HANDS ON: Students try their hand at making the most efficient paper planes.

By Anand Holla

Recently, BAE Systems hosted a STEM Workshop at Nasser Bin Abdullah Secondary Independent Boys School in a bid to promote engineering as “an interesting, fun and diverse career for young people.”
As part of its education outreach programme, BAE Systems works closely with Qatar University in this area. At such workshops, students get to weigh engineering in as a possible career and undertake a hands-on engineering activity as well as speak to BAE Systems’ graduates on their decision to choose engineering as a career. Community spoke to BAE Systems spokesperson to know more:

Why does BAE Systems believe in organising STEM Workshops?
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, as it is more commonly known, is an interdisciplinary educational curriculum focused on building the skills that drive innovation and fuel economic growth for the future.  BAE Systems’ approach to STEM is to inspire young people to think about their future careers across the STEM subjects. We use our young engineers, both graduates and apprentices, to bring STEM alive, making it more accessible for everyone. During our STEM outreach programme, arranged with Qatar University at the end of October, we visited six Qatari and two International schools in Doha, inspiring over 500 children with our ‘Theory of Flight’ presentation and hands-on activity. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report considers the quality of maths and science education and the availability of scientists and engineers as critical indicators of national and economic competitiveness. In the 2015-2016 edition of the report, Qatar was ranked the most competitive economy in the Middle East and North Africa. For Qatar, increasing the number of graduates and developing skills in the STEM field is a Human Development priority deeply rooted in Qatar’s National Vision 2030. Through our Educational Outreach programmes, BAE Systems has been actively engaged with educators and students in Qatar since 2010.

Through your programme, how have you made engineering as a career seem fun and interesting?
The key for any successful educational project is to be able to relate to the audience and make it relevant to them. As part of the BAE Systems’ apprentice and graduate programmes, we have a pool of extremely talented, bright and sociable young engineers who love to get involved in STEM workshops, both nationally and internationally. In our STEM workshops, graduates talk about their placements and experiences at BAE Systems. So, during our recent workshops in Doha, Samantha Surmon was talking about her role as a cockpit designer and blackbox analyst, whereas Adam Rule was talking about his plan of advancing his career in aviation accident investigation. The students had a lot of questions for them as this was the first time they had access to engineers with know-how and personal experience of this kind.   

What sort of activities do the children get to participate in?
It’s important to make the STEM workshop activities as interactive, fun and interesting as possible. After the short presentation on aviation by the BAE Systems’ graduates, students were tasked to build their own paper plane. Some might wonder what is so special about a paper plane; we all know how to do it. However, when the students were given the task of building a paper aeroplane that flies the furthest or highest, the nature of the task changed. What makes some people’s planes drop like stones, whereas others’ fly across the room? The students started to ask questions engineers would ask and got an insight into how engineers think. Our STEM workshops are not about introducing complex or mundane exercises; they are all about engagement with the entire group, making everyone feel included and part of the exercise.

On what basis were these activities designed for this programme?
BAE Systems has an established STEM workshop model that we have been working with and developing over a number of years. What we at BAE Systems aim to do, is to ‘bring engineering to life’ by demonstrating the importance and impact engineering has on individuals or the local community and we have interactive exercises for the students to participate in. On this visit, we were talking about the most obvious engineering projects in Qatar – construction of houses and towers, metro links, football stadiums and Hamad International Airport. Students in Qatar can relate to and experience the projects on a personal level on a daily basis. Talking about subject matters students can relate to and topics they can put into context bring the examples to life and the students find a new appreciation of the detail that goes into engineering projects.

What is the core essence of the lessons shared by the BAE Systems’ visiting graduates about their engineering experiences?
Our graduates’ personal experiences are absolutely crucial for the success of the BAE Systems’ STEM workshops. Talking about their time at school, favourite subjects, why they chose their particular engineering course at university and why they wanted to start working for BAE Systems is very important for the local students. For example, Adam, one of the visiting graduates, spoke of how he had been working as a pilot for a few years before discovering that it wasn’t for him and he wanted to return to engineering. Sharing his personal journey with engineering students at Qatar University, was very inspiring for the students, and was followed up with more in-depth conversation at the Q&A.