Electronics and Computer Science Outreach

ECS were lucky enough to have Barton Peveril visit. The A-level students spent the day getting a tour of campus, learning about university life and getting to grips with Python. They used the Code Academy interpreter. This worked well as it helped them experiment with Python. We made number guessing game and a hangman game. It was perfect for beginners.

This was the first all male group I have had. I decided to take this group on as we were keen to make stronger links with Barton Peveril and I am working with them on another event to attract female students later on in the year (5th December). It worked well and I am pleased we did it as some of the students will be coming back to the university to give a seminar about Minecraft!

I volunteered to help the University with its ‘Your Life‘ campaign pledge. This is a government initiative to increase the numbers of young people going into STEM subjects. As part of this campaign I attended the working group round table discussion. This was very interested as there were representatives from other universities and all were sharing good practice. These are informal notes from the day:

• Update on the Your Life Campaign: An agency has been commissioned to begin an advertising campaign for 14-16 year olds to encourage them to take STEM.
• There was emphasis given to mechanical engineering in this meeting.
• Sheffield University have said that they have changed the names of their courses and there has been an amazing affect e.g. chemical engineering with architecture (the with is something that is related to people). They have also taken out the physics requirement.
• Sheffield have a senior academic on the faculty management (same level as Michael Butler) who has the role of ‘Faculty Director of Women in Engineering’ She spends 20% of her time on this role.
• They also offer scholarships for female students for their MSc.
• More female students than male students on open days.
• As well as scholarships for conversion courses e.g. English graduates who want to do a conversion in computing.

On the 10th September I was lucky enough to go on a training course titled: ‘Importance of STEM to economic growth’. It was an interesting day with very engaging speakers. It made me more motivated to focus on the bigger picture and how the public engagement and outreach we do is contributing to solving a social economic problem. These are some bullet points I made of the day – they are in note form. Averil McDonald gave a good talk:

• Setting up a STEM club could help motivate young people. Averil McDonald said the opposite as girls have too much to do.
• Inform STEM ambassador programme that ECSOutreach exists.
• Might be a good idea to set up parents classes e.g. internet safety etc. To build them up.
•  We need to make sure we say comforting things to parents like: your child will be happy, not lonely, supported, we want people ewho excel at lanagugaes, personable etc.
• Make it relevant for girls –> bigger picture.
• Don’t do competitions
• Role models have to be like them (so people who have just started in year 1)
• Egos put them off
• Posters like ‘Think like an engineer’ do not work because they don’t want to change who they are.
• Its good to tell girls they are discriminated against in Industry and say how the uni will help them.
• Computer Science is essentially linguistics  – might be an idea to use similar words to marketing it to what psychology do to market their course.
• At transition points – postdoc etc – its important these women have increased visibility in the department, people know what they are doing and they are given the chance to shine.

We were really lucky for Erica and team 😉 to win a VC award in August. The award was given for:

“the phenomenal success of both Erica herself, the team who developed and built her and their impact on the University’s reputation. The team hugely deserves an award for their ongoing tireless effort using Erica for outreach activities.”

I have blogged before about a fabulous outreach tool that Erica has been. We were very excited to be recognised for this award as it demonstrates the work we have done at a university level.

Picture by C.Gutteridge

Erica was also a finalist in the National Public Engagement Awards. As well as winning the VC award, back in June Erica was also a runner-up in the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Engage Competition in the “Engaging with Young People” category. It was an honour to be nominated in a national awards. Again its nice to have our hard work recognised.  

In July, ECS were very lucky to host the Headstart Summer School for Electronics. This took a lot of planning and patience to organise (hence my silence in June!). It was a success. We had 80 year 12 students from all around the UK to take part and they stayed in student halls, experience lectures and take part in labs! Everyone loved it 🙂 This is the news article from our website:

Record number of students attend electronics summer school in Southampton

Related Links:

• UK Electronics Skills Foundation

The fourth annual, and biggest ever, UKESF (UK Electronics Skills Foundation), summer school was hosted by the University of Southampton this month (7 to 11 July).

The UKESF Summer Schools provided prospective electrical and electronic engineering (EEE) students first-hand electronics experience.

The five-day course consisted of practical lab work and lectures from academics from UKESF university partners (Cardiff, Edinburgh, Imperial, Manchester, Nottingham, and York) as well as academics from the University of Southampton. There were also field trips to course sponsors Thales and the Science and Technology Facilities Council; offering students the opportunity to gain practical insights into the lives of working electronic engineers across a range of disciplines including aerospace, defence, security, transport, particle physics and space technology.

James Fitzpatrick, 16, from Bournemouth School, said: “I’ve really enjoyed using the lab equipment, which we don’t normally get access to at school. I want to study computer science so it was great to see how the University works and experience going to lectures and halls of residence.”

Mary Bennett, 16, from Peter Symonds College, said: “It’s been an awesome few days and I’ve met lots of new people and made some new friends. I knew that I wanted to study engineering at the University of Southampton and after this week, I now know that I want to do electronic engineering.”

