How Engineers Without Borders Australia encourages STEM education

The Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) Innovation Challenge is an annual STEM outreach event that brings together high school students to explore the opportunities possible in engineering careers.

The outreach initiative engages Year 9 and 10 students, primarily from backgrounds under-represented in STEM, from schools across the state, with a focus on cohorts that are under-represented in the engineering sector; schools in regional and lower socio-economic areas, girls and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Eleanor Loudon, CEO at EWB Australia explained to Digital Nation their STEM program focuses purely on engineering.

“There's not that many that are focused on engineering. There's a lot of math, science, technology, but engineering there is not that many programs,” she explained.

“It's delivered by people who are really passionate, students from universities who are studying engineering, they get fully trained by us, so they're delivering it in a professional way, but they're trained to deliver it in a fun way.

EWB and Bentley Systems have signed a three-year partnership with an aim to empower the next generation of students in engineering.

Loudon said Bentley Systems has always been interested in EWB’s outreach program.

“It is where we go out and we talk to young people about how fantastic engineering is especially when you engineer for people and the planet,” she said.

EWB travels to a range of locations to promote engineering education.

“Sometimes we go to schools, sometimes we do it in community parks and in community halls,” she said.

“Sometimes we go out to remote Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander communities and we talk to them about this. That is often not in schools, it is in the community. It is all organised and arranged through either community leaders or teachers.”

Loudon said this is an opportunity for EWB to introduce engineering as a career path with the message that engineering shapes the future.

“It triggers something in students where, particularly in diverse cohorts, so particularly women and girls, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islanders, when we talk about the difference it can make in their own community,” she said.

“They often think about being a doctor because they've seen doctors in their communities making a difference or lawyers. But in this case, they haven't really recognised that if you're an engineer, you could make the same level of impactful, tangible difference back in your own community.”

Kuthur Sriram, global manager, education program at Bentley Systems said there’s a huge focus on the current skills shortage in Australia and this program aims to fix this issue. 

“At Bentley Education, we implemented the EWB Innovative Challenge 2022, with the mission to inspire young minds to pursue engineering in their tertiary education phase. Adding to that, was also the core aim of achieving greater gender equity in the STEM field,” he said.

“We endeavoured to create curiosity in the field of humanitarian engineering and find human-centric solutions through engineering technologies.”

Sriram said EWB and Bentley Systems successfully accomplished these goals throughout the course of the program, as evidenced by the feedback from participating students who now have a newfound interest in pursuing engineering as a career.