Vandyke girls impress at Loughborough STEM residential
Vandyke girls impress at Loughborough STEM residential
Last term, five Vandyke students went to Loughborough University for a STEM residential for girls. When we were there, we stayed in the university accommodation used by students during term time. We went for four days and had to complete a task over the time given to us and present it at the end of the week.
One group of five girls went from school and together we had to make an island that was self-sustainable from the sources that we had been provided with. The island had to be suitable for 40 families and include things for their health care, leisure and transport. While we were there, we had different “lectures” and workshops of a whole range of things that would help us provide for the people on our island and make it self-sustainable. These included workshops on: solar powered cars, recycling, waves and architecture. Then we had time to develop the map that we had been given of our island to show how we would develop it for our families.
In the evenings, we also did social activities. We watched the semifinals of the Euros on Wednesday, which got very tense at times, and on Thursday we did UV Zumba, where we did Zumba in the dark with glow sticks, which was really fun. The whole event was sponsored by Ford and on one of the days we got a talk from an employee of Ford about their sustainability goals for the future, including self-driving cars which looked really cool!
One of our proudest moments of the week was when we made a set of ecobins in the recycling workshop. Our main prototype was called Gerald and he was a clothes recycling bin who was decorated with clothes to encourage kids to learn recycling from a young age. We even made an Instagram for him!
On the last day we had to give a presentation to share our ideas and present our map to some of the people who had been giving us talks throughout the week. Our presentation included an overview of our island, our ideas and the main focuses for our island, which were: transport, energy sources, architecture and jobs, and sustainability and packaging. We had a special slide for Gerald, and one of us presented as him with an Australian accent (which got us a special mention!). Unfortunately we didn’t win, but we all got more confident when we all had to talk in front of a lecture hall full of people for our presentation.
We had a really fun week and everyone there was really kind and supportive, especially our student ambassador from the university, Deborah, who looked after us while we were there. It was a really cool experience to see what university life was like – we had an amazing time!
This report was written by the Vandyke STEM Girls themselves!