February 16 2021 | Online | Views: 1279
National Apprenticeship Week 2021 took place from Monday 8 to Sunday 16 February. Throughout the week The STEM Hub hosted a live talk each day. These talks were well attended, as were the pre-recorded videos from the experienced STEM Ambassadors which (at the time of writing) have more than 550 views!
The week started off with a live talk from Billie Sequeria, a technical engineer from BAE Systems in Rochester. In 2019, Billie was named in the Top 100 ‘most influential women leaders in engineering UK and Europe’. We were therefore delighted that she agreed to support this event to share her knowledge and expertise. The students were very engaged with the talk and there were plenty of questions at the end!
Jonathan took the plunge and undertook a live talk as his first ever STEM Ambassador activity. Jonathan began as an apprentice working for Thames Water and was keen to share his experience and demonstrate the benefits of doing an apprenticeship. It certainly paid off for him as he is now working as the project delivery manager.
On Wednesday, Kerry from Thales talked all about the different apprenticeships that Thales offer, and students got a first-hand experience from three of the current apprentices. These apprentices talked about why they chose an apprenticeship, their day-to-day roles and the benefits and challenges they face. They were then able to answer the many varied questions asked by their audience.
The penultimate day of our live talks was hosted by Emily who is currently doing a Chemistry apprenticeship. She discussed her personal route into the apprenticeship and her day-to-day roles, which include using robots to run screens of 96 tiny reactions at a time, to gather lots of data to find the best reagent, solvent, additive etc. It was a really interesting talk and there was lots of questions as a result.
The week concluded with Dan an apprenticeship lead from Plumpton College. Dan has 10 years’ experience working in the apprenticeship sector and had a lot of knowledge to share about what it is like to undertake an apprenticeship. A key point that Dan made was that it is important to be ready to work, and students need to understand that they will be expected to work and study at the same time. Dan also spoke about the variety of apprenticeships on offer at the College.
Feedback from the live talks included:
All of the live and pre-recorded talks can be found on our website.
