16 November 2009
Make Your Mark Challenge winning team go forward to Regional level
Make Your Mark Challenge
On Monday 16th November four teams of SERC students competed in the UK’s largest enterprise challenge for secondary schools and colleges. The teams came from right across the College with teams in Bangor, Lisburn and Downpatrick.
This year the Make Your Mark Challenge saw over 70,000 students across the UK take part in the one day initiative. The theme was “Don’t be a carbon copy” and students were asked to come up with a product idea with a local link and a low carbon footprint.
Each group is provided with a mentor and this year we were lucky to have two advisors from Action Renewables who were great sources of information on low carbon technologies and whose brains the students thoroughly picked – with excellent results! They also brought some great gadgets. Ashleigh and Patrick are seen with the latest in solar robots.
This year’s teams produced four excellent business ideas and judges were very impressed with the imagination, commercial sense and business planning.
The concept chosen to represent SERC in the NI Regional finals is SOULTRAX - a GPS panic button. The Bangor students who submitted this award came from Construction, Sports Science, Performing Arts and Business subjects. The mix of skills proved to be very effective.
Our finalists succesfully reached the Regional NI finals where their idea was commended by the judges. In next year's competition they are targeting the UK finals in London.
The SERC champions are:
- Chris Heanue Performing Arts
- Patrick Kelly Performing Arts
- Sian Devon Business
- Ashleigh Johnston Business
- Keisha Breen Construction
- Jennie Wright Sport Science