19 lockdown the STEM Ambassador Hub West England contacted STEM Ambassadors to ask what they are doing during this unprecedented time and how the lockdown had affected their day to day lives. Here is a snapshot of responses to #WEfightCOVID

Martin, STEM Ambassador from CGI

“I’m working from home, full time for the moment. Nobody in my company (CGI) is furloughed. I am classified as a key worker, as I am the technical architect for a telco’s Internet of Things comms platform, which is considered Critical National Infrastructure; I was allowed to travel during the lockdown (e.g. to get a laptop fixed), but I have not needed to. Slightly tragically, I haven’t seen my girlfriend since before lockdown! CGI itself is doing a fair few things around the world for fighting Covid – I’m not personally involved though in any of those initiatives. I have two daughters, years 10 and 12, who are feeling very socially isolated.”

Carly, STEM Ambassador from Vaulto Ltd

“I have been working from home and it doesn’t look like we will be back in the office anytime soon. I work in video streaming so with everyone watching a lot more online video we have been pretty busy. Missing my usual STEM Ambassador duties I ran a kids coding club on my street where I delivered micro:bits to their house and ran the session on Zoom. I have written a few blogs to help parents with the lockdown: https://www.digitelle.blog/blog. The kids are loving being home and it’s been great to get to do some home schooling. We have been doing lots of coding and learning about space.”

Helen, STEM Ambassador from Jacobs

“I’m working from home, hosting virtual meetings with clients and working remotely with our project teams. So it is virtually business as usual. I work part-time, so I am also able to spend some time homeschooling my children. We are all learning something new!”

Laura, STEM Ambassador from the NHS (Radiotherapy)

“There’s a group of STEM ambassadors currently working in Radiotherapy in Bristol, we’ve changed ours ways of working a lot but we’re still seeing a lot of patients each day!”

Tim, STEM Ambassador from the NHS (National Blood Service)

“Well I’m doing OK. I’m not doing what I normally do for the last 2 months (teaching other biomedical scientists and other healthcare professionals how not to kill people) blood transfusion science knowledge and skills updating. I have been supporting our budding scientists and currently to date supported 3 student verifications by The Institute of BioMedical Scientists (IBMS) which were conducted remotely via Skype.

I also volunteered to help the donor collection teams (those people who collect donations from willing donors) on triage to ask questions on their circumstances recent health of them and others in their household before letting them into the building to help protect NHS Blood and Transplant staff and other donors attending the session. I got called twice at short notice to act in the triage role and found it most satisfying to meet fantastic members of the public willing to donate blood.

Luckily Just before lockdown we held Healthcare Science week and had two School visits and conducted a tour of the Blood processing and Testing departments, a laboratory training session where the students performed some blood grouping and a chat about careers in Healthcare.

Although I haven’t updated the STEM activity log to reflect it!”

JJ, STEM Ambassador from the Music Technology Sector (Self Employed)

At this time, I am “shielding” – still. I wasn’t sent a letter, but I have a chronic heart condition. You may be aware that Bretta, my wife, is a headteacher. So we’re co-existing in different parts of the house.

As you might imagine, I’m not doing much STEM at this time. But since I typically do my day-job from home, very little has changed – apart from an uptick in work!

STEM Ambassador Extension Training

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

Through support from STEMNET, Graphic Science developed STEM Ambassador Extension Training and delivered sessions to over 400 volunteer STEM Ambassadors from Edinburgh to Exeter.

Graphic Science worked with STEMNET to deliver more than 25 training sessions to STEM Ambassadors around the country. The training was developed to support STEM Ambassadors who wish to play a more active role in inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.

The two-hour sessions were designed to help STEM Ambassadors to:

increase their confidence in presenting in front of different audiences
develop their own STEM Ambassador activities and adapt them appropriately
share ideas and experiences with other STEM Ambassadors through informal mentoring

It was great to meet so many Ambassadors. Now, the training has been handed over to the local STEM Ambassador contract holders and we hope that it will continue to be used to inspire their volunteers to create exciting new STEM activities for their schools.

Supporting the Engineering Diploma

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

In addition to the training we give to all STEM Ambassadors under the STEMNET contract, we provide on-going support to our STEM Ambassadors through one to one mentoring, guidance to develop activities, networking opportunities and buddying with more experienced Ambassadors.

From time to time, this includes developing specialist training to help Ambassadors support developing areas of the curriculum or other areas of increased school need.

For example, in 2009 we received funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering to design a bespoke training course, along with a set of specially devised classroom activities, for engineers across the South West who wished to support the delivery of the 14-19 Engineering Diplomas in schools.

The project entailed

Designing a training course that provided engineers with the skills to support the delivery of the 14-19 Engineering Diplomas
Delivering this training course to a range of STEM Ambassadors across the South West
Developing resources and activities for engineers to use in schools
Working with schools to provide opportunities for these engineers to develop their skills through working with students studying the 14-19 Engineering Diploma

More recent curriculum changes and significantly reduced government support have meant that fewer schools now offer the 14-19 Engineering Diploma. However, the engineers who took part in the training continue to support schools with the activities they developed.

