News Archives - Page 6 of 16

Plan B

20 June, 2018/0 Comments/in News/by Carol

As part of the ESH Building my Skills programme each year, NUSTEM staff take part in a mock interview day with students from North East secondary schools. During the day, students have the opportunity to be interviewed once or twice by representatives from local businesses and other organisations. At NUSTEM we see the interviews as part-practice and part ‘behind the scenes’ to gives students an insight into what they might be asked and why in an interview.

I ask the students to tell me about themselves, and what career they might thinking about. As part of Building my Skills they will have already done some research into possible sectors of interest to them, so they all have something to say. There’s always an wide range of detail in their answers; with some young people knowing very clearly what they want to do and why, and others who have only a vague idea.

Regardless of their answer, my follow-on question is:

‘What is your plan B?’

This often throws the students as I suspect they’re not often asked what happens if they’re not successful.

What is most interesting to me is that, in their answers, students will often change the whole direction of what they would like to do for their plan B. For example, I’ve had students who had been interested in midwifery suggest that their plan B would be ‘something to do with drama’, or who wanted to be a tennis player, but their plan B would be ‘I dunno, maybe history?’. Very few give suggestions that are in a similar sector to the one they are planning for.

At this point in the interview, I’ll talk about other possibilities that the students could do that is not their first choice, but that is linked to it. Often I’ll suggest websites or resources that they might like to investigate. For example, if a student wants to study medicine, but their predicted grades make that look unlikely we’ll talk about what is it about medicine that interests them. They could study radiography, occupational therapy, Information management and so on. (Although I do have to admit that if it’s the salary that they find attractive, then the other options aren’t so well paid!)

I would encourage all students (and teachers and parents/carers) to think about their Plan B. Just in case.

Some useful websites:

Health careers from the NHS – an invaluable website for students that want to work in healthcare, and for their teachers and families to find out the huge range of careers.

This is Engineering from Engineering UK – looking at the opportunities in engineering from a range of different viewpoints e.g. design, space, fashion, sport

National Careers Service website – a government backed website which includes an A-Z description of over 800 different careers.

Why not Physics?

13 June, 2018/0 Comments/in News/by Carol

Last month, the Institute of Physics released a report called ‘Why not Physics?‘

The report looked at how many students studied A-level science subjects in different schools in 2016. The good news is that the picture is a little bit better than when the IOP did a similar analysis 4 years ago.

The bad news is that there are still 44% of schools that don’t send any girls to study A-level Physics*.

As well as looking at the number of students who study physics in different types of schools, the report looks at how well students do in their GCSEs in different subjects, and how that affects their choice of A-levels.

“More girls achieve high grades in GCSE physics than boys, and girls generally outperform boys across the board at GCSE. However, a smaller proportion of girls have physics in their top four subjects at GCSE (65% for girls compared to 81% for boys). When a student does have physics in their top four results, boys are three times more likely to progress to A-level physics than girls.” pg.18

So, on average, girls tend to be doing well in all of their GCSEs, which means that even though they get a good grade in Physics, they also get good grades in their other subjects, which makes physics less likely to be in their top four subjects.

How do GCSE grades influence what subjects a student chooses at A-level? You might think that students will be more likely choose to study A-levels in subjects that they did well in at GCSE.

You can see in Figure 12 from the report that students are much more likely to study a science A-level if the respective GCSE was in their top 4 results at GCSE.

But what happened if a science was not in a student’s top four subjects.

There is no reason why students have to choose A-levels in subjects that were in their top GCSEs. In fact, there are good reasons relating to progression to university or employment, or simply enjoyment, that mean a student might choose to study an A-level that isn’t in their top 4 GCSEs.

Looking at the graph, boys tend to progress to a science subject that was not in their top 4 at about the same rate regardless of whether it was biology, chemistry or physics.

But wait … Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Read that again.

Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Why should this be? Why biology? Why not physics?

