Free Science & Engineering Saturday Club for 13-16 year olds from underrepresented backgrounds.
St Mary's has teamed up with the National Saturday Club to host the Science & Engineering Saturday Club. This is a weekly club run by St Mary's that will encourage members to develop practical and analytical skills, experience different academic subject areas using real university facilities, and to consider the future career paths open to the next generation of creative and innovative scientists and engineers. The Science & Engineering Club is supported by various academic departments at St Mary's and the University's Widening Participation and Outreach team, as part of St Mary's University's commitment to widening participation in Higher Education.
The Club will take place at St Mary's University on Saturday mornings during term time, from 10am-1pm. We will launch on Saturday 11th January 2024, and run until Saturday 17th May 2025. The final event of the programme will be in mid July, when we take a trip to the National Saturday Club Graduation ceremony, and to view the students' work in the prestigious Summer Show at Somerset House. For provisional dates for the Science & Engineering Club, please view this document (dates subject to change).
Apply for the Science & Engineering Club
What was it like last year?
During our first year of the Science & Engineering Club, our new Director Danielle Farquharson led 12 taster sessions on different areas of science and engineering!
Danielle was supported by 6 Student Leaders from various science-related courses at St Mary's. Our teenage Science Club members came from a real mix of schools, including The Green School for Boys, Elthorne Park High School, Glenthorne High School, Bolder Academy, and The Heathland School.
During the year, we explored many different areas of science and engineering:
- biomimicry and deployable structures, in which we learned how human design and engineering challenges can be solved by looking to structures in nature
- psychology, including cognitive experiments
- building electronic musical instruments out of cardboard, using micro:bit technology in the Computer Science labs
- analysis of different types of cells under the microscope in the Biology labs.
Our final year project was a photo collage composed of different animal, plant, and bacteria cells revealed under a light microscope. This was displayed at Somerset House at the Graduation and Summer Show for the Saturday Clubs.
We also had a great masterclass with Ceres Power, exploring different green energy options, including solid oxide electrolysers, and green hydrogen. You can read more about our students' experience with the masterclass.
“I liked the practicals as they help me understand things better.”
“I valued learning about global warming and the effects of it.”
This free customised programme is for young people between the ages of 13-16, and priority places will be allocated to students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in Higher Education, or who may face barriers to accessing university. This could include students with a disability, students whose parents did not attend university, or many others. See our Targeting and Eligibilty page for further criteria.
Every week will explore a different area of Science & Engineering, with some time using lab spaces, computers, and outdoor spaces. There will be around 25 young people, all with an interest in science and engineering, and all coming in with different experiences. Everyone will learn the variety of skills and techniques together, and the club is a great place to make new friends.
Our Director and team of Science Leaders will be with you all the way, from demonstrating an experiment or technique, to helping you do it for yourself, and giving you an insight into what science at university could be like.
We're hiring - Science Leaders
Each year, we recruit Science Leaders to support the director in facilitating our weekly Science & Engineering club sessions. For 2024/25, we are seeking four current students from any St Mary’s course with a particular interest in science to work as Science Leaders.
Please view the job description (uploaded in due course) for further details of the role.
Applications are open until the deadline in mid-November. To apply, complete this short application form (uploaded in due course).
Any questions about the Science Leader role? Email us at ScienceSaturdayClub@stmarys.ac.uk
Be a great role model for the next generation of scientists and share your passion of all things science while gaining fantastic work experience!
Ben (Science Leader 2023/24)
Contact us
If you have any concerns, such as directions to St Mary's University campus, or anything else, however small, we would love to hear from you.
Email us: ScienceSaturdayClub@stmarys.ac.uk
Megan Simmons: Widening Participation Officer - 020 8240 4014
Mandip Birk: Senior Widening Participation Officer - 020 8240 4081