On 9th July 2025 we gathered together partners, colleagues and friends to celebrate ten years of sustained outreach, engagement, and research. Here, we present notes and links to continue the discussions started during the day.
Programme
Here’s how the day went down
12:30 – Light lunch and refreshments
13:15 – Introduction
13:20 – Starting Points. Prof Becky Strachan
13:30 – … and then there was a Theory of Change. Prof Carol Davenport
13:50 – Bazaar and cake
15:05 – Our research journey. Annie Padwick and Carol Davenport
15:25 – Now and the next 10 years. NUSTEM team
15:45 – NUSTEM – a university approach. Prof Andy Long, Vice Chancellor
16:00 – Close
Bazaar tables
Guests circulated around a selection of activities and examples. Here are links and accompanying notes for each
Attributes
Notes and links to follow!
Teaching: Influencing practice
Roleplaying Careers
Partnerships
NUSTEM (at that time Think Physics) was founded as a partnership between Northumbria University, sector bodies, regional councils and education trusts and employers. Formalising relationships and sustaining them over a long period of time has allowed them to flourish and for them to continue to bear fruit.
Our approach to schools was unique at that time. Instead of focusing on delivering the NUSTEM offer to lots of schools, we formed formal partnerships with our primary and secondary school, each committing time and resource to working together with shared goals over a sustained period. This has enabled us to build strong working relationships and try out new ideas and projects such as exploring parental engagement at Battle Hill primary school https://nustem.uk/myst/ and co-design a board game with New York primary school https://nustem.uk/in-our-hands/.
Over the years we have realised that partnerships are they way forward. We work with colleagues at the University to learn about and disseminate their research and enrich outreach and teaching. We have become formal partners in many academic research projects offering science communication training, public engagement design and evaluation. Forming partnerships allows us to tap into the expertise and knowledge of others, open up new audiences, share and disseminate our ideas and support partners in STEM engagement. Over years of working together on shared projects, we have strong working relationships and ways of working.
We work closely with partners in the region. Having worked closely with University’s cultural partners the Centre for Life and with Museums Northumberland and the Discovery Museum (North East Museums) for a number of years. We aim for closer partnership with regional Universities through the supportive structures of Universities of North East England. We hold lead the North East STEM Engagement network, bringing together like-minded people to discuss common issues and shared goals.
We would be nothing without the support of our funders who have given support to our ideas, provided support, training and collaboration opportunities, and who continue to allow us freedom to try new ideas and explore new ways of working.
Evaluation
NUSTEM are committed to building understanding of STEM participation through our outreach and engagement projects. As a result, we spend time to evaluate our work well and sharing the findings with others in the sector.
The evaluations of our funded projects are publicly available as evaluation reports and blogs on our website, or are written up as research papers.
https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-023-00421-y
https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/publications/innovative-methods-for-evaluating-the-science-capital-of-young-pe
10 years in, we reflect that evaluating STEM engagement is much more complex than we first thought. Initially we were concerned with rigour and achieving the best design we could with what resource we had available, more recently we have been focused on how we can make evaluation relevant and useful, and achieving more participatory evaluation that serves our audiences as well (image: evaluation choices poster). Most recently we have incorporated reflective practice and participatory evaluation methods such as Most Significant Change into our evaluation plans.
Lucia and Aimee.docx
Our table activity today asks participants to discuss suitable outcomes for STEM engagement evaluation and identify ones they use or think are valuable.
As well as in-house evaluation of our projects and activities, NUSTEM offers external evaluation consultancy for other organisations. We work with organisations to:
- Build evidence-base, develop programme theories and Theories of Change
- Conduct impact evaluations and demonstrate value
- Better understand how interventions work, and in what circumstances and for whom
- Give participants a voice in programming and activity design
- Support organisational development and learning.
We regularly work with companies to evaluate large-scale public engagement events, programmes and networks, and to guide evaluating planning.
University & Society
Notes and links to follow!
Families
Notes and links to follow!
Beyond STEM
Notes and links to follow!
