Twenty-three young Australians spent last week at Curtin University of Technology as part of the Indigenous Australian Engineering Summer School (IAESS).
The year 11 and 12 students from WA and Queensland lived at Curtin’s Bentley Campus as part of the six-day program.
Activities included talks by visiting engineering companies, site visits to major local projects and engineering operations, and taking part in hands-on engineering activities at the university.
Hale School student Rhys Bedford, who is from Kununurra, said the summer school provided him with the opportunity to further his dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer.
“My goal is to study at Curtin and then work on concept cars or at NASA,” he said.
Curtin’s Dean of Engineering Professor Moses Tade said the program aimed to give Indigenous students an insight into university life and an engineering career.
“Engineering is an important profession which offers a wide range of roles from working with robots to working on oil rigs,” he said.
“In fact, engineers make the modern world go round because without them we would not have cars, planes or bridges.
“However, there are not enough young Australians studying engineering and we have a shortage of qualified engineers.
“We hope that by conducting programs like the IAESS we will encourage more young indigenous people to take up the challenge and see if engineering is the right career path for them.”
IAESS was hosted by Curtin and the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA with the support of a number of other local companies and organisations.
