Teachers with SCG Committee members: Colin Black (Carjon-NRG Ltd), Lien Ta My (Schlumberger), Dave Peter, Will Davies (ITF) & Tim Clarke (Corazon Oil)
The School Career Guidance committee organised a teacher show around at the SPE ICoTA Well Intervention Conference and Exhibition at the AECC on the 9th November. There was a good turnout at this event; seven guidance teachers, career advisers from Skills Development Scotland and Developing the Workforce from across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire attended.
The event started with the teachers, along with the SCG committee volunteers, attending the keynote presentation which was given by the Oil and Gas Authority. This gave the teachers general information about the oil & gas industry and also the future of North Sea development.
This was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition hall. The volunteers brought the teachers around the different companies exhibiting at the event where they had the opportunity to talk to the company representatives. At each stand the teachers had the opportunity to discuss the company business, technology, products and hear the various personal career stories of the company representatives; these covered a diverse range of career paths from all over the world. Company representatives emphasized the importance of continuing to recruit both young apprentices and graduates across a range of roles and education background. This experience gave the teachers a better understanding of how to guide students in developing the skills needed to create their own careers.
The event provided an opportunity to create links between industry and teachers and those involved in helping students choose subjects and make career choices. The teachers were all very positive about the event, found it very informative, they welcomed the opportunity to develop links with industry and look forward to building on the contacts made at the event. A representative from the Aberdeen Science Centre also attended the event and provided information about STEM projects available in Aberdeen Science Centre to all teachers.
SPE Europe Director and Global energy4me committee member Colin Black, MD, Carjon-NRG Ltd commented “ICOTA Exhibitors and innovative technologies as well as real life experiences help to inspire the Teachers and Career Guidance Staff who are then better informed to guide pupils towards engineering and science related Careers in our sector. As such this event was a great success, well done to the SPE Aberdeen SCG team”.
The teachers were also directed to other resources about energy industry information including free class room material at http://energy4me.org/resources, http://inside-industry.org.uk/