Empowering Women in Energy: from Classroom to Career explores the crucial role of STEM education for girls in shaping a workforce ready to lead the energy transition, highlighting the importance of early STEM engagement for girls and the diverse opportunities it creates for future leaders in clean energy.
UNSW Digital Grid Futures Institute is delighted to be able to offer recordings of the SOLD OUT event that was held in Sydney in June 2024. It is offered in four parts, reflecting the agenda of the in-person event hosted by EY.
The following transcript is for the second segment of the event: Engaging Female Students in STEM.
Transcript
Sharon Swift:
We've talked a lot about The Orbispace Initiative and early interventions, which is why we're here. And Anna-Grace is actually just gonna give you a very quick overview of what the program actually is, how we're gonna be partnering together, starting from, well, we've already been partnering.
Anna-Grace Millward:
Yeah.
Sharon Swift:
But how we'll be continuing and building on the partnership next year. And then we'll go on to a panel session, which is gonna talk with school teachers, New South Wales Education, and of course, Anna-Grace.
Anna-Grace Millward:
Perfect.
Thanks so much, Sharon and John and the entire team at the Institute for hosting this fabulous event.
If I look tired right now, and you can see some bags under my eyes, apart from the fact that I'm not great at doing my own makeup, it's also because I've just come from an enormous event at the Sydney Startup Hub.
Over the last two days, we've had about 500 guests, of which that included 300 girls from across New South Wales, a big bunch of educators, a hundred industry leaders and mentors, specifically, women in innovation, who come in to do the mentoring, the training, you know, teach all of these kind of foundational skillsets and workshops at the hub, and besides being exhausting, it's just incredible to see the power of the ecosystem that we're building at TOI.
That event there, it's called The Future of Female Leadership Forum, and it's just one capstone out of what is now a six-month curriculum. So initially, I started out at the Sydney Startup Hub as an entrepreneur, and you'll hear a bit more about my story on the panel session, but, essentially, I was creating these experiences for young women. They were tremendously successful, but the big problem was that even though they were grade 10 to 12 students, and we were thinking, "Oh, we're catching them at the right time," the girls would always say, "Well, I didn't choose any STEM subjects, and like, how do you expect me to suddenly change my plans for my degree?"
And so when we went back and we had a look at where the drop-off was in terms of engagement with STEM and also where we could make a real difference in terms of subject selection, we found that it was in grade eight, right before they're choosing those high school electives, and when they're starting to really make and formulate those kinds of ideas and that vision for themselves, their identity, and their future careers. And so, the TOI program is mapped to the Australian curriculum. It's fantastic because it's something that is teacher-led, so there's a huge component of what we do that is teacher upskilling.
I know for all of us in the industry, it's honestly, half of our job is doing our day-to-day work, and the other half is just staying relevant, trying to keep up with the changes, the new skillsets, the new tools, and so when you think about the time it takes for those sorts of new knowledge and new innovation to diffuse into a curriculum, the turnaround time is just really not fast enough, and so, essentially, what we're able to do is move very quickly in taking that knowledge from industry across innovation sectors, and ultimately helping to upskill teachers right across the state of New South Wales.
So, this year marks a thousand students through the program. That's a thousand potential
future female leaders in the STEM industries that we're releasing here into the ecosystem in New South Wales, and also an incredible cohort of hundreds of teachers that are teaching the program and also coming into industry.
So, the final part of the program, the first module, is really soft skill development, or what it means to be an innovator. 85% of our cohort can't even name a female innovator coming into the program, and the second half of the cohort program is really all about them getting to apply their technical skillsets.
So, we have what's called Pitch for the Planet, and that's really an opportunity for them to create their own innovations and to solve a real-world case study, which is provided by Sharon and by the Institute.
So, this year's case study is on the electricity transition, the transition to electric vehicles, and how we can do that sustainably, and also drive adoption here in Australia, and so, the students are very
much moving into this world of thinking about energy and sustainable energy transitions, and as part of that, they come to the Sydney Startup Hub again, and they get to pitch their innovative solutions to real industry leaders, and also real VCs, so that we can hopefully get some money and investment behind this, but, probably, their favourite part of the whole program is actually the real-world connections and relationships that they make.
So, we have three pillars, the knowledge and the curriculum, the experiential learning and industry, and finally, the networks, where do they go next, and how do they connect with industry and into industry, and so, in terms of vision for where we're going next, our scale-up program now is this concept of EmpowerHER, an opportunity for students to re-engage in grade 10, because while we've cultivated this super passionate cohort, ultimately, it's about keeping them engaged and keeping them on that pathway into industry, and grade 10 is another pivotal time where we can then, again, map their subject selections and choices.
And a side note I'll just add really quickly, is also that we're seeing schools expanding their offering as well. The types of subjects that they're making available in their electives, where there's more uptake and more engagement for those students, but we're really looking to be able to deliver a super deep enrichment program where you can get girls in to actually see what the future of work looks like, what are these skillsets that they're going to need.
It's very hard to create a dream or vision for yourself when you don't really have any points of connection to what those roles even look like in a day in the life of, so this is really a deeply immersive enrichment program, with an energy focus, that we're looking to take on with UNSW, with collective leaders, particularly, female leaders in this space as well, and to build that pipeline that Australia really needs.