The first Teleconference call in the New Year - Progression and Careers: An Introduction to 'Your Future East Midlands' is taking place on Tuesday 27th January (10.30-11.30am).  Rather than the usual discussion we will be welcoming guest speakers Neil Raven and Carla Herbert from Aimhigher in the East Midlands, who will be introducing the ‘Your Future East Midlands’ website www.yourfuture-eastmidlands.co.uk followed by a Q&A session.

E-mail me, to book your place on the call.

As a STEM Student Journalist, I had a wonderful opportunity to attend the East Midlands STEM Partnership Forum held at Rolls-Royce, Derby on Friday 28^th November. This event was aimed at discussing how partners can work together to promote STEM learning and careers in the East Midlands.

The day started with my interview with Michael Carr, Executive Director of Business Services at East Midlands Development Agency (emda). I asked his views on issues such as why encouraging STEM skills and careers is so important to the region. Throughout the day I listened to discussions on National STEM Developments and other factors such as The UK Skills Challenge given from an aerospace perspective. I was also able to exchange my opinions and ideas in the ‘STEM Development, National Priorities-Regional Perspectives’ and the ‘Progress and Working Together Locally to Increase Impact’ workshops.

This event allowed me to understand what has been done in the East Midlands in order to encourage more students to take up STEM-related subjects, the challenges and future developments. What interested me most in this event was the opportunity to meet new people with a similar interest in encouraging a wider participation into STEM subjects, but in which many had different point of views as to how this could be done. These views came through various groups e.g. from a teachers point of view and from a student or a business point of view. I had an amazing time at this event and believe that it is important to provide continual opportunities to discuss these issues.

Ting-Hin Tang

Animal Sciences

The University of Nottingham

(Left to right: Liam Mullen and Josh Skilton, Trinity School.  Cameron Watson, West Bridgford Comprehensive School)

There are many things I expect to write about in relation to STEM activities – I just never thought it would be about thousands of zombies… 

On Friday, we braved the cold and accompanied 3 Student STEM Reporters to GameCity 3, the Videogame festival designed to bring the people who make games, together with the people who love them. 

After meeting in the Market Square, the students were given their press passes and GameCity Passport, for VIP access for the day.  The students’ first stop was Malt Cross. Here we investigated a number of award wining games at the Indiecade International Festival of Independent Games.  We met the creator of Machinarium, who took us through the process of how he designed the story of a little robot who has been unjustly thrown out to the scrap yard behind the city. 

After chatting to real life designers, we headed up to the ‘View from the Top’ gallery for a ‘hands-on workshop’ by North Nottingham E-Learning centre, to learn how to design and make our own game. 

We then went back to the Market Square to see Nottingham’s army of Zombies gathering to attempt to break the world record of total number of zombies gathered in one place.  This record, amazingly, was broken!! 1,227 zombies turned out in the Square to dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller (199 more than the previous attempt). 

After an inspirational day as press officers, the students departed to work on their reports – so watch out for these.  In the meantime, for more information about this great festival visit www.gamecity.org.

Please remember the East Midlands STEM Partnership Forum Event is on 28^th November 2008.  

With less than four weeks away until the big day, preparations in the STEM Support Team gather pace.  

Although some workshops are now fully booked, there are still places left, so remember to register before its too late at - http://emstempartnership.eventbrite.com/ 

Please feel free to forward the above link to anyone that may be interested in attending.

The Space Academy team are gearing up for the launch event on 2 October 2008 by Ian Pearson, Minister of State for Science and Innovation at the National Space Centre, Leicester.  This will be a significant day as the UK’s first Space Academy is officially open for business.  Students and teachers can expect a number of events throughout the year as part of this ground-breaking strategic STEM initiative.  The Space Academy is a partnership between the National Space Centre, the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester, the Science Learning Centre East Midlands and STEMNET, and is funded by emda. 

The academy has a novel structure including dedicated Outreach Post-doctoral Researchers at the partner universities bringing cutting edge space science research into the classroom.  This aims to enrich student STEM learning and will provide teachers with exciting examples of using these subjects in STEM lessons.  We also aim to get industry more involved with outreach activities by facilitating workshops and events linking them with higher education and further education institutions. 

As project manager of the Space Academy I am enormously excited at the potential of this project as I believe that with the expertise we have on board it is without a doubt going to be an outstanding success – watch this space! 

Sarah Hill, Project Manager

I attended this event on 3^rd September and was struck by the messages about skills needs in Nottingham City and beyond. For instance, the expanding bioscience incubator BioCity doesn’t need many life scientists as you might expect. Instead, they need a wide range of expertise in chemistry, medical technology, process engineering, bioinformatics and others to work within this complex environment. 

A statistic that will stay with me is the prediction that, by 2014, half of all school leavers will have to go into healthcare to meet the demand in that sector. 

So there are some huge challenges to meet the skills’ needs and to achieve scientific excellence in the city. Many ideas came out of the delegate discussions around how we can encourage people to develop STEM skills and to move into STEM sectors and how we can excite the whole population about STEM. A number of great partnership projects have already emerged from the Nottingham Science City Education and Training Group which has been meeting for the last 2 years. This event has provided a basis to take the work of the Group forward to tackle these challenges and aspirations. 

www.science-city.co.uk

Cathy Brown, Regional Director, STEMNET