We are working in partnership with the charity In2science UK. Due to poverty and social background being huge obstacles for young people to obtain a career within the STEM industry, the charity sets out to help overcome these barriers. Working with industry professionals, In2science UK provides young people from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds an opportunity to gain practical insight, knowledge, and confidence. Students work alongside and attend workshops hosted by industry professionals.
We have set up a workshop and present to a group of 16-18 year old students who are interested in starting a career within STEM.
The structure we lay out for our In2science UK workshops are as follows:
- Discussion of the presenter’s career path to highlight to the students the variable nature of career development and to reassure them that even when things don’t go to plan, you can still achieve positive experiences and ultimately have a successful career in STEM.
- Reassure students that it is okay to not know exactly what they want to do at their stage of their life. The suggestion is to try out different STEM subjects through online learning and work placements to see where their interest lies.
- Explain why engineering was chosen as a career path for the presenter. What qualifications and memberships are needed to get into engineering.
- What it means to be a building services engineer, what types of disciplines are covered and the types of challenges/problems we try to resolve.
- Explain about the company and building services consultancy. The type of tasks the students can expect during the working day.
- What technologies and software we use to aid within our work and building services engineering.
Key questions we get asked from students are:
- “What piece of advice would you give someone our age to help start a career in engineering?”
Try to attend a summer vocational placement to make contacts and understand whether you enjoy the industry. Microsoft Excel is a very useful tool for calculations and efficiently analysing data, so we recommend that students obtain a good knowledge on its abilities.
- “Can you advise of any free online tuition that could help get into STEM and help us understand which area we would like to pursue?”
The Khan Academy has numerous free online tutorials on various STEM subjects.
- “What do you think is the biggest challenge in the building services sector right now?”
New regulations (June 2022) have just been put into place and as a company, we are trying to learn how they will affect our future designs. In 2025 the ‘Future Homes Standard’ will be released, and this will change how we design domestic buildings.
The feedback that we have received from attendees after our workshops:
- “It was very informative based around engineering careers, so I now know much more than before, and questions were answered well.”
- “Insightful on a career that I thought of doing but didn’t know 100% what it was about.”
- “It was interesting to get to hear from different people about their journey into their respective careers and jobs.”
For information on how you can volunteer for In2scienceUK and inspire a young person into STEM click here
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