Twenty-seven Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Queensland Year 10 and 11 high school students made good use of their holidays by attending the Indigenous Australian Science and Infrastructure Development (SID) Winter School hosted by QUT's Oodgeroo Unit and global engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.
The students, from a range of south-east Queensland schools, discovered many facets of science and engineering during four days of hands-on projects run by the Oodgeroo Unit and QUT student ambassadors.
SID coordinator Joel Anderson said the SID Winter School is now in its second year and involves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from across south-east Queensland.
"The SID Winter School is designed to raise participants' knowledge, understanding and aspiration toward higher education," Mr Anderson said.
"The students were really excited about the whole experience and many said they wanted to come back next year. In fact, the ones who'll be in Year 12 asked us to expand the program so that they could participate on 2015."
A highlight of the SID Winter School was testing different renewable energy systems: solar, wind, water, geothermal and nuclear to see how they worked in QUT's Science and Engineering Centre.
The students worked in teams named after different countries and were asked to take the perspective of their country's power needs.
The students' enthusiastic comments included:
"It's good fun and interesting and we are learning stuff."
"It's great to do experiments to see how the energy system works."
"It's enjoyable and a good experience for people of our generation to learn about this stuff."
The students nominated their visit to the RAAF Amberley Air Base where they went onto the tarmac and boarded a cargo plane as one of the most exciting parts of the Winter School.
Students also spent a morning in the life of a Parsons Brinckerhoff staff member by working in teams to solve challenges in delivering traffic and infrastructure projects from previous real world projects at the firm's Brisbane CBD office.
Parsons Brinckerhoff regional director Queensland Gerard Ryan said it was pleasing to once again deliver the successful SID Winter School.
"The school seeks to encourage Indigenous Australian students into higher education and ultimately to take up professional and leadership positions across community, government and the corporate sector," Mr Ryan said.
Oodgeroo Unit director Professor Anita Lee Hong said the event was so successful at opening up career possibilities for the students that it would be run again next year.
"Our aim is to promote a range of higher education and career opportunities in science, technology and maths-related disciplines that these young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students may not otherwise be exposed to, and to go beyond that by making it a tangible and realistic goal for the students," Professor Lee Hong said.
The SID Winter School program is supported by corporate sponsorship, and through partnerships with Parsons Brinckerhoff (ANZ), The Royal Australian Air Force and the BMD Group.
Media contact: Niki Widdowson, QUT media, 07 3138 2999 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au.