One of the recomendations of the IOP report is that:

Schools should provide effective careers guidance that starts at an early stage, focuses on the next educational phase, emphasises the benefit of choosing certain subject combinations to allow progression to a wide variety of opportunities, and actively challenges gender stereotypes and unconscious biases. pg.8

Here at NUSTEM we are working with North East schools to tackle unconscious bias, and minimise its effects on students. We offer CPD on unconscious bias for teachers, as well as for those who are involved in advising students about A-level and career choice.

If you would be interested in having NUSTEM work with your school on unconscious bias, then get in touch.

*This slightly weird definition means that we can also look at schools which don’t have a sixth form, and track where their pupils go.

Leaky pipeline or drip irrigation system

19 March, 2018/0 Comments/in News/by Carol

The leaky pipeline is a recurring metaphor in discussions about the gender balance in Science (especially physical sciences), Technology, Engineering and Maths (collectively, ‘STEM’). Whether the field under discussion is academic or industrial, there is widespread concern about the fact that many of those who start in the field do not stay in the field in the longer term.

Images of a pipeline, with leaks, are regularly produced which show the percentage of women at different stages, and in different disciplines. Alongside the images are headlines about ‘Plugging the leaks’, ‘Why women leave…’ and ‘Where have all the women gone?’

This is a very negative narrative. Somehow, the lack of diversity in a range of fields is the fault of the people leaving, and not the fields themselves. If only the women (or people of colour, or low socioeconomic status) realised that they were part of a leaking pipeline, maybe they’d stay and everything would be alright.

The leaky pipeline metaphor implies that leaving the pipeline is wasteful, and a poor choice (on the part of the people in question). However, is that really the case?

Is the problem with the people or the subject?

In 2006 the Institute of Physics published ‘Girls in the Physics Classroom: a review of the research on girls’ participation in physics‘ and ‘Girls in the Physics Classroom: a teachers guide for action.’ In many ways, this work was focussed on how to make the physics classroom more appealing to girls, and to identify how to teach girls so that they liked physics.

Over time IOP has used analysis of the National Pupil Database to show that there are whole school effects around the take-up of physics by girls and boys. The report ‘It’s different for girls‘ looked at the differences in Physics uptake as a function of type of school, and ‘Closing doors‘ looked at the gender balance for a range of subjects.

It would seem that uptake of A-level physics (and by extension other STEM subjects) is not a problem for 13-16 year old girls to solve, but rather is mediated by whole school, and even societal, issues.

On a wider scale, I would argue that rather than trying to change girls and make them choose STEM subjects, the onus is on the different STEM industries to change so that girls (and others) want to work there.

Are the people leaving ‘going to waste’?

The implication from many of the articles around the leaky STEM pipeline is that those people that leave the pipeline are wasting their training and their talents. Perhaps, from the point of view of an engineering company, an engineering graduate who becomes a physics or maths teacher is a waste. They have dripped out of the pipeline, and represent a net loss. Maybe, from the point of view of a university, the chemistry graduate who becomes a science communicator, or an MP, is a waste. Every A-level physics student who goes on to study law or music is another physicist lost from the pipeline.

But are they wasted? Or do they take the ways of thinking and understanding of the world gained from studying STEM (to whatever level), and use them in other fields of knowledge?

Changing the metaphor

What if, instead of thinking in terms of leaking pipelines, we thought about drip irrigation systems?

A drip irrigation system is a series of pipes which direct water and nutrients to plants where they are needed, and then release the water. In ‘leaking,’ the irrigation system makes its environment better.

Society needs people at all levels and in a range of different disciplines who are comfortable with STEM and see its value, not necessarily working in STEM. Maybe we should think of the drip irrigation STEM system – improving society as those with STEM training permeate throughout it.

