UL's EPI-STEM Centre hosts BT Young Scientist participants and winner

EPI-STEM National Centre for STEM Education located in UL's School of Education at the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences is an internationally renowned research and innovation centre for STEM teacher upskilling and Continuing Professional Development (CPD). This week, EPI-STEM welcomed pupils from Coláiste Chiaráin Croom, their school principal Ger O’Sullivan and their science and physics teacher Edel Farrell.

The pupils speaking today included Miles Bueno, Amina Costello, Lily Li, Ruben Massey, Aidan Oscar, Taha Nije, and Seán O’Sullivan were all entrants in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition earlier this year. Between them, they carried off a long list of prizes including the top award of the BT Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year 2024, by Seán O’Sullivan.

The participants from Coláiste Chiaráin were received in EPI-STEM by interfaculty scientists, science educators, teacher educators, researchers, research assistants and enterprise partners.

Speaking at the opening of this STEM education seminar, Professor Geraldine Mooney Simmie, Chair of STEM Education and Director of EPI-STEM said: “This seminar showcases the great local talent in science and technology education, research and innovation right on our own doorstep at University of Limerick and acknowledges the vital work of leadership in the school, through the fulsome commitment of the school principal Ger O’Sullivan and his deputy principals, and the longstanding commitment to this work by the science and physics teacher Edel Farrell as a champion of inquiry-oriented learning and the valuing of imagination and research in all our lives.

“This seminar offers an important living space for the voices of the pupils as they share with us today their reflections about their preparations and planning for entry to the BT Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year Exhibition. This will be of immense value to us as it will help us to better understand how we might better teach our current and future student teachers in STEM education at UL, especially in a time of rapid national curriculum change in relation to STEM and STEAM education, climate justice and sustainability.

“EPI-STEM has a proud history in research and innovation, we have a strong research-informed commitment to new cutting-edge and inclusive pedagogies and we are constantly striving to do this better all the time. Besides being the largest provider of teacher education in the post-primary sector in Ireland, the School of Education at UL is unique in having all the STEM subjects and being in a position to offer a full suite of interfaculty STEM initial teacher education programmes.

“This seminar today fills us with a profound sense of hope for the future of Irish society. We clearly need fresh thinkers, people who are curious and original enough to leave no stone unturned in their search for truth, for knowledge and for doing life better for us all. We are in a time of rapid change and we clearly need people who are prepared to dig deep, to be considered, to stop and think, to do the creative critical and collaborative work of researching with originality, to design new hypotheses and to do the testing. We need people who are prepared to interrupt the discourse, to search without as well as within so that we can secure a decent future for our locality, for our country and the planet. We can rest that bit better today knowing we have you in our sights.”