Celebrating Chesterfield’s STEM ambassadors
Educators, businesses and local authorities across Chesterfield have been working together in recent years, as part of efforts to encourage more students to consider further study of STEM subjects and progression into related careers, inspiring the next generation of STEM professionals.
To help with enthusing and engaging our young people, STEM Ambassadors volunteer their time and expertise to promote STEM to young people in original, creative and practical ways. They also work to support the STEM curriculum in schools, raising awareness of careers and supporting activities in the community. Ambassadors cross all ages and backgrounds, representing a vast spectrum of different employers.
Chesterfield businesses can get involved in supporting STEM careers in a number of ways:
- Sign up as a STEM Ambassador at https://www.stem.org.uk/
- offering tours of your workplace for students and teachers
- delivering talks to groups of learners in schools about your organisation and job opportunities
- mentoring students doing projects
- networking with students and teachers
- setting a project related to your sector
- doing mock interviews
- filming a video of you at your workplace
- and much more!
What are the benefits of being a STEM Ambassador?
- Engage and develop your employees
- raise your profile within the local community, whilst also expanding your regional and national media presence
- promote your apprentice roles directly to local schools and colleges
- support your recruitment efforts, boosting your future technical and graduate pipeline
- offer specific and sector careers information to young people and their influencers
Meet the Ambassadors
Here are a few examples of how STEM ambassadors are helping to drive forward the future workforce here in Chesterfield:
Name – Lindsay Rowe
Company – AECOM
Position in company – Senior Mechanical Engineer
What it means to be a STEM ambassador.
To me, being a STEM ambassador is an opportunity to raise awareness of alternative careers, share my knowledge about the world of work and show young people that there really is something out there for everyone and there is more than one way to achieve your goal.
What it means for your business.
STEM ambassadors not only raise awareness of our industry in general, but they show students that they don’t have to move to London and the big cities to follow an exciting and rewarding career in engineering. Our company name and brand becomes more widely known and we get recognised as a company that students want to apply to when starting on the career ladder. Ultimately this makes it much easier for us to hire the people we need to continue growing our business.
The proudest moment you have had from volunteering your time
I’m always happy and proud when I see children being inspired to think differently about the type of work they might like to do in the future. My proudest moment though was when I finally got to attend a careers event at my son’s school, he was the reason I started volunteering in the first place.
Name – Ann Fomukong-Boden
Company – Kakou CIC
Position in company – Co-Founder/Director/Principal Electronic Engineer
What it means to be a STEM ambassador.
Being a STEM Ambassador is my opportunity to give back to my community and also encourage people to see how creative the STEM subjects are. I got into engineering through my love of music. The STEM subjects play a huge part in every aspect of our lives – even the fun things! I also like to challenge people’s stereotype of what an engineer is or looks like. Most people I meet rarely guess my profession from my appearance.
What it means for your business.
We have a community engagement programme called Social Fuse. We produce and facilitate creative-arts based STEM activities for our community. Social Fuse provides us with the opportunities to meet new people, build networks and collaborate on diverse, interesting projects that we may not have been aware of through our normal engineering activities. It brings variety to the business and we get to interact with young people, teachers, parents and organisations that we may have not otherwise encountered.
The proudest moment you have had from volunteering your time
To be honest, I feel a sense of pride whenever I volunteer, especially when you see someone who is new to an activity suddenly have that moment where it all starts to make sense and they realise that they understand something that they previously thought was difficult.
A stand-out moment was being chosen by the British Science Association to be one of their inaugural Community Leaders in recognition of my time volunteering within the community. As part of that I went to the Houses of Parliament to give expert testimony at the APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. That day I also discovered that the Houses of Parliament use some equipment that I had designed – which brought a smile to my face.
Name – Julie Eley
Company – Ready4Work/School of Thought
Position in company – Co-Founder
What it means to be a STEM ambassador.
It is a privilege to engage with young people, not only to give them information about different careers but also to offer hope especially in uncertain times.
What it means for your business.
We have set up a project called School of Thought so we can promote the Automotive Industry to young People. If it wasn’t for STEM we wouldn’t be able to do this, so this helps us tell everyone about the great Industry we work in, dispel myths and to build the pipeline for the next generation of Employees
The proudest moment you have had from volunteering your time
Letting Young People know that there are different routes and that University isn’t the only choice. Personally, seeing some students tell me about their project of building a go kart, and seeing how excited and knowledgeable they were, I found it really inspiring
Name – Emma Knight-Strong
Company – Green Arch Consulting
Position in company – Owner
What it means to be a STEM ambassador.
I am proud to be a STEM ambassador. I am passionate about my field and want to ensure that young learners understand what skills they need to have in order to follow their own dreams. I personally believe that a STEM ambassador is a person who can use their enthusiasm for their chosen profession to inspire young people to think about the huge range of possibilities available to them if they continue in STEM subjects. It’s less ‘teaching them a specific job type’ and more about showing them how STEM can help them be resilient and adaptive to a constantly shifting job market.
What it means for your business.
It allows more people to understand the type of business that I am in and introduces learners to a sector that is still relatively new
The proudest moment you have had from volunteering your time
Having a teacher say to me that the three young girls who had been asking lots of questions usually never said a word in class and he was amazed at how engaged they were with the activity.
Name – Tom Mowbray
Company – Rolls-Royce
Position in company – Sub-System Design Engineer
What it means to be a STEM ambassador.
I find being a STEM Ambassador is a great excuse to share my excitement for Engineering with inquisitive minds. When I host STEM activities with kids it really is a two way exchange, whereby I’m sharing some insights about Engineering whilst setting challenges, and in return I get to see how young minds tackle the problem set. There’s some beautiful creativity that is quite inspiring.
What it means for your business.
“Our activities are designed to demonstrate the life-long opportunities that STEM careers can offer, helping to secure a future talent pipeline for ourselves and the wider industry. We hope that our education outreach programmes will inspire people to study the STEM subjects and show them the life-long opportunities that STEM careers can offer.”
The proudest moment you have had from volunteering your time
I have participated in a variety of activities with children aged 7-18; covering topics such as friction, power and motion in primary ages through to GCSE maths tutoring, careers days and A-level mentoring. The range of options to get involved and the overwhelmingly positive feedback makes me proud to be involved.
For more information about the STEM Ambassadors scheme, you can contact the Derbyshrie Education Business Partnership (DEBP) on 01246 212535 or visit their website: https://www.debp.org/
