Day 1
The 2024 Ballarat Tech School Girls in STEM program launched on Monday 18th March with 52 excited girls and eight Student Leaders from 14 local and regional schools coming together to share two days of STEM focused experiences, activities, and challenges.

The first day of the 2024 program was all about getting to know each other and the Tech School. Students met other Girls in STEM delegates for the first time and started building connections through shared experiences in 3 rotating workshops.

Virtual Reality:
Exploring a custom-made virtual Tech School to find hidden clues before stepping back into reality to locate the physical clues to decode a secret message.

Laser Cutting:
Using laser cutting software and equipment to design and make 3-dimensional models.

3D Printing:
Using TinkerCAD software to design and print models on the brand-new Tech School fleet of 3D-Printers.
 

Day 2
We are very fortunate to have an outstanding and passionate industry partnership with Mars Wrigley Australia here in Ballarat, in particular with the engineering team. Lead by Head of Mars Engineering Australia, Heather Lord-Knight, this team of professionals spends a day each year with the Girls in STEM, sharing their personal STEM journeys, their industry knowledge and providing inspiration for future career possibilities.

With students working in mixed school teams of three, Mars Wrigley staff presented the students with an engineering quality control challenge to separate subquality Maltesers from the production line before packaging.

The determination, collaboration and creativity on display blew the Mars Wrigley staff away. In just 3 hours our students displayed the skills of budding engineers and produced impressive prototype solutions through outstanding efforts in design and teamwork.

Congratulations to the students who were awarded the Mars Wrigley Golden Ticket to tour the Ballarat Mars Factory site in April for their winning design and also to the team that won the Directors Choice Award, each receiving a copy of Fantastically Great Women.