UTC Heathrow welcomed in some very special guests on Monday, 23 June, when 32 STEM-loving girls from three surrounding schools spent the day working together on an ocean-themed engineering challenge.
The Year 8 girls came from Northwood School, Pinner High School and Hatch End to mark International Women in Engineering Day, a day dedicated to recognising the impact of women in engineering around the world.
Greeting them was UTC Heathrow’s Assistant Headteacher Michelle Reeves, who devised the day. Michelle is especially passionate about getting more girls into engineering and tech – a sector where women and girls make up only 15% of the workforce.
She explained how important it is to inspire the next generation early: “With so few women represented in the engineering and technology workforce, it’s really important to be able to highlight all the different roles that they can undertake in engineering, and to be able to show them what an exciting industry it is to work in, and it is really important to be able to highlight this at a young age so they can start to make those choices for their future.”
After speaking about some of the vast amount of careers available in engineering, Michelle presented the girls – who had been split into mixed school groups – with their very own engineering challenge for the day – to design and pitch engineering solutions that help prevent plastic pollution from reaching our oceans, while also raising awareness of the severe impact plastic has on marine life.
The room was shocked to hear that more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic are estimated to be floating in the world’s oceans, which could nearly triple by 2040 if no action is taken, and the groups were clearly passionate about working on their pollution solutions!
Helping them were some of UTC Heathrow’s Year 12 and 13 girl students currently studying engineering, and six female tech and engineering industry professionals from Amazon Web Services, LMG and Scott Logic. These mentors sat with the groups, explaining what they did and what kinds of careers were available within their profession, as well as guiding each group through their project.
Working together, the students produced a range of creative, well-thought-out and ambitious designs for products and services aimed at tackling this crucial environmental issue.
Solutions ranged from encouraging schools to compete in collecting plastics in a project with big aims to roll out globally to various bottle collecting schemes that rewarded recyclers with money off products, to a clever can tote and branded fabric bags. The groups impressed with their ‘planet first’ focused designs and business sense – they really had thought it all through. What was especially impressive is that these girls didn’t know one another, which will have been a first for many, as would the presentations at the end where they were asked to ‘sell’ their ideas to the room. It’s really daunting for 12- and 13-year-olds to stand up and present to a room of 50+ people, and they were clearly very proud of themselves for doing so.
Jade, a student from Hatch End, said she’d enjoyed the day: “We haven’t done anything like this at our school before and it was really fun. I liked working with students from the other schools and learning about the impact of plastic in the ocean.”
Anushi, a student at Pinner High School said: “It was inspiring, fun and informative.”
Hatch End teacher Nuura Mohamed said: “It was a real pleasure to bring along my pupils from Hatch End, who fully embraced the challenge of coming up with real-life solutions to tackle the urgent issue of plastic waste in our oceans. I was incredibly proud of the way they thought critically about ocean users most impacted by plastic pollution and how to support them – culminating in the thoughtful briefs they developed and presented. Events like this are invaluable in nurturing the next generation of innovators – I left feeling inspired and I’m already excited to return next year!”
Teacher Racheal Barry from Northwood school said: “It was lovely to see them in an environment that they’re not used to and actually be able to work together – it builds on what we’ve been saying to them about having to work with people they don’t know in the real world later on in life.”
Teacher Rakhee Jotangia from Pinner High School said: “What’s been great for me is seeing that it’s opened their eyes to the different areas of engineering and that it’s not just an area of work for the men.”
Our industry professionals were impressed with the enthusiasm shown. Suzanne Angell from Scott Logic said: “These girls have been fantastic. Lots of them don’t know each other. They’re only 12-13 years old, taking on a massive challenge, but they have absolutely stepped up. They’ve gone through all the different parts of the brief and the context, and we’ve seen some fantastic ideas and collaborative work coming from them. Some have already said they want to be engineers!”
Challenge days such as this one is a common occurrence in the UTC diary, where students go off curriculum for the day, working on projects that test vital employability skills such as teamwork, leadership and project management.
