STEM Event

Almost six years ago to the day, Thornton hosted its inaugural STEM Event.

Companies who took part included Sir Robert McAlpine, and one of our students, Antionette Marchant, was inspired to follow a career in Civil Engineering as a result of attending the evening. Antionette is now studying Civil Engineering and Architecture at Bath University, is currently on her placement year with Jackson, and delivered a fantastic interactive workshop for around 100 students at our 2022 event.

Students were put into teams and each team was set a task to build a tower of at least 30cm high to hold a tennis ball for ten seconds. The designs were amazing, all very different and Antionette and her colleague Josh, were hugely impressed with the girls’ problem solving skills.

Alongside this workshop, over 40 girls took part in a Robotics session, led by Dr Gilbert Tang, Head of Electronic Engineering and Robotics at Cranfield University. Dr Tang engaged with the students to discuss their initial perceptions of robotics with students referring to what they see in the movies such as Big Hero 6, and WALL-E. This led on to how Robotics is applied in Medicine, Agriculture, Warehousing (such as Amazon), Care, Sanitation, Tourism, Delivery services and Education.  Dr Tang brought with him NAO, a £6000 humanoid robot designed to help as a Teaching Assistant and students were able to collaboratively program the robotic to speak, move and more.