At a recent STEM in Schools conference, Yvonne Baker (STEM Learning) talked about the need to consider a longer game. Maybe students don’t go into STEM, or maybe they leave STEM to follow another career path. But, perhaps when their children, or friends’ children talk about wanting to become engineers, physicists or computer programmers, they would encourage those career choices.

Rather than making people feel like they’ve failed if they don’t make it to the bucket at the end of the pipeline, let’s encourage them to irrigate and improve wherever they go to.

Let’s change the metaphor.

Sci Pop: running a science pop-up shop

14 February, 2018/0 Comments/in News/by Joe Shimwell

We’ve been running science pop-up shops for a number of years now, in shopping centres across the north-east. These community events enable us work with our “harder to reach” family audiences in ways that we can’t achieve through our school-based workshops.

This post outlines our process for running these events; we hope you might find it useful if you’re setting up your own interventions to support local families. Do contact us if you’d like more information, support, or clarification of anything you see here.

Finding a venue

NUSTEM works with local communities in areas of higher socio-economic deprivation, because we want to reach families from groups that are currently underrepresented in STEM fields. The locations of these communities are key to finding suitable venues; we can’t expect them to come to us, so we need to go to them. In our case, local shopping centres during half-term holidays have been a good source of the sorts of families with which we want to work.

A quick google of shopping centres in the area was a great start: centre websites typically have contact details for the centre manager, then it’s a case of contacting them to find out if they have any vacant lots that could use for events. We’ve built relationships with store managers in three shopping centres in our region, and we run our pop-up shops during each half-term holiday. We’ve found centres to be receptive, supportive, and straightforward to deal with.

Choosing suitable activities

We pick our activities carefully to make sure that primary-aged children can complete them and that parents and carers can join in too. This is important: we don’t want to be day-care or a break for parents, we want engagements where families talk about and ‘do science’ together. If we can foster this shared discussion about science at the event, parents are more likely to feel confident in continuing discussions at home. Our activities are all designed using cheap, readily-available materials so that families can easily repeat them at home. The activities are also linked to a career. For example, this week we’re showcasing:

Botanist: creating miniature greenhouses using freezer bags
Forensic scientist: taking and identifying fingerprints
Astrophysicist: build planets from balloon and rice

Construction engineer: soft toy bricks and tools for young children
Acoustician: noisy lollies
Mechanical engineer: catapults from cups and spoons

Staffing your event

It’s impossible to know how many people are going to visit your event. With all the advertising in the world, bad weather or a new film at the cinema can impact your numbers. We usually see about 70 people at each event (sometimes more, sometimes a lot less), but we have to plan for rather more ‘just in case.’

Our events are staffed by undergraduates from the University. They attend a one-hour training session where they’re briefed on the activities, ethos of the event, and safety hazards to watch out for. For five activities we plan a minimum of seven staff: this allows each activity to be crewed, with two spare people to further promote the event around the shopping centre, and to support delivery over peak periods and lunchtime.

Marketing

We’ve learned the hard way that you can’t just put on an event like this and assume families will come flooding through the doors at 10am. If you don’t tell people about your event, nobody will come.

That sounds obvious, but solutions are subtle. Our current marketing approach includes:

A week before, we drop advertising postcards to all the schools local to the area.
We ask the centres to promote the event on social media and throughout the centre on posters.
Facebook groups can be a good source of attention, though whether that converts into foot traffic or not can vary.
During the day, we pace the centre handing out more flyers and (gently!) accosting families.

In the end, the last of those is the only way to ensure that you’re going to have families through the door. It’s worth planning staffing accordingly.

Logistics

Think about how you’re going to present the space you’ll be working in. It’s unlikely that you’ll have tables and chairs provided by the shopping centre (but ask to make sure) so a van and furniture hire might be needed. We can source chairs from our university, but not tables, so we use a local events company: it costs us about £30 to rent tables for two days.

On the day, we give ourselves an hour for setup and takedown, which is ample time with a large enough crew of helpers. Van parking needs planning – ask your centre liaison for their advice, both for unloading and for parking.

