Science and Technology Challenge- University of Liverpool

12 gifted and talented year 8 girls attended the University of Liverpool on Friday 4^th July 2014 to take part in a ‘Science and Technology Challenge’ against other schools in the Merseyside area, promoting women into STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and maths). The pupils took part in a range of STEM activities throughout the day, including programming robot vehicles, constructing images using the police software E-Fit, building a miniature car and bridge building. All pupils did extremely well, with victories from Katie Lees and Lucie Corcoran in the car building challenge and Ashleigh Booth and Rebecca Quinn in the E-Fit challenge.

The pupils had a fantastic day, met lots of new peers from other schools and had the chance to sit in a university lecture theatre, ask current undergraduate students any questions and gain an insight into university life.

Well done girls!

Anjesa, one of the pupils involved, tells us about her experience on the trip.

The trip to the University of Liverpool was a great and educational time and a good science trip. The activities were interesting and improved our designing and engineering skills, knowing how to build structures and control them. My favourite activity was the computer science session, where we had a competition to create accurate images of real people’s faces using the E-Fit computer software the police use to identify suspects.

Anjesa Hakija

Health Science residential at the University of Liverpool

 Eight year 10 students recently had a glimpse into true university life when they visited the University of Liverpool for a three day residential. The trip allowed the pupils to stay in student halls of residence for two nights, meet undergraduate and post-graduate students of the university and get a try out a number of different courses available to them at university including veterinary science, dentistry, medicine, psychology and many more. How else to promote the progression onto university into these prestigious careers than to try them out for yourself and have a true idea of what’s involved.

Leah, one of the pupils involved, tells us about her experience on the trip.

“On the 8^th of July, Rhys, Anna, Abbey and I went on a trip to the University of Liverpool. The trip was based on a 3 day course doing ‘Dangerous Sciences’, this included physics, computer sciences, engineering, electrical engineering and earth and ocean…

As we arrived outside the university, the first activity we had was Physics where we learnt about liquid nitrogen and discussed a range of jobs available with a degree in physics. During the three days, other activities we completed we x-ray imaging, competitions in building catapults, controlling robots with computer programming and changing a computer game. On the last day, we packed in the morning and moved onto sessions which consisted of ‘finance at university’, Q and As with university students and then on to designing our own university. After this, we said our goodbyes to the new friends we had made and set off back to school.

My overall experience was brilliant! I had so much fun and enjoyed the whole trip, it definitely opened my eyes towards university life, I will most certainly be going.”

Leah Vasconcelos