Future Cities - school pupils explore challenges for the built environment
As a result of a new partnership between the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment and the Smallpeice Trust, 80 Year 9 Pupils from secondary schools in Southampton were on campus in March for a 3-day engineering challenge - how should the City respond and adapt to predicted sea-level rise over the next decades?
Working in teams modelled on real-life multi-disciplinary engineering projects, the pupils presented their strategies to a demanding panel of education and engineering professionals, including Andrew Cave, Director of the SmallpeiceTrust.
Course content was led by architect and lecturer Paul Bulkeley with support from staff in his SnugProjects practice. Pupils also had access to additional expertise and input from Southampton City Council staff, engineers from Arup, and the team of Smallpeice Trust Ambassadors.
A key aim of this initiative is to showcase the diversity of engineering career options to pupils with an interest in design who may not have had the opportunity to explore their creativity in an engineering context. Future Cities complements the Faculty's many other engineering outreach programmes and is seen as an investment in widening the pool of potential future engineers.