Risk assessment

Your venue will likely insist on seeing your risk assessment and public liability insurance documentation. In addition to thinking through each activity and minimising hazards, we use a lot of signage to help ensure that parents know that, ultimately, they are responsible for their children (including their behaviour). Our staff are briefed on the potential hazards for each activity so they can work safely with the public.

You’ll also want to assess the unit you’re working in. This can be tricky as you might not know exactly where you are until the day of the event. Make sure that you walk around the venue before the public enter, carrying out a visual inspection of the whole space. Anything you spot that may be a hazard (particularly trip hazards, in older shops) should be removed, covered or signposted. Talk your risk assessment through with your staff before the public come in. Ultimately, if you are not happy with the space, you need to speak to the manager before you let the public in.

As well as checking the space before you open the doors, check it before you leave at the end of the day. You probably want to return to the same venue, so as a matter of courtesy hand it over in at least as good a state as you found it… and don’t leave anything behind!

And finally…

We’re really proud of the pop-up shops we’ve run over the past three years (23 events and counting!). We’ve reached new audiences and engaged families in science that we definitely wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Sometimes our numbers are low, but that comes with the nature of the audience we want to engage, and it doesn’t put us off. Each new interaction is a chance for us to support a young person and their family in a life-long positive relationship with STEM subjects.

Organising a pop-up shop is always going to be significant work, but over time we’ve managed to streamline the process – partly by keeping the events simple. We’re not trying to be an all-singing, all-dancing glossy representation of cutting-edge research, we’re trying to present STEM explorations as being a normal part of family life. Cardboard and masking tape, casual and friendly staff, a supportive and relaxed atmosphere, people leaving with smiles and a determination to continue activities at home – these are things which matter to our shops.

Further information

This guide from Imperial College, London is useful: it’s a handbook for science pop-up shops which covers a range of different approaches, from interventions which look much like ours through to much more highly-designed, ‘high concept’ spaces. We don’t believe the latter suit our objectives, but it’s worth thinking through your own aims, the circumstances of your audiences, and the capacity you can muster.

If you’d like more information from us, please get in touch.

@NUSTEMxmas: our festive, robotic, IoT glockenspiel

14 December, 2017/0 Comments/in News/by Joe Shimwell

Every now and then, we (Jonathan and Joe) get an idea stuck in our heads. It’s usually a ridiculous idea, an idea that should never see the light of day. But then, one of us says it out loud…

We’d like to introduce you to the NUSTEM IoT Festive Glockenspiel™.

Whilst you pick your jaw up off the floor, we’ll explain what’s going on and offer a little background as to how we ended up with this creation in our office.

The Glockenspiel has the brains of a Raspberry Pi, and those brains are listening to Twitter. When anyone tweets to @NUSTEMxmas and requests a festive tune, our Pi picks up the message and quickly searches through our vast bank of early 00s mobile phone ringtones for a match. A command is then sent to another Pi elsewhere in the office, which decodes the ringtone and instructs yet another Pi to rev eight servos into action. Those servos move hammers which strike our home-made, only-slightly-out-of-tune, no-sharps-or-flats, plays-with-enough-enthusiasm-to-occasionally-break-itself glockenspiel. We also added flashing lights – synced to the music, obviously – to enhance the festive mood, and a readout so we know who’s requested the song. One of the Pis (we forget which, but probably the first) also tweets a reply to the original requester.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how it works, we’ve documented our code on GitHub. You can download it and (in theory…) build one of these things yourself. Or poke around in our code for festive giggles: we cobbled this whole project together using bits of previous projects or longer-term incomplete ideas, so the system architecture is at the hilarious end of software engineering.

