Working with young people

Queen Mary has a team of staff who work closely with a range of schools, organising revision classes, summer schools, student mentoring schemes, talks and open days, all designed to promote the benefits – and possibilities – of a university education. Our academics and students also work with schools in a variety of innovative ways, bringing their research to life, sharing their knowledge and experience, and enthusing young people. Here are a just a few examples of this work:

• Each year, we organise a Maths Challenge competition for secondary schools in Hackney, sponsored by UBS and in association with the Bridge Academy. The finals are held at Queen Mary and judged by some of our maths PhD students.
• Our Embodied Emotions project helps local primary school children to improve their emotional skills. It brings together historians, performers, educators, and children to investigate how bodily movements and facial expressions mediate between inward feelings and the outside world.
• Researchers from our Centre for Neurosciences and Trauma recently visited the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition to explain how their research into the failure in the body's normal blood clotting function will help save lives.
• We run a science education centre called the Centre for the Cell from our medical research laboratories in the Blizard Building. The Centre aims to improve the lives of young people, inspire the next generation of scientists and raise educational attainment. With interactive talks like 'Snot, Sick and Scabs', which looks at how the human body defends itself against unwanted microscopic organisms, young people love it. Here's what three young visitors had to say:
  
  "It was amazing seeing scientists working, so different from anything I have seen before."
  
  "It’s not all sitting down putting your head down, you can actually have fun when you’re a scientist."
  
  "I know now that I want to be a scientist."

Much of this work takes place locally, but not all:

• Our law students have worked with organisations such as Lawyers Without Borders to provide free legal advice in countries such as Ghana, Malawi and Zambia.
• The Centre for the Cell’s online resources are used by schools around the world – the site has had nearly 20 million hits from 146 countries and is a particular favourite with teachers in Cuba!
• Our Computer Science for Fun (cs4fn) programme is an international campaign to get young people interested in computer science – in one year alone, its website received 15 million hits worldwide.