STEM Ambassadors during COVID-19

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.

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!

Evaluation workshops for Wellcome Trust centre Public Engagement staff

Graphic Science was asked by the Wellcome Trust to run practically-focussed evaluation workshops for the public engagement leads at each of the centres that receive strategic Wellcome Trust funding.

We consulted with staff from each of the centres to find out what would be most useful to them and then developed a highly interactive workshop that took them step by step through the process of planning, designing and analysing the data from an evaluation.

As part of this, we threaded through a real example of a project we had evaluated and encouraged participants to think about how they would approach a similar task and critique our approach.

“I found it very useful and the orientation – towards practical advice and hands-on exercises was spot-on.”

“Personally, I liked the relaxed delivery style of the trainers – they were happy to let the session wander off the planned agenda into group discussions, which were equally useful and helped the group start to form constructive relationships between different centres – contacts that I’m sure will be mutually helpful in years to come.”

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