1 2 3

How we got here

The Glockenspiel is a spin-off from our Robot Orchestra workshop. We’ve been running this digital making activity with our schools and as a public drop-in for several years. The workshop (and the robots) have gradually developed, becoming a little cleverer each time:

First version: Arduino controllers move servos on a fixed beat pattern.
Second version: Arduinos ‘easily’ reprogrammable, and operating two servos.
Third version: Wemos D1 controllers commanded over wifi from a Raspberry Pi, hence all playing in sync.
Fourth version: Command system can parse saved patterns and so ‘play tunes’; controllers can respond to one of eight ‘channels’.
Fifth version: You know, things get a little hazy somewhere in here…
nth version: System controlled by a lovely light-up button board, or a less glamorous but more practical on-screen interface. This is both a super-modern visual programming environment, and something that looks uncannily similar to the sort of punched cards that were used to drive weaving looms and started all this stuff off in the first place.

We’ve built the various parts of our system in a modular sort of way, so it’s relatively easy to switch bits in, remove parts, or graft in new ideas. We use this approach in lots of our digital making projects, with the result that ideas and bits of code are easily shared across projects. We also have a habit of attempting projects which are right on the edge of what we think we can do, but which feel achievable because we’ve already solved half the problems in other projects.

(an early version of the robotic glockenspiel – from, like, Tuesday or thereabouts – showing the on-screen direct programming interface. This was before we built the parser for mobile phone ringtones.)

The new parts we’ve built for this version of the project include:

Using a Raspberry Pi as our servo controller, and driving eight (count ’em, eight!) servos from it. Thanks to Ben Nuttall for pointing us in the right direction for that.
Handling requests from Twitter. We’ve done this before, but we’ve done a better job of it this time.
We found a library of suitably festive songs … in RTTTL mobile phone ringtone format, which is one of those things that rather died out in 2004. So we dredged up music theory half-remembered from our pre-GCSE days and leaned on bits of code from others (RTTTL parser; frequency-to-note convertor), and ended up with code which plays ringtones on our…
…home-made copper pipe glockenspiel. Which was itself inspired by this Instructable. Big thanks to everyone who came to our Raspberry Jam last weekend and mucked in to help build this!
We added a Pimoroni Displayotron HAT screen, which was intended for a completely different project but was just too bling not to use. Only later did we realise there’s a whole monitor literally right next to it. Oh, well.
Finally, we hacked some of the older Wemos-based players so they drove twinkly lights rather than servos, and used them to increase the total amount of festive.

We’ll use bits of this system in a variety of ways throughout 2018, so it’s not even the case that we’ve been massively goofing off in work hours. Mostly. Sadly, we didn’t manage to get to ‘posting video clips back to Twitter’ – most of the recipes we’ve seen for that sort of thing are video-only, which wouldn’t work so well for a musical project. So if you tweet us, you’ll just have to trust that the system has indeed played a little tune for us in the NUSTEM office.

Hmm… a little belief? At Christmas? It’ll never catch on.

New opportunities: GET North resources, Whole School Gender Equality, Computing resource grants

28 November, 2017/0 Comments/in News/by Jonathan

If you’re the sort of person who’s involved and engaged with NUSTEM’s work, these opportunities might be right up your street:

Great Exhibition of the North Teaching Resource Creators

The team running GET North 2018 are looking for help developing teaching resource packs for use across England at Key Stages 2 and 3. Separate packs will be produced to tie into the themes of the Exhibition:

KS2: Science, Art and Design, and Design and Technology
KS3: Computing, English, and Design and Technology

The organisers are looking to recruit resource creators; professionals who can provide current industry context and support to the resource; and SEN consultants.

Interested? Get the full details and the application form at the GET North website. Deadline 12 noon, 1st December.

IOP Whole School Gender Equality Programme

The Institute of Physics have a long-running project looking at improving gender balance in physics. Their reports and research are valuable and highly influential (they’ve been a key influence on NUSTEM, for example!). Currently 40 schools are part of a whole-school programme, making small changes in their environment which can lead to big changes in student outlook. Funding has recently been secured to expand this programme.

