Imagine! STEM Club

Imagine! A STEM Club with a difference

Do you imagine how science and medicine could improve the way your body works? Can you imagine how understanding the natural world helps us improve our aircraft, or whether plastics are a good or bad thing? Could you imagine how virtual reality may affect our future lives?

If the answer is YES to any of the above, and you are aged 12-15, then we invite you to Imagine!

Trust Science: Help Make Essex Covid-Safe

A CSES Imagine! STEAM Competition

We are pleased to announce another online competition, hot on the heels of our CSES Imagine! Environmental Challenge and CSES Imagine! Plastic – Friend or Foe?

Vaccination is the only way that we are going to beat COVID-19 and get back to normal. But this only works if over 80% of people are vaccinated.

It is vital that the Covid-19 vaccination message is understood by your family and people who are worried, unsure, resist or reject being vaccinated.

Help us de-bunk myths, lies and fake news about the vaccine! If you are a primary, secondary or home-schooled pupil or student in Essex, CSES is challenging YOU to help beat Covid-19 and make Essex Covid-safe.

Imagine! how you would persuade people to get vaccinated. Design a poster or make your "call to action" Video and get your own message across. You could win a prize! And your video or poster will be published.

The deadline for entry is Friday 4 June 2021. Open to children and school students of all ages.

Read on to find out more about the competition and click here to register.

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CSES Imagine! Plastic – Friend or Foe?

Imagine! the Future by exploring plastic in our lives!

Many people believe that environmentalism begins and ends at the recycling bin. Simply throwing something away into a large recycling bin is enough to make us feel like we've done our bit.

But the recycling process is much more problematic and recycling plastics is much less straight forward than many of us think. Apart from complying with local rules and regulations, recycling is a business and as such must be profitable. If there is no demand for reprocessed materials, nobody will recycle them and if the recycled product is not good quality, nobody will buy it. Consequently, we consumers play a much more important role than we might imagine!

It is vital that we all play our part to ensure our beauty spots are not destroyed by pollution and our town centres are not clogged up with litter.

This particular challenge is concerned with PLASTIC pollution. Enter the challenge to encourage your friends and family to RECYCLE, increase their involvement with their environment and become part of the CIRCULAR ECONOMY.

Please register here if you would like to enter this competition.

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CSES Imagine! Environmental Challenge

Today, modern society suffers many forms of pollution, litter in our streets, fumes in our towns and plastic waste in the oceans.

CSES hopes to encourage the young people of Essex to become aware of the (mainly human) activities which result in this pollution and IMAGINE! ways in which the pollution can be reduced or eliminated, or circumventions can be put in place to reduce the risk to the environment or human health.

This first of several challenges invites pupils currently in Years 6 or 7, individually or in teams of up to four (please check Covid tier rules for your area before planning a team venture) to investigate the risks posed to people just by walking to school or through a particular area of their Town Centre.

Please register here if you would like to enter this competition.

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Imagine! STEM @ Home

A DIY Imagine! STEM competition during lockdown

We are pleased to publish our Imagine! masterclasses for Essex 2020 online.

Go to our resources section to find out more.

Bridge building competition

The CSES Build a Bridge Competition is now closed and we thank all those who made the effort and took the time to submit an entry. With entries across a very wide age range, judging proved to be very difficult, but the quality of effort throughout and ingenuity applied to the challenge by everyone has been beyond our imagination! Well done to all participants.

Bridge building competition winners announced

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Launch report of Imagine!

The Imagine! STEM Club is a new CSES/ARU event for school students and young people

The inaugural launch of the Imagine! STEM Club took place at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) Chelmsford campus over three days (29-31 July 2019). Over twenty students aged between 12 and 15 attended with an approximate 50% male-female ratio.

CSES Imagine! STEM Club was conceived and planned in consultation with ARU and Essex County Council (ECC) with the aim of promoting STEM learning and career options to young local school students and home-schooled students. CSES Council Member Bob Easby drafted the programme together with Professor David Humber from ARU, who were keen to show off their new £4 Million SuperLab, and Ed Bye, a CSES member who works with Schools and ECC providing specialist STEM support. The interactive practical sessions were delivered in the SuperLab by David Humber, Bob himself and Paul Cotton the SuperLab Manager at ARU, with some additional help and support from some enthusiastic ARU Ambassadors.

Students undertaking urine analysis in the SuperLab

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Bridge building competition winners announced

Results of our inaugural Imagine! STEM @ Home competition

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Imagine! STEM @ Home Bridge Building Competition. We were bowled over by the number, quaility and diversity of entries received!

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Imagine! Returns with 2020 Masterclasses

Our hit STEM Club is back with an expanded programme for Essex 2020

Due to the COVID-19 situation, we will unfortunately have to postpone these sessions until the next academic year.

We are very pleased, however, to publish our "Simple Machines and Bridges" masterclass (originally scheduled for May) as a DIY activity pack. See our resources section to find out more.

This is part of Essex 2020 – a Year of Science and Creativity.

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Introducing a STEM Club with a difference...

As part of the build up to our centenary in 2020, CSES, in partnership with Essex County Council (ECC) and Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), is launching an exciting new venture to support and encourage young people to consider the importance of science and technology in everyday life.

Imagine! STEM Club will start with a three-day workshop on 29-31 July 2019 in ARU's high-tech Super Lab.

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