A group of nine Year 8 students from Dungog High School have participated in the HunterWiSE Women in STEM program.
The program is designed to support and inspire Year 8 girls to look beyond traditional jobs when considering their future career paths in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
The program involved an industry visit to Hunter Water, a competition where students identified a problem in their community and developed a solution, and an end-of-program presentation night at the University of Newcastle.
Under the guidance of student mentors from the University of Newcastle the Dungog High School teams developed three worthy projects.
Bella Kable, Bridgette Canas, Bella Wall and Chelsea Blacker designed a windchime to deter birds from the Year 7 area to reduce bird droppings, Lucy Field and Lara Silver created a Dungog Ride Share app to address poor public transport, and Kammi Conn, Jordan Kozis and Allira Hall planned to reduce canteen prices by supplying fresh produce from a specially-designed school garden. The girls then made prototypes and pitched their ideas to a series of judges.
Dungog High School didn't feature on the winners' podium but the efforts of the girls were applauded by the judges as well as the hundreds of people in the crowd.
