Submitted by Elena Gonzalez on Mon, 03/04/2023 - 15:37
CEB has recently partnered with the Brilliant Club hosting 40 students on their Scholars Programme to give them a taste of the discipline and life as Cambridge University student.
The Brilliant Club, a UK-wide university access charity, works with schools and Universities across the UK, mobilising the PhD community to support students who are less advantaged to access the most competitive universities and succeed when they get there. The Scholars Programme helps students develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to progress to the most competitive universities.
This is just another widening participation initiative CEB outreach colleagues are running to engage students with chemical engineering and biotechnology and our research impact.
On 23 March Y9 and Y10 students from two schools (Churchgate Academy, Cheshunt, and St John’s Fisher Catholic Comprehensive School in Chatham, Kent) visited the department accompanied by their teachers.
Mano Emmanuel, University Partnerships Officer at The Brilliant Club, welcomed the students and kicked off the proceedings with a study skills session. CEB then took over with a presentation on the discipline and our undergraduate and PhD students shared their experience studying in CEB and working in the lab. They also ran a Q&A session with the students.
The inquisitive students were also taken on a tour of our facilities and had the opportunity to ask researchers about the projects they are working on. They spoke to lab staff in our teaching lab who demonstrated the workings of fluidised beds. They also went into the Makerspace, Teaching lab, and research labs and talked to technicians and several researchers about their work of impact to tackle the biggest global challenges in sustainability and healthcare.
One of our own PhD students from the Particles, Soft Solids, and Surfaces Research Group, Jelena Brown, is also a Brilliant Club tutor. She has put together a whole module on ‘heat transfer on our everyday life’ as a resource for some Y9 Brilliant Club scholars that she is supervising. PhD tutors deliver the Scholars Programme in schools across the UK, sharing their subject knowledge and passion for learning with students aged 8-18.
‘It is truly rewarding to participate in this programme and see the impact I am having on the pupils. They have enjoyed learning something quite different from their standard curriculum, especially linking theory to real-world applications. I hope to have inspired them to consider going to university and perhaps even choose a STEM subject’, Jelena commented.
Those prospective students wanting to find out more about chemical engineering and biotechnology at Cambridge are welcome to attend our July Open Days, apply for a Sutton Trust summer school, an Arkwright Scholarship, or a programme with the Brilliant.