What is the Spark Engineering Camp?

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The ‘Spark’ Engineering Camp is a Youth Without Borders initiative, bringing together a variety of stakeholders to provide up to 64 Grade 10-12 students with a life changing opportunity to see what the university experience, particularly engineering, can provide. Over the course of seven days (July 1 – July 7, 2012) at the University of Queensland St Lucia campus, students who are nominated by their teachers, parents or peers, get the opportunity to gain an insight into where their life will lead should they be ‘sparked’ towards pursuing tertiary education. The camp is focused towards indigenous, refugee and financially or otherwise disadvantaged students and is fully funded – there is no cost for students to attend.

Students will participate in a series of engaging workshops and excursions to learn about the various fields of engineering and other technical disciplines, complemented by a vast professional development and numerous social activities, to provide them with a well-rounded experience they will remember for years to come. In particular, the engineering workshops are designed to give students an appreciation of both the breadth of engineering and the role engineers play in society, piquing their personal and diverse interests. Further education such as university courses may be unfamiliar or foreign to the students and Spark aims to give them some understanding about what future study could be like.

As well as developing a newfound sense of what their future could have in store, the students are also equipped with the skills for realistically achieving these goals. Students will actively participate in numerous team building activities (some, but not all, with an engineering focus), as well as fostering a previously undiscovered sense of self through personal development exercises. They will learn that an engineering or technical based career is not a distant dream, but in fact a very real possibility, and will be given the inspiration to set challenging and exciting goals, as well as practical ways of achieving them. Lastly, the students engage in social and team-building activities, fostering strong relationships with their peers and mentors and immensely enriching the enjoyment level of the camp.

The camp is entirely run by university student mentors, from a broad range of backgrounds and study disciplines, who encourage the students to unlock their potential and throw themselves wholeheartedly into the week’s activities. Both the mentors and students will stay on college at UQ, giving students, many of whom are rural, a small appreciation of college life.

Activities likely to be carried on form 2011 include (but are now limited to):
- Story Bridge Climb
- Dreamworld excusrion
- ‘Robogals’
- EWB Water Filtering Workshop…

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