Participating schools will receive whole-school CPD on unconscious bias and gender equality; can nominate a Gender Champion to attend a free 2-day residential course; and will have access to funding to support further work, including dissemination to other schools and partners.

For further details and the contact email through which to express an interest, see the IOP’s website. Also, do keep us informed (nustem@northumbria.ac.uk), as we’re keen to assist in these efforts ourselves.

Community Foundation Raspberry Pi kit funding

This just in… the Community Foundation have up to £2,000 available to support the purchase of Raspberry Pi kits and CPD by primary schools, as part of a new project launched recently by Make Stuff NE and Tech for Life. For more information and to apply for funding, click those links. At the time of writing things aren’t quite working correctly; we think the relevant grant scheme may be this one, in which case it’s a very straightforward (online) form.

Family Space Explorers

20 November, 2017/0 Comments/in Events, News/by Joe Shimwell

We’re always looking for new ways to engage different audiences, and this winter our Family Space Explorers project is doing just that. Funded by the UK Space Agency, we’re engaging young children and their families with space science through STEM story workshops and hands-on activities in libraries across the north east.

Why families?

As a project, we believe that one way of addressing the STEM skills shortage is through long-term interventions. We want STEM conversations happening at home, amongst young families, so that when children later come to make career-critical subject choices they already have a wealth of experience and family support to guide their decisions. The Family Space Explorers workshops are aimed at children aged 2-5, along with their families. They’re carefully planned to help parents and carers build their confidence in exploring science and engineering topics with their child.

Why libraries?

Most of NUSTEM’s work is delivered via our partner schools, which are drawn from the local area. For some families, entering a school can itself be a barrier to engagement. Working in local libraries and community centres (along with schools!), in areas of higher socio-economic deprivation, we hope to reach a greater number and variety of families.

The Workshops

We’ve developed two workshops, each with activities linked to books for young children. The sessions are each 45 minutes long and involve shared reading and activities. At the end of each session, participants get to keep a copy of the book, so they can continue the reading and activities at home.

Choosing the stories was difficult. We aim to embed diversity and equality throughout our work, and it was tricky to find stories that had strong female lead characters. In book after book we found male characters (children and adults) heading into space… with very little representation from female characters.

We chose “Goodnight Spaceman” because of its charming story and strong links to the UK Space Agency. We also wrote our own book, “Are we nearly there yet?” to explore space exploration through non-fiction, which allowed us to cast a female lead character in the shape of a robot explorer. We also put together a list of other good STEM stories, which you can find at our Family Space Explorers page.

Linking activities

It’s important that our workshops can be repeatable by families at home – we want the interventions to continue beyond the end of the workshop. In the workshops, families use Duplo to build their own version of a space rocket to travel to the International Space Station, and a rover to explore the surface of Mars. The simplicity of the activities enable parents to continue constructive play at home, and to adopt similar approaches with other stories.

Supporting local schools

We’re sending a copy of our book to schools across the region, and inviting teachers and educators who work with young children to attend our two free training sessions. These sessions will equip teachers to deliver the sessions in their own schools.

How to get involved

We have a number of sessions booked into our calendar over the next few months. If you have children aged 2-5 and you’d like to attend, click here to view upcoming sessions and find details of how to book onto the events.

Tetrahedral Kite, Beamish

1 July, 2017/0 Comments/in News/by Jonathan

As part of Beamish Museum’s ‘Wind in Your Sails’ event, visitors today helped us make this amazing tetrahedral kite. It’s constructed from drinking straws, survival blanket, fishing line, and tape (OK, and a couple of cheeky lengths of dowelling to reinforce the keel and spine).

Built and flown (…and crashed) in the same day. Huge thanks to everyone who helped out. We hope you enjoyed building this as much as we did.

