Written by Lisa Chestnutt, 3rd Year Biomedical Engineering, FemEng Outreach Convenor 21/22, UofG This year, FemEng have worked with Glasgow Counts and Literacy for all at the Glasgow Improvement Challenge (GIC) who are a subgroup of Glasgow City Council that focuses on equity in education. Together, we have reached over 1000 primary 7 pupils in the city. This has been such an exciting opportunity for the society as we have supported teachers and pupils through a 6 week course that introduces learners to engineering. FemEng provided video workshops and other supporting lessons, as well as Q&A video calls with ourselves and industry professionals. We were supported by the GIC who created additional worksheets and lesson plans and found schools who wanted to take part. The project aims to promote the values of FemEng whilst educating young people in the field of engineering and raising attainment in literacy and numeracy. The first eight schools taking part in this year’s sessions kicked off in mid-October, followed by 14 more who began the project in January. For all the learners, their first week involved an introduction to STEM. Pupils looked at what STEM is through comprehension, research and debating tasks which also covered the role of engineers in the fight against climate change. For most pupils, the stand out lesson of this week was a numeracy task where the learners worked with fractions and percentages to understand the ratio of women to men who work in engineering. Some of the young girls in particular were horrified by the facts, and decided that this has to change! Once they’d got to grips with the concept of STEM and understood why groups like FemEng are needed, the pupils jumped straight into learning about engineering disciplines in the second week of the project. This week focused on aeronautical engineering, giving the pupils the opportunity to make gliders and parachutes as well as to learn about accurate measuring and expand their vocabulary whilst thinking about air resistance. By this point in the project, some of the schools had begun to take part in virtual Q&A sessions with both FemEng students and engineering professionals. The students and professionals gave the learners a brief insight into what they do each day, and then there was lots of time for the pupils to ask questions that they’d prepared ahead of time. These calls were one of the highlights of the programme, and we were asked lots of brilliant questions ranging from ‘How many parts does it take to build a rocket?’ to ‘What’s your go-to McDonald’s order?’! We were joined by engineering professionals from the RAF, Mitsubishi Electrical, RyanAir and Aecom who have all done super exciting things that they were able to tell the learners about. We are so thankful to them for giving up their time! In the third week of the programme the focus shifted to biomedical engineering. The pupils really enjoyed this week, and not just because their model DNA was made of sweets! The primary 7s learnt about DNA and did some data gathering work to learn about phenotypes and genotypes. This week also featured a guest session from our friends at Handprints Enable Scotland, as well as a video interview about some new medical technology ideas. Week 4 was a whistle stop tour of civil engineering! This week’s video workshop was a tutorial on bridge building using paper and cans. The pupils also had the opportunity to design an inclusive play space using TinkerCAD. This was a really popular task as the pupils had free reign to be as creative as they liked in their design, and really enjoyed using the software. Some of the classes have even come back to this after the project ended, and have gone on to design even bigger and better things! For the schools who started the project in January, week 5 lined up with the February half term break. In this short, two-day, week, the classes had a quick introduction to electrical engineering and made some jelly baby wave machines. Edible crafts always go down a treat! The penultimate week of the project explored mechanical engineering. After an introductory video where the pupils made a mechanical pulley system, the pupils worked through a design brief to create a wind farm proposal. They worked in groups to decide where to put their turbines, how many to have and what power rating they should be. The learners used their numeracy, research and reasoning skills to come up with a proposal, and then shared this with the rest of their class in a short presentation. Some of the classes even had the chance to build their own model turbines; experimenting with different numbers, sizes and shapes of blades to decide what works best. In the final week of the project, the learners took some time to reflect on the project and all that they’d learnt. They also thought about engineering as a tool for positive change, and compared the different types of engineering. They learnt about COP26 and the role that engineers can play in the fight against climate change, and had the opportunity to enter a competition on this topic. A winning class from each cohort was selected, and the FemEng team came out to visit them with some fun, interactive workshops as a prize! Our winners were pupils from St Patrick’s Primary School who submitted their entry in the form of a QR code, and the primary 7 class at St Conval’s Primary who created a video entry that everyone contributed to. Both the pupils and the FemEng team had a great time at the prize afternoons. Learners worked around three stations where they got to learn about prosthetics by making some foam hands and to have another go at building a wind turbine with some giant Meccano! We were also joined by some students from GU Rocketry who ran the third station, telling the pupils all about what they do and letting them help to design their next mission patch! All in all, the project has been really successful and it’s been so encouraging for the FemEng team to see how engaged the pupils are and how many questions they have. Some of the teachers have organized extra trips and calls for the pupils to supplement the material that we’ve provided, and one pupil in particular was so gutted that he would miss a Q&A call after being sent home early from school that he had the zoom link sent home so that he could log on from there! From my own perspective, it has been such a privilege to be FemEng’s Outreach Convenor this year and to work with so many inspiring professionals, teachers and pupils. I’m excited to see how the project develops in the years to come! If you’re a teacher, engineering professional or University of Glasgow student who would like to get involved with the project please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
