Student mentors national winners
by Michele Nardelli
When
the Robotic Peer Mentoring (RPM) Program began a few years ago there
were no goals for world domination.
In fact, the plan to match engineering, IT and other university students with local high school students to encourage more engagement with the power and potential of maths and the sciences, was really experimental.
No one could have predicted that today more than 40 UniSA students would be regularly working with students, mainly from years 10 to 12, in about 40 SA schools.
Since the program began, more than 1,500 high school kids have been switched on to robotics, its career potential and its role in modern industries. It is not unusual for school students, hooked on this learning experience, to give up school holiday time to work on their robotic systems projects.
Peer mentors Andrei Lloyd, Simon Lane, Aaron Mohtar and Nathan Potter understand that RPM is a long-term project but they believe in it with a passion. Ask the team if they have come across any of tomorrow’s Einsteins in the classrooms they visit and they are quick to reply “there is one in every class”.
So it was no small leap for them to expound the success of RPM at the Australian finals of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) – but what did rock their world was the fact that they won. The first team of engineering/IT students to enter and win the prestigious competition, the win will pay their way to Toronto in October to represent Australia in the SIFE international finals.
You could probably fill a book with all the positive spin-offs that have grown from the RPM program – high school students meeting in company boardrooms to discuss new computer hardware developments to improve real products, a SACE-based year 12 pilot extension studies program that will allow kids with flair to study electronics engineering, or simply the infamous “problem” student suddenly settling down and blossoming.
What the SIFE competition team has proved beyond a doubt for the Australian judges (CEOs and MDs from some of the nation’s most successful businesses), is that the project is one of the best examples in Australia of how education can change lives. Now let’s hope they can convince the rest of the world.
More information about the SIFE competition is available at www.sife.org or www.sifeaustralia.org.au