Australia’s submarine company, ASC, is actively supporting STEM education to meet the shipbuilding workforce needs of the future.
ASC engineers have been mentoring Le Fevre High School students to prepare for the Subs In Schools competition, which was completed on Friday. Le Fevre High School placed second, behind Brighton High School and ahead of The Heights High (Modbury), and will participate in the national Subs in Schools competition later this year.
Each team must build a working model of a submarine and drive it, remote controlled, through an underwater course, demonstrating the ability to dive, turn and surface.
The competition started with pool tests on Wednesday and continued on Thursday and Friday with assessment of the engineering and marketing aspects of their entries.
ASC Chief Executive Officer, Stuart Whiley said:
“It is vitally important that Australia educates more students in STEM, ensuring that we have a highly skilled and capable workforce to support the Federal Government’s naval shipbuilding agenda.”
“As an employer of choice, tasked to maintain, upgrade and enhance Australia’s submarines, ASC believes it is imperative to actively foster learning in STEM and create pathways to careers.”
Students at Le Fevre were guided by ASC engineers Nick Jones, Tom McGovern and Rikus Van Altena, who apply their real-life experience maintaining and enhancing Collins Class submarines.
ASC actively fosters STEM education in other ways, including hosting a “Robot Rumble” event in June at ASC’s site in Osborne, which gave students the opportunity to test their robots and interact with ASC experts and learn more about a career in submarines. The event attracted about 80 students and teachers.
ASC offers highly competitive entry-level programs for graduate engineers and tradespeople and an internship program for undergraduate engineering students.
ASC also works closely with universities to shape the next generation of submarine and shipbuilders. ASC subject matter experts deliver key courses within the Masters of Marine Engineering, at the University of Adelaide.
Over 250 specialist engineers are employed across ASC in submarines and the Air Warfare Destroyer program.
The Subs in Schools competition involves pool tests on Wednesday, followed by judging of the engineering, project management and marketing support documents on Thursday and Friday at the Royal Adelaide Show.
Subs in Schools is run by Re-Engineering Australia in association with the Department of Defence.
