SIBUR launches Inventing Engineers program in Voronezh as part of its Science Sessions
17 june 2021
On June 21 through 25, Voronezh will host a new series of education-themed events called the Science Shifts for students aged 9 to 12 who have showed an interest in scientific and technical disciplines. The project will be implemented with SIBUR’s support as part of its corporate social investment program, the Formula for Good Deeds, and with the support of Voronezh City Administration’s Department of Education and Youth Policy
The Inventing Engineers program seeks to help develop the students’ engineering design skills, promote and popularize the subjects of mathematics and physics, as well as to develop and further enhance the competence of instructors in organizing hands-on engineering activities for school students.
Course participants will spend their time tinkering with a Livetronic construction set developed by Gekkon, a children's scientific and technical creativity club. Each participant will be issued with an individual set of equipment necessary for doing the practical work. As part of their course, the students will be tasked to assemble an Asimov's robot, a rubber-motor car, a catapult, and a catamaran. They will then study their principles of operations and improve their skills of handling hand tools. In addition to attending the master classes, the participants of the Science Sessions will be offered video lessons, lectures, and contests.
Prior to the project’s launch, participating instructors will receive training on the course’s curriculum and will attempt to build the suggested engineering models on their own.
The classes for 9- to 12-year-old students will be held at the following extracurricular education centers: Constellation, Children’s and Youth’s Creativity Center, and Real School.
This course in engineering doesn’t just introduce students to the world of inventing, but it also offers them an opportunity to build working models with their own hands, Anton Zaitsev, supervisor of the Inventing Engineers program, noted. Course models and designs are going to be made of purposely prepared parts that would have to be tool-finished to be later used in practical experiments.
This course will give students a unique opportunity to acquire new skills in a pleasant setting and in very entertaining form. These skills will most likely be quite useful to them in the future even in their day-to-day lives, Lyubov Kulakova, Head of Education and Youth Policy at Voronezh City Administration, commented. And as for our teachers, they, too, thanks to this program, will be able to master yet another experimental method of instruction that is aimed at unlocking the schoolchildren’s potential. After all, current trends in the field of education quite often require us to try our hand at some new and innovative approaches to instruction, urging us to get our school students more actively and deeply involved in carrying out more research while working on their own.
SIBUR, being a socially responsible company, finds it very important to work toward raising the level of education, culture, science and in other critical areas in the regions where we have operations. The objective of the Science Sessions is to develop in the younger generation an interest in knowledge building and research, to develop a desire to learn more about the world around us and to strive to change it for the better. After each season of the Science Sessions, we get positive feedback from the students, their parents and teachers. We see the demand for such educational projects and we are happy to support them further, Stanislav Martynenko, an expert with SIBUR's Division of Business Support in Presence Regions, commented.
This year's Science Sessions are being held in eight cities where SIBUR has operations. While Dzerzhinsk was the first city to conduct the sessions, the program will also be hosted by Gubkinsky, Tomsk, Nyagan, Pyt-Yakh, and Blagoveshchensk (Bashkortostan).