Written by Mairéad Reid, 3rd Year Electronics with Music, FemEng General Board Member, UofG Over the summer I had the opportunity to undertake a 13-week Electronics Engineering summer placement at Leonardo, a global high-tech company and a leading player in Aerospace, Defence, and Security. I was not sure quite what to expect when I started as this was my first internship and I went in without much hands-on engineering experience due to the pandemic! Despite this, I have had an incredibly enriching and fun summer placement. Leonardo produces radars, sensors, and electronic systems that sit under the skin of the world’s most advanced planes and helicopters, effectively acting as their brains, senses, and nervous systems. I was placed in a radar team and given an independent project to complete over the summer. This was a completely new field to me and I felt a bit of imposter syndrome at the beginning of the placement, but this disappeared quickly as everyone was so eager to help and support me. As an Electronics engineer, I have been designing and developing schematics and printed circuit boards. I haven’t yet covered this design work in much detail at university, and so I am glad that I have had the opportunity to develop these skills now, in preparation for entering my third year. This experience will surely prove invaluable as I tackle similar problems at university next year and beyond. However, this summer placement hasn’t been without its challenges. By far the biggest constraint on my progress was my lack of experience, meaning that some parts of the design process took a lot longer than they might have otherwise. This was particularly evident during the PCB design process – a topic about which I knew very little before this summer. I am sure that if I had gone into the project with my current knowledge, I would have been able to complete the process much more quickly and efficiently. However, I am still very happy with my progress and feel a real sense of pride about what I was able to achieve. I would encourage any university student to seek placement opportunities, as they provide a crucial insight into the working life of an engineer, with an introduction to cutting-edge, specialised technologies that may not be covered at university. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of placements is being able to work on real-world projects. The project-based nature of my placement pushed me out of my comfort zone, allowing me to make mistakes and learn from them. I feel that I am a much more confident and competent engineer after this experience. Engineering is such a broad field, so there will be many jobs that could suit you perfectly (or don’t!). Placements are a fantastic way for students to discover new topics and gauge their personal interest in a variety of areas. Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed my summer placement at Leonardo. I could not have asked for better workplace culture and the friendships that I have made with the other students have enriched my experience massively. Written by Cleopatra Pierides, 1st Year Civil Engineering, UofG Missing out on the “best years of your life” cannot be even remotely compared to the direct effects of COVID-19, but I am sure you can understand my disappointment as a fresher. Feeling lonely and lost for a good chunk of my first year, I was determined to make up for this ‘lost time’ by gaining any sort of cultivating experience outside of university grounds. Luckily, as a compulsory part of my Environmental Engineering module, we participated in the Engineers Without Borders Design Challenge. This year’s competition project collaborated with EcoSwell, a local NGO situated in Lobitos, Peru, whose mission is to support the development of marginalized communities in a sustainable way by implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and envisions people and nature to thrive in unison. With such an empowering mission and seeing that the vulnerable communities – who already lived in the lowest of socioeconomic levels D and E, lacked reliable access to potable water as well as appropriate sanitation standards - were now more than ever heavily impacted by Covid-19, I thought it would be a wonderful idea for me apply as a Water and Sanitation Volunteer Intern; something completely terrifying and unknown to me. But I knew that this would be a remarkable experience and it was worth taking the risk. What involved a lot of planning and precautions, I funded my way half-way across the globe during a pandemic to volunteer in a surfing and sunset paradise that sadly lacked the funding and resources for it to thrive. And it was the best decision I have made so far. I was constantly surrounded by diversity: diversity in mental states, age and experience, culture, energy levels and this acted as a constant drive for innovation. I was able to understand what a professional working environment feels like, put my engineering experience to test, and with an open mind learn and expand my knowledge. I learned to understand and appreciate the true meaning of engineering: using creativity to find eco-friendly and sustainable solutions with materials that are available and affordable to you. During my three weeks there, I worked in a challenging environment with penultimate year and master’s students, as well as industrial engineers with over 10 years of experience in the field, to try and bioremediate wastewater spills around Lobitos by building vetiver based pontoons. The materials used for these pontoons were bamboo sticks, rope made from recycled plastic bags, and Vetiver bunchgrass. Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) can grow hydroponically, and with frequent shoot chopping can regrow, continuously forming new roots. It thrives in high heat, low moisture environments, and is a low-cost technology method mostly used in the tropics to conserve water and soil. It has a high tolerance to high levels of heavy metals and extreme weather conditions and can absorb nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus out of the wastewater making it cleaner as it runs off into the streets and sea.
I gained unique experiences, true friendships and grew both academically and mentally. I believe you owe it to yourself as a person to truly witness the art of offering and comprehend how privileged you can be - whether that means having food on your plate, a roof to live under, or not considering closing the tap while brushing your teeth - and how you can use your knowledge as a superpower to provide a service. My volunteering journey has just started, and it surely will not end here! |
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