The Smallpeice Trust: Future Cities
Ove Arup Foundation has announced support for the The Smallpeice Trust project Future Cities.
All of our courses make use of the expertise within universities and in industry to show students the options available to them.
The virtual Future Cities 2022 course is a development from the course run in 2021 which was switched from a residential course to a virtual course due to the Covid-19 restrictions and was supported by the Ove Arup Foundation. For 2022, The Smallpeice Trust has been able to provide a blended approach to courses, offering a mix of virtual and residential. This provides the best of both approaches and draws on the experience gained by The Smallpeice Trust in virtual delivery.
The course will broaden students understanding of the interconnected problems and how STEM practitioners from different disciplines are talking these issues. 50 Year-12 students will investigate Future Cities on our 3-day course run in conjunction with the University of Southampton in the summer of 2022, the precise date to be confirmed.
Subjects covered will be inspired by previous activities, including Introduction to Future Cities, Civil Engineering, Foundations for Electrification, Smart Bridges, Keeping Cool Whilst Staying Warm, Autonomous & Low Carbon Vehicles as well as activities based around these subjects. Additionally, there will be University Ambassador Presentations and invited speakers from the University of Southampton’s Alumni.
The course offers Year 12 students: -
- Engineering role models and inspirational speakers.
- Academics from the participating university.
- DBS checked supervisors for group working sessions.
- A Smallpeice Education Officer, who has a background in STEM, and a supporting course administrator.
The course will encourage more uptake of further and higher education options, helping to equip industry, showcasing to students the educational options and career paths available to them. During the course, students will gain experience of life at a university by virtually meeting current and past students and academics.
The Smallpeice Trust has gained valuable experience of delivering virtual courses in collaboration with universities and industry. We also have a better understanding of the approach to recruitment of students for virtual courses.
The Smallpeice Trust will evaluate the course based on the feedback gained from participants. Our approach follows the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ STEM Engagement Evaluation Tool. This focusses the acquisition of new knowledge and the transformative thinking of the participants.
We use student feedback forms, along with verbal and written responses for our events evaluations form supervisors which goes to inform our report and our student impact analysis. To determine longer-term impact, we undertake an annual Impact Report in which we ask past participants about their subsequent educational choices.