Alexander Graham Bell

Better-known for inventing the telephone, Scotsman Alexander Graham-Bell was also obsessed with kites. Specifically, box kites based on tetrahedral cells, just like our. There’s a terrific set of photographs of these at Public Domain Review, here’s just a taster:

Alexander Graham-Bell’s 64-cell tetrahedral kite. Public domain.

Looks familiar?

Sunday

One of the neat features of this design is that it works at several different scales. If you think of the single tetrahedron as being one ‘cell’, then a 4-cell kite will fly pretty well. A 16-cell kite flies really well. Even in the gusty wind at Beamish, on Sunday Carol and Antonio managed this:

Thanks for all your help!

International Women in Engineering Day 2017

23 June, 2017/0 Comments/in News/by Carol

Today (23rd June) is International Women in Engineering Day.

Across social media, companies and organisations are tweeting and posting to show their support for women in engineering.

Tweets which show employees looking happy, often standing in front of large equipment!

Friday is Women in Engineering Day #nwed2017 so we’re talking about skills in transport all week long. Follow & join in at #TransportSkills pic.twitter.com/UQbD80eMKC

— UrbanTransportGroup (@utg_uk) June 19, 2017

Today we’re celebrating National Women in Engineering Day. Here’s some of the team hard at work. #NWED pic.twitter.com/ffHqr8ABA9

— Foster + Partners (@FosterPartners) June 23, 2017

Our member Roshni Wijesekera talks about being a woman in engineering: http://t.co/VIlNZBTq6g #INWED17 pic.twitter.com/WfXRKu1Naq

— The IMechE team (@IMechE) June 23, 2017

Here at NUSTEM, we think that it’s really important to show the diversity of the engineering profession along with other STEM careers.

American activist Marian Wright Edelman said

‘You can’t be what you don’t see’

It’s not having role models exactly, but thinking that if someone else, who is like you, can be in a career, then so can you. We hear parents tell their children ‘You’re just like your Aunty, she’s very good with numbers. Perhaps you could be an accountant like her’ or words to that effect.

We believe that it’s important that children and young people see ‘people like them’ in a range of careers.

In school, one of the most common sources of information when students are ‘researching’ is wikipedia. And wikipedia is a good starting point. But what if students want to find out about women who work in science or engineering. How good is wikipedia then?

Sadly, it’s not great. Only 15.5% of Wikipedia articles on people are about women. So when students look for information about people in science and engineering, they’ll get a skewed viewpoint.

Here at NUSTEM we’ve teamed up with Dr Jess Wade from Imperial College and Dr Alice White, resident wikipedian at Wellcome Trust to change this imbalance on wikipedia.

On 25th July we will be hosting a day-long wikipedia Hackathon for girls aged 14 – 18 in the North East. Girls will find out how to judge the reliability of a source, when and where to reference and how to edit wikipedia to create their own content. They’ll then edit or create wikipedia pages with information about some of the great women who are working in science.

If you’re interested in joining us, and are aged 14-18, then please sign up on our eventbrite page.

And if you’re looking for more images and stories about women in engineering then follow the hashtag #IWED on twitter.

Goodbye Think Physics, hello NUSTEM

8 March, 2017/0 Comments/in News/by Jonathan

We’ve changed our name.

We started as Think Physics in 2014, but as the project has grown we’ve come to view that name as, well, not quite right. Whilst we continue to be committed to addressing the challenges facing — in particular — gender balance in the physical sciences, we now work much more broadly than our original name suggested. Within Northumbria University, we work across departments; with our partner primary schools we support the whole STEM curriculum; and at secondary we aim to support technology, engineering, computer science, maths, and more, in addition to physics.

So we’ve bitten the bullet and given ourselves a shiny new name which better reflects what we do. We’ve also switched from lovely organic green to dashing university orange.

We continue working with our partner schools and delivering everything we’ve done previously – and we’re already finding our new name opens doors more widely across the University. So watch out for exciting news from us in the very near future.