Generous community support will help a group of Cobar High School students to compete at the Science and Engineering Challenge Regional Championships in New-castle.
Funding from the Peak Gold Mine and the Rotary Club of Cobar, along with the NSW Department of Education (Regional Industry Education Partnerships program), will help cover the travel and accommodation costs for the group of 32 students to travel to Newcastle later this month to compete.
The school progressed to the regional compe-tition after comprehensively winning the Uni-versity of Newcastle’s Outback Science and Engineering Challenge in Cobar last month.
Cobar High School relieving Science/TAS head teacher, Lena Dean, is thrilled STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathe-matics) students, ranging from Years 7 to 10, will have the opportunity to take part.
“We really appreciate the support we’ve had from both the community and the department to get this going. It’s made it more affordable for the students,” Ms Dean said.
She said they decided to add an extra day to the excursion so that students will also get the opportunity to visit a STEM industry.
“We are looking at possible venues and hope to take them to an engineering facility to get an idea of what’s involved in a STEM career which, we hope, will encourage their participa-tion in STEM careers in the future.”
Ms Dean said having the event held at New-castle University is an added benefit as the students will also be exposed to a tertiary edu-cation facility and get “a university experi-ence” which might interest them in the future.
A number of fun activities have also been planned for the excursion, including ten-pin bowling and putt putt golf, which will help to encourage team bonding which will be helpful for the Challenge competition.
Ms Dean said students will also learn some life skills as part of the excursion and they will be required to buy their own meals which will test their budgeting skills.
“The trip is a long way so we want to make sure the students are going to benefit out of this,” she said.
Rotary Club of Cobar president David Snel-son said youth programs are a corner stone of Rotary International.
Mr Snelson said the Cobar club has for many years been a supporter of the Outback Science and Engineering Challenge, and they were now pleased to also be able to support Cobar youth to compete at the next level.
