On Thursday 2 October, LMH hosted our inaugural Key Stage 4 STEM Taster Day. We welcomed Year 10 and 11 pupils from three schools across our link regions to take part in an interactive day of activities with LMH tutors and students.
The event was designed to open students’ eyes to the exciting range of STEM subjects available at university and to help them feel confident and well-equipped to make decisions about their Key Stage 5 options, including choosing which subjects to study at A Level.
Throughout the day, participants took part in a series of engaging workshops led by LMH tutors. Economics tutor Ruth Tarrant introduced attendees to Game Theory with a lively and competitive activity exploring oligopolistic markets, while Senior Research Fellow in Medicine Dr Shona Murphy and her colleague at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine Professor John Reader led a hands-on session where students created bracelets representing complementary DNA sequences. Pupils also took part in an exciting puzzle-solving Chemistry workshop and enjoyed tours of the college led by current LMH STEM undergraduates.
The event was a great success, with many students commenting on how much they had enjoyed the day and teachers already asking to bring groups again next year.
Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive, with one teacher commenting:
“It was an absolute pleasure to attend the inaugural KS4 STEM Taster Day. The event was wonderfully organised, and my students thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. They came away inspired and full of enthusiasm for studying STEM subjects at university, which is exactly what we’d hoped for.”
Our Outreach and Access team hope to build on this success by hosting an additional, complementary event for humanities subjects in the future.