“These courses are a fantastic way for school students to learn about electronics and to encourage them into degrees valued by an industry that has a range of rewarding careers to offer,” said Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Associate Dean for Research at the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering. “Since UKESF started, over 30 of our students have been part of the scholarship scheme, undertaking valuable work experience that has informed their career decisions,” he adds.

The event was sponsored by a number of world-leading companies that create or rely on electronic systems including ARM, Broadcom Foundation, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor, Imagination Technologies, Jaguar Land Rover, and Thales.

On Friday ECS hosted the IET Faraday Challenge. We were very lucky to host it as we had to put in a proposal to host this challenge. The challenge was an aerospace challenge and involved all sorts of flying machines! Sturnminster Newton School from Blanford won the challenge this year. We want to congratulate all the schools who took part and we are looking forward to seeing you next year!

Sturnminster Newton School was a school introduced to us by an Alumni. Chris Speckman was keen to broaden our links with schools in his local area of Blandford. In all honesty I had not targeted these school before as it was not on my radar. Chris and I went into the school to talk about careers and since then the link has turned into a blossoming friendship. We love visiting them and they bring there students to the university.

If any alumni want to work with us to broaden links with their schools we would love to do this! Please get in touch.

Students from schools in Hampshire became real-life engineers for a day when they researched, designed and built solutions to real engineering problems.

On Friday 16^th May,  The University of Southampton hosted the Faraday Challenge Day, provided by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Teams from Sturmeister School, Testwood School, Toynbee School, Romsey School and Thorndon School took part.

Forty-five educational establishments across the UK have been chosen to host the 2013-14 IET Faraday Challenge Days. Six teams of local school students competed to find the best solution to an engineering-related challenge.

The brief for these young engineers is  shrouded in secrecy to avoid unfair preparation and research.  Teams raced against the clock to solve a real-life engineering problem, putting their engineering and technology knowledge and skills to the test.

Gareth James, IET Head of Education, said: “Students who take part in the Faraday Challenge Days experience hands-on design and practical work giving them a peek into the life of a real engineer, the variety of engineering out there and the central role it plays in our everyday lives.

“There is huge demand for new engineers and technicians and we are confident that this will challenge young people’s perceptions of engineers and hopefully make them consider engineering as a career choice.”

The events aim to encourage more young people to study and consider exciting and rewarding careers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) by using creativity, innovation and problem-solving skills.

Each team member in the winning group will be awarded a prize and a trophy for their school. The top three teams from across the UK will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the national final in London next year to compete for a cash prize of up to £1,000 for their school.

The Faraday Challenge Days are part of a wider Faraday education programme, made up of a whole host of teaching resources and activities to inspire and attract the engineers of tomorrow.

Ends

Notes to editors:

• For more information, visit: http://faraday.theiet.org/
• Interview opportunities are available with IET spokespersons.
• The IET is Europe’s largest professional body of engineers with over 150,000 members in 127 countries.
• For more information, visit www.theiet.org.
• Follow the IET on Twitter.

Media enquiries to:

Robert Beahan, Media Relations Manager

T: +44 (0)1438 767336

M: +44 (0)7595 400912

E: rbeahan@theiet.org

I bet Erica the Rhino was very happy when she was visited by one of her superfans who came to visit her. She got given a special treat. Georgie Russell was very nice and fed her some cables (erica doesn’t really eat wires. Its more for fun!). She is the daughter of Daniel Russell, a member of staff from ECS! We look forward to seeing you again soon!

We were very lucky to part of the University of Southampton’s Science and Engineering family day. The aim is to invite families to see what goes on in Science and Engineering. They get to learn about how to make slime, robotics and what happens inside the human body (amongst other things!). Its an excellent way of bringing together the Universities outreach and public engagement activities. All I can say is that there is some fabulous outreach work going on around the university. ECS (thanks to Dr Denis Nicole) had a significant presence. We had the following activities on display:

• Erica
• Making model boats.
• Soldering Activities
• Cyber Security activities
• Robogals
• Beginning to programme activities.
• Nano Lab activities.
• Wireless society activities

These were only the activities on show we have a lot more going on! Thanks to Zena Hilton for organising such a fabulous event and thank you to everyone who participated.

Denis Nicole and Zena

Yesterday I met with Chris Speckman who is an ECS Alumni. I worked with him on a small outreach project that we are looking to expand. Here is a summary of what happened.

Chris Speckman approached Joyce Lewis in ECS to express his concern about the lack of opportunity to visit Engineering Labs for rural schools and girls in those schools. Chris had link with schools he wanted to bring in to show off the department. I worked with him to co-ordinate these visits. This is how it worked:

·    Chris had the link with the school and introduced me to the contact from the school. I then arranged for Chris and I to go into the school to give a presentation to 40 sixth form students about computing careers and degrees. As well as University life in Southampton.

·    We then invited a class of pupils in to the university to see campus life 35 year 8 pupils. This was successful. The school is now a regular link. For instance – 30 girls from the school attended our international womens day event. We aim to keep these links going so we invite students in atleast once in the academic year so we have a consistent stream of students from these schools coming in.

If this didn’t happen then:

I would not have pursued the  school. This link would not exist.We have now opened the eyes of approx 120 students to university life.

·The teachers now know we exist.

—> Thanks to Chris for the introductions and links.