STEAM

Whilst the phrase “full STEAM ahead” is a terrible pun it does sum up the attitude of this year’s STEAM leaders. In