IES UPDATE
National Engineers Day 2016: Bringing engineering into the heartlands by Yue Kok Sun Edited by Queek Jiayu Hosted by IES for the seventh consecutive year, National Engineers Day (NED) has become a key platform for students to discover the marvels of engineering and the many unfolding opportunities in an engineering career. This year’s edition was held over the weekend of 23 and 24 July 2016, at the HDB Hub in Toa Payoh. Venturing out into the heartlands for the first time, the engineering festival for youths, with the theme “Engineers - Innovators & Creators of the Future”, served up a weekend of fun and engaging workshops and talks for both students and their parents. Addressing talent pool growth right at the source Mr Ng Chee Meng, Acting Minister for Education (Schools), presided over the opening ceremony, which was attended by some 150 delegates from both local and overseas business and engineering firms, as well as staff members from various government agencies and supporting partners. In his opening address, Mr Ng spoke about the importance of the
need for engineering capabilities in Singapore, as well as aligning training programmes to the SkillsFuture movement and lifelong learning. To further nurture students’ interests in engineering, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has been collaborating with many partners such as IES to bring students out of their classrooms and engaging them through competitions like the Energy Innovation Challenge (EIC).
This exposes exposing students to real world problems such as climate change and energy depletion and challenges them to deepen their engineering knowledge and to innovate in order to help the human race overcome such problems, he said. Setting high Standards in innovation Mr Ng was later given a tour of the exhibition area, where he met the
Mr Ng reviewing the EIC project submission from Victoria Junior College.
September 2016 THE SINGAPORE ENGINEER
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