Journey into STEM with Innovation@EAST with Anika Singh '24

UWCSEA Communications team
10 October 2022

Innovation@EAST was made for students to explore and develop an innovator's mindset outside of the classroom, whilst keeping the UWC mission at the forefront of their thinking. Students are empowered to create innovative products, services and systems that provide solutions to real-world problems and needs within their community.The key areas of innovation that Innovation@EAST focuses on are systems, services and products. Within systems, students design complementary products and services to create robust scalable systems such as Internet of Things and smart city projects. Next, services involves making a product or process easier to try, use and enjoy for a particular purpose. Examples students have worked on include augmented reality community partnership coding and social startups. Finally, products focuses on developing products with distinguishing features and functionality. Examples include circular design, and game design robotics. At the heart of this framework is entrepreneurial engagement: enacting the UWC mission.

Students learn to challenge the status quo as entrepreneurs by seeking ways to improve the world through channelling their creativity, curiosity and constructive discontent to seek out opportunities and possibilities. Innovation@EAST mentors students to take their original concepts from ideation to launch. In doing so, we engage students to learn from both their mistakes as well as their successes in order to develop an innovator's mindset. As students internalise this innovator’s mindset, they take responsibility for connecting and collaborating with our local community to create innovative products, services and systems.

Read on to discover Grade 11 student, Anika's experience being part of Innovation@East and find out how she has gone from having almost no technical background to now being involved in big projects and how Innovation@EAST helped spark her interest in the STEM field, paving the way for her to continue on in this space in the future.

Students don't need to have a strong technical background to join Innovation@EAST clubs and activities. A big part of innovation is "learning on the job".  In fact, when Anika first joined the innovation club, she had minimal technical experience and took on more of a leadership role in EIC. Over time, she has continued to develop new skills such as programming to take on more technical roles in projects. The FRC team that she is currently part of is working on building a robot which aims and shoots a ball into a hoop, and Anika is working on the coding elements of this project. At Innovation@EAST, there are many areas of innovation students can be involved in, from the natural sciences to engineering and design and so there are plenty of different opportunities available depending on skillsets and interests.

UWCSEA East's supportive culture and environment has been crucial in helping to foster and nurture Anika's interest in STEM. She finds being a part of Innovation@EAST one of the most rewarding and special areas of the school to be in. "What I really love about innovation is that there really isn't any limit to what you can do, from sustainability to service, as well as science and engineering. Personally, I think innovation gave me an avenue to channel my thinking and creativity and combine so many different aspects of my learning which heightened my whole school experience."

I think innovation is special because it combines so many different elements of learning – sustainability, peace, and education, to name a few – in order to arrive at solutions for very real-world and relevant issues. Through innovation, I've had opportunities to be able to work towards solutions which address these issues and actually make a difference.

Recognising that some students might find joining innovation activities daunting, Anika says encountering challenges is a part of the learning process. "Problems and obstacles are inherently part of any design and ideation process so I think having the resilience, skills and motivation to overcome them is the real "challenge" ironically." Citing the importance of teamwork and communication, she adds that oftentimes people have different ideas and perspectives on a problem and because the nature of innovation is that there are so many different ways to approach a task, it can sometimes take a long time to arrive at a consensus that everybody is happy with. However, she views this as an opportunity to work on her communication and collaboration skills – two very important life skills to have. She also recognises that some students might be concerned that activities in this space can be time-consuming and sometimes even stressful, but adds that she has never felt burdened by it because she is always having fun, learning and working with others.

When asked how we can get more girls to be involved, her advice is to make girls more aware of opportunities and she recommends paying a little bit of extra effort and attention to how they feel in the club or the activity, such as by providing girls an avenue where they feel safe to ask questions and understand things at their own pace and to also be given the same opportunities as any other gender. "I think it is important for girls to be comfortable and feel recognised which is sometimes difficult to do in an environment which is largely male-dominated – which is almost every STEM-related Club."

Anika would like to see more students taking up an interest in Innovation@EAST activities, citing how much fun she's had throughout her experience and also appreciating the learning opportunities it presents. "I would recommend innovation to anyone at UWCSEA East because the facilities and support system we have are absolutely incredible and that is something not everybody gets." 

There are opportunities for students in various age groups to take part, such as FIRST Lego League, AWS DeepRacer, R&D Club, hackathons and more. Find out more about Innovation@EAST here.