Lights, camera, action!

Clees • August 29, 2024

Welcoming the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and Springpod to our office

Yesterday we had the pleasure of welcoming the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and Springpod to our office in Cheadle for filming their online work experience exercise for secondary schools!

IChemE have invested in a new and innovative online work experience platform as part of the DiscoverChemEng campaign. The platform, aimed at the 14 to 18 age group, will deliver a coherent and consolidated work experience package representing the chemical and process engineering sector.

For young people to fully understand the integrated nature of any career, to be certain in their higher education choices, or to have their stereotypical views and misconceptions challenged, they need to experience the world of work. With careers funding in schools cut and H&S regulations making it difficult to get young people into the workplace, online learning is becoming the norm. SpringPod is well regarded in the education sector and has a reach of over 500,000 school age children. It is well proven by other engineering sectors including ICE, IMechE and AirBus.

In the first year, the platform will reach up to 1,000 UK students which supports IChemE’s aims of building a future talent pool of prospective Chemical and process engineering students and members who will have completed 8 to 10 hours experiential learning to support their career ambitions.

As part of the work experience package young people are being given the chance to complete a real-world problem-solving exercise which has been led by one of IChemE’s volunteer members – Clare Dunkerly from Otto Simon. Clare will be guiding young learners through a problem-solving task to switch from traditional fossil fuels to Green Hydrogen. With plenty of calculations and design considerations this part of the package will give youngsters a real taste of life as a process engineer!

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