Enhancing employability: STEM undergraduates

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

Enhancing employability skills of STEM undergraduates

A HE STEM funded project in collaboration with the Universities of Exeter, Bath and Plymouth and Devon Education Business Partnership to develop and deliver training that would enhance the employability skills of Student Ambassadors studying STEM subjects at Undergraduate level.

The aim of the project was to help STEM Student Ambassadors to identify and develop employability skills during their time at University. The project consisted of training workshops and resources that encouraged students to reflect on their ambassador experience, recognise the skills they have developed and learn how best to sell these to potential employers.

Student ambassadors play an important part in South West HEIs’ outreach and engagement activities by acting as enthusiastic and capable role models. In turn, student ambassadors develop a wide range of skills through their participation in these activities; skills that are highly valued by employers. However, many ambassadors fail to recognise the transferability of the skills they are developing or that this experience can provide them with evidence of vital skills and attributes sought by employers.

Graphic Science was a key member of the steering group that developed the two sets of training for the project. The first helped STEM Student Ambassadors to identify key employability skills, find ways in which to develop them and practice giving evidence of them in an interview setting. This training was delivered to students at the University of Bath by Graphic Science.

The second was a ‘train the trainer’ event where ambassadors who had already attended the employability skills workshop learnt how to deliver the same workshop to new student ambassadors. This training equipped students with valuable facilitation skills as well as making the programme sustainable.

Graphic Science trained 10 Student Ambassadors from across the three participating universities. These ambassadors then supported the training of a new cohort of students at their own institutions. The HEIs involved found the ‘train the trainer’ element of the project so valuable that they have now incorporated it into a number of their training packages.

Graphic Science has also put together 9 case studies illustrating the benefits of the training to the Student Ambassadors and the HEIs involved.

The case studies and other resources associated with the project are available through the HE STEM South West website: www.hestem-sw.org.uk/project?id=18&pp=254

What will we be eating in 2050?

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

The education team at Brunel’s ss Great Britain asked us to help devise and run a discussion event as the result of an opportunity they had to extend their Future Brunels programme to work with whole class groups in local secondary schools. http://www.ssgreatbritain.org/about-us/press/introducing-trust%E2%80%99s-12-new-%E2%80%98future-brunels%E2%80%99 We worked with them to create a Dragon’s Den inspired activity themed round the question “What will we be eating in 2050?” Students learned about some of the challenges of food security and then three professionals pitched their future food solutions to the students. These ranged from high-tec solutions such as lab grown meat and GM fungus-resistant bananas to eating insects and hydroponics. The students took on the role of the Dragons and decided what technologies should receive the greatest funding. Big thanks to Alice-Marie Archer (Bristol Aquaponics), Travis Callue (University of Bath), Marianne Ellis (University of Bath), Sophie Nedelec (University of Bristol) and Glyn Owen (Soil Association) for their interesting and thought-provoking pitches.

Heritage Heresy

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

Heritage Heresy enabled young people from Bath to ignore all the rules and imagine a future city where anything is possible. In conjunction with the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution and supported by Bath’s community of engineers and architects, the project taught Bath’s younger residents about the city’s environment, history and contemporary challenges, and allowed them to bring their ideas for a rebooted city to life at the Museum of Bath Architecture. Students from various local schools worked with Buro Happold engineers, architecture students from the University of Bath & other local engineers from various disciplines to tear down, re-imagine and re-build Bath – a city famous for it’s history, distinctive Bath stone bricks, winding river and steep hillsides! The students then decided what they wanted to see in their vision of Bath – History or 4G? We ran a guided bus tour of the city followed by various workshops on the weekend of the 21st October 2017, an exhibit of the students ideas was then displayed in the Museum of Bath Architecture for two weeks.

Graphic Science were awarded funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious scheme for Heritage Heresy. Ingenious is an awards scheme, run by the Royal Academy of Engineering, that supports and funds creative and impactful projects that engage the public with engineers and engineering.

Evolution of Technology Workshop

Posted on September 25, 2019January 22, 2020 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

How many electronic devices that were familiar a few years ago are now virtually obsolete?

Evolution of Technology is an interactive workshop for key stage 3 and 4 students to think about how rapidly technology has changed, improved and entered into every aspect of our lives.

We developed the workshops and train STEM Ambassadors to run them.

Evolution of Technology was funded through the IET Education Grants Scheme.

Interactive workshop looking at the rapid development of technology over recent years.

Extension Training for STEM Ambassadors

Posted on September 25, 2019May 25, 2021 by adrian@webdesigncity.co.uk

STEM Ambassador Extension Training was developed by Graphic Science to support STEM Ambassadors who wish to play a more active role in inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. The sessions were interactive with an emphasis on delivery styles, engagement and practical activities. Each session was be led by experienced trainers from Graphic Science.

The training was designed to help STEM Ambassadors to:

increase their confidence in presenting in front of different audiences
develop their own STEM Ambassador activities and adapt them appropriately
share ideas and experiences with other STEM Ambassadors through informal mentoring