TILG Project Manager, Paul Dyer was joined by Head of Curriculum, Education & Quality, Rebecca Clarke and Accountant and Programme Support, Carla Thomas in Washington DC. Over the course of the partner meeting, our team had the valuable opportunity to meet and work with the teams from the other three global locations, Johannesburg - South Africa and Cincinnati and Greenville representing North America.
Carla Thomas said, “I was fortunate enough to be invited to a partner's workshop with Rebecca and Paul to Washington DC, hosted by FHI 360 and joined with the other community partners from Johannesburg, Poland, Ohio and South Carolina, as well as GE Vernova and GE Aerospace.
For two days, we collaborated on best practice and our personal experiences in each area of running the Next Engineers programme. This included; ice breakers, a design challenge, break out rooms and feedback, video q&a with students from each area, hot topics on important aspects of the project and what the future might look like.
Each community partner also presented to the group and gave the room the opportunity to ask questions about how and why they run the programme in such a way. The Staffordshire team's presentation covered the Year 3 'Design Your Own' challenge and the array of unique ideas that the students came up with, such as an adapted home gym for disabled people. We included clips of the students talking about their experiences and the importance of the GE Vernova graduate volunteers.
Overall, we left feeling very grateful and positive to have a group of people that we can turn to support this unique project as well as getting to see some of Washington DC and its history. We will now be reviewing all of our takeaways and looking at how we can implement some of these strategies into the next 2 years”.
Rebecca Clarke added, “It was so exciting to meet the other partners who, like The Inspirational Learning Group, deliver this fabulous programme worldwide to develop STEM skills and to promote engineering as a future career. It was great to hear everyone’s ideas and share best practice. A highlight for me was hearing directly from students who had recently graduated from the programme!”.
Now that the team has returned from Washington DC, their attention has now turned to the new academic year which will see our Academy students in Cohort 2 and 3 returning to their sessions refreshed from their summer break.
In addition to the Academy sessions, our facilitation team will also be engaging with schools as part of the Discovery project. Over 1,500 aspiring engineers from schools across Staffordshire will build their awareness of engineering through short, engaging sessions led by our teams. Students will be tasked with completing challenges including “Run Marble Run”, “Critical Load” and “Toxic Popcorn” and will expand their knowledge of the engineering mindset and spark the imagination of future aspiring engineers in Staffordshire!
