Regional Students at Riverina Discover Engineering
The Riverina Regional Group of EA Sydney Division held its first Discover Engineering Day at Kooringal High School, Wagga Wagga on Tuesday 7th August. The day was a great success with 63 students attending from 10 high schools across the Riverina – from Leeton in the west to Tumut in the east, and as far north as Young.
The day commenced with three short presentations: the first by Tim Keyes, a recently graduated Civil Engineer who is also an old boy of Kooringal High School, the second by Sarah Hayes, a second year Environmental Engineering/Commerce student at University of New South Wales and the third by Tom Mackerras, National Engineering Manager of a major stainless steel fabrication company from Griffith. The presentations were followed by a short Q&A session, after which the group broke for morning tea.
On resumption they were entertained by a presentation and demonstration of the University of New South Wales Robocup dogs by Brad Hall. The group then split into four smaller groups to rotate through four breakout sessions, which were:
- A demonstration by University of Newcastle robots
- Testing of the Paper towers they had built beforehand
- Construction and testing of marshmallow catapults
- An Education Hub.
Lunch was served after they had been through two of the breakout sessions. Both morning tea and lunch were provided by the Hospitality students at Kooringal High School.
Tertiary institutions represented in the Education Hub were:
- University of Newcastle
- University of New South Wales
- University of Sydney
- University of Western Sydney
- University of Technology Sydney
- University of Wollongong
- Australian National University Canberra
- Leeton TAFE
In addition COMPACT had a stand to promote the “Build a Bridge....and get over it” camp.
The winner of the Paper Tower competition was a group of students from Kildare Catholic College, Wagga, with their tower supporting 454 times its own weight. The Marshmallow Catapult exercise was won by a group of students from Kooringal High School with a distance of 9.6 metres.
At the conclusion of the rotation through the breakout sessions the group recombined for a further Q&A session and to complete a survey of their opinions of the day. On departure each student was presented with a “show bag” containing informative and promotional material from Engineers Australia and some of the Universities.
