Words by Fiona Clayton
Since 2005 the University of Adelaide has been welcoming high school girls onto campus for their Young Women in STEM event. At this event students meet awesome women studying STEM and learn from technologists, engineers, and mathematicians through a range of hands on activities.
This year we once again had the opportunity to send some of our bright STEM students in years 9 and 10. They heard from a PhD student who is currently researching how to modify DNA to stop blindness. Our group then had the opportunity to participate in three workshops. The first workshop gave the girls a task of Mechanical Engineering. We had to build an electric motor.
The second workshop looked at animal behaviour and the girls had a great time training each other with positive reinforcement and clickers. Naomi volunteered to show the rest of the group how it was done and then everyone had a chance to try it. Parents will be pleased to know that the girls are very trainable with this method!
The last workshop was all about architecture and art and the girls were given a word and they had to use the building material supplied to represent that word in 25 mins.
The names of the above groups were: Sloth, Serenity, Anger and Joy!
The day was a perfect opportunity for the girls to see what University is all about and learn just some of the wonderful STEM degrees on offer through Adelaide Uni.
