The Science and Engineering Challenge was held at James Sheahan’s Mercy Hall last week with students from Year’s 9 and 10 at Orange High School, James Sheahan and Orange Christian School getting involved.

The challenge is an outreach program founded by the University of Newcastle in the year 2000. Since then it has grown to involve over 100 Rotary Clubs and 30 Universities, reaching over 1000 schools and 35,000 people nationwide.

The program’s activities were based on students being given the opportunity to get involved with an electrical grid stimulation, a bionic hand as well as bridge testing. All of these activities have an underlying focus towards STEM.

Team Leader at the Science and Engineering Challenge, Pete Fullagar explained, “The aim of the program is to get students to look at careers in science and engineering, through this program perhaps what subjects they need to do in senior high school, so they can look towards their tertiary education.”

“There’s not a huge amount of opportunities for students to get a hands-on understanding of some of these styles of applications of activities. It’s important that students see that there are those opportunities in these careers at a local level and not potentially something where they have to say, “Well my only choice is to leave Orange and go to the big cities,” there are opportunities here locally if they choose to do that in their future which I think is great. “

Orange North Rotary had 18 volunteers there on the day. Bob Geaghan of Orange North Rotary Club said, “We volunteer in just about everything, we were contacted by Charles Sturt University in Bathurst who asked us if we wanted to coordinate this for the Orange area. Some of the kids here are astonishingly bright, they sit there and they say, “Oh I get it” and I think well I’m glad that you get it because I don’t,” laughed Bob. “It’s a great program for those who have their sights set on that career path.”

Charles Sturt are ceasing to sponsor this program financially as of next year, so North Orange Rotary are looking for a long term financial partner, if this is something you are interested in getting involved with please contact Bob on 0438 795 570.