Last term Shalom College Science Department was the recipient of a $5000 of an Explore your Future Grant from the Queensland University of Technology – QUT.

This program is designed for QUT Widening Participation partner schools and community groups to participate in on campus excursion experiences.

On the Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 June, the Year 10/11 science students got up very early and travelled to Brisbane via the tilt train for a two day QUT campus immersion experience. Students were able to visit both QUT campuses – Kelvin Grove and Gardens Point.

At Kelvin Grove students were given a tour of the campus enabling them to see what university life looks like. They also toured the many health related clinics that enable university students to complete their practical studies on campus in the areas of Podiatry, Optometry, Exercise Science and Psychology.

After a big day of walking on the first day students were taken out to dinner at Ahmets Turkish restaurant. A new experience for many of them. This was followed by a range of yummy desserts at Southbank.

On Wednesday, they walked again down to Garden’s Point campus. As they toured the campus students were able to participate in a range of hands on activities such as:

•  the interactive “Cube” wall
•  anatomy and physiology workshop (sorted bones and organs and did  electrocardiographs)
•  engineering workshop – using CAD design programs.

A big thank you to all the QUT staff for giving up their time to show our Shalom students some of the amazing things that they can study at QUT.

A really big thank you to the QUT student volunteers who spent the two days showing our students around. It was great to see Lauren Blackwell – an ex-Shalom Student (currently studying engineering at QUT) who did a great job showing us around.

A big thank you also to teachers Grace Tobin and Steven Jenes who helped supervise this trip.

And lastly a big thank you to the 23 students who represented Shalom College extremely well with their enthusiasm, perfect behaviour and respectful manners on this trip.