Our Worcester, UK office held its annual Student Open Day in July. Following on from the success of last year’s event, three local schools were invited to send a mixed group of their brightest 14-15 year-old science students interested in a career in engineering or manufacturing.

After introductions and a safety briefing, students completed a factory tour, watching AFCs being manufactured for Narrabri (Australia) and Roof Supports destined for Taldinskaya in Russia. There was just time to fit in a quick lunch of pizza before the students learned more from local staff about their career paths which led them to Joy.

The highlight of the day was the engineering challenge where school teams competed to design and construct a trebuchet (type of catapult) capable of launching a projectile the furthest distance possible, using principles from engineering, physics and maths. The engineering team was on hand to give expert advice, hints and tips. The winning team were students from Christopher Whitehead Language College (pictured) who as well as launching their missile the furthest, successfully completed a worksheet explaining the principles of the task and gave a short presentation on the trebuchet’s configuration.

One teacher from Christopher Whitehead Language College shared, “Thank you to all your brilliant colleagues for such a great day today.  Our students have taken a lot from this experience and were positively ‘buzzing’ on the way back to school!”

This event is just one example of the many ways our company works to encourage students to pursue STEM careers across the globe. Helen Gibson, Training and Development Manager, Eurasia commented, “this event is part of our strategic outreach programme to engage and inspire young people through STEM subjects and they are an enjoyable development opportunity for our employees. We’re also doing our bit to encourage greater gender diversity in these non-traditional subjects for girls by ensuring that we achieve 50:50 ratio of male:female students at our events.”

A further event for 16-18 year-old students is planned for the autumn in Worcester and have plans to extend these events to our other UK sites.