Engineering Students @ Work Challenge
The ES@W Challenge is support funded for schools and students that are unable to cover the cost of the program.
It is a work experience program that is run in collaboration with an engineering firm. It features presentations by engineers from the firm as well as guest speaker engineers from the community.
It is a week long Work Experience for Year 9 & 10 students above 15 years old. Typically, students are asked to work in groups to develop a sustainable building precinct.
Students prepare professionally written reports, and create interactive 3D models and 3D prints of their building and precinct. On the final day, students present to a live audience of engineers, teachers and parents.
Support Partners
Akorn are grateful to receive funding and support from organisations such as ARBS Research Foundation, Introba, Engineers Australia, Alloys & Makerbot.
Engineering Students @ Work Challenge
The Engineering Students @ Work Challenge aims to provide a realistic engineering work experience for secondary school students. Students are provided a brief to collaboratively design buildings that form a sustainable satellite community. Models of their buildings are printed using MakerBot 3D Printers.
During the program, they:
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- Learn about the diversity & viability of engineering
- Work with professional engineers
- Participate in experiential learning
- Develop an understanding of and an ability to develop sustainable engineering design solutions
Students develop the following skills and gain benefits such as:
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- Creative thinking and analytical skills to develop engineering projects and solve problems with sustainable outcomes in mind Student communication skills to enable collaboration in a team situation and to justify their decisions and actions
- Information and communications technology and learning skills to research, acquire and manage information relevant to project development
- Interpersonal skills through collaborative working in teams to achieve a common objective
- Opportunity to learn and use/implement current technology
- Encourages students to consider engineering as a study path and future career
Program Feedback
I wanted to thank you on behalf of Noah, Chris and myself for a great work experience during the holidays.
Noah thoroughly enjoyed it, he loved being in a professional organisation and completing a project that was interesting, challenging and allowed him to use his skills.
He had great praise for the company and especially Liz who oversaw the group. He appreciated how much the students were treated with respect and given a great deal of constant and constructive support.
It sounds like it was an amazing experience for them all and Noah came home with a renewed confidence and gratitude to have had such an astounding experience.
So thank you for organising this and please pass on our thanks to your team who made the arrangements. Can you also please thank the company for the opportunity and for planting seeds in these students’ minds as to the future that exists for them?
If anything this has now cemented Noah’s idea of studying engineering at uni. He also has a renewed confidence in himself, maybe travelling independently to the CBD each day helped!
Once again thank you for this opportunity.
Vanessa
Parent
As a parent one of the students (Elizabeth) who attended Engineering Students @ Work last week, I just wanted to send this email to express my thanks for this valuable opportunity. It was wonderful to be invited to attend the presentation day and see all that they had worked on. I couldn’t believe how much different work experience was for me.
Elizabeth loved hearing the different engineering experts and learning some things which then needed to be incorporated into the facility they were asked to design. Having a short timeframe to produce a design with people they didn’t even know, meant that the students had to quickly work at communicating so they would work together effectively. This is a skill that’s needed in the workplace where not every colleague is your best friend. It was good to hear each student present, sharing something of what they had designed, and how they had worked together.
Again, I’d like to thank Akorn, [ARBS] and Engineers Australia for the opportunity this week provided. One of Elizabeth’s teachers has encouraged her to look at design as a career but until this week, when she got to ‘try on’ the process she hasn’t been convinced. After this experience she is open to engineering as a career pathway.
Best wishes
Heather
Parent
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