In January of 2021, Becky Bennett and Daniel Nieuwenhuize were chosen to attend the 2021 Rotary National Science and Technology Forum.

We were given the opportunity by the HOLA of Science Miss Mora. As Rotary describes it, it is an annual two week camp for high achieving Year 12 STEM students who are interested in widening their knowledge in where STEM can take them through university and beyond. Normally, there are around 180 students and about 20 people making up the staff, so it’s quite a big event. It was based in Auckland, we stayed in the university dorm and got to travel around to different universities. We both found staying in a university dorm with the kind of people we expect to be surrounded by at university very valuable. The dorm we were in was essentially a 16-story 5-star hotel. We had such great food and accommodation while there. 

We gained a lot of knowledge over the 20 different modules at the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and Massey. It wasn’t just learning the whole time though, every module was really interactive and interesting. There was also a forum volleyball tournament which was very competitive and a lot of fun. As well as all the time in between modules spent making friends with some of the smartest students from all around the country.

We both found it really difficult to pick one favourite part of the Forum, but here’s one thing from each of us that we really enjoyed.

Becky: I really enjoyed doing the sheep heart and lung dissection at Auckland Medical School during the BioMed module. We each had our own set of organs to dissect and the teacher was really knowledgeable and walked us through each step of the process in great detail. She was instructing us on screens that were around the lab on the ceiling that showed a close up of what she was doing. We also did another activity where we split into groups of 3, learnt about something, in my case, it was the human heart and how it works, and we then presented it to everyone else.

Daniel: I really enjoyed doing the medical school recreational option. The rec-options were 3 chosen activities that you hopefully got to do if there was space. I was very fortunate to get medical school as it was the most contested one. There were three parts, the first was playing skin cancer bingo and we learnt about it and genome sequencing. Then we got taken around medical labs where we got to see cancer cells under a microscope. We were also shown all of the expensive medical equipment and we got to talk to a forensic pathologist. Afterwards came the best part, a room with the human body parts! It was so interesting getting to see all of these organs, body parts and what happened to them.

Our time at the Forum was really insightful and loads of fun. We talk to our friends that we made there every day and we make sure to hang out with the ones who live here in Christchurch. We would like to thank our respective Rotary clubs and especially Miss Mora for giving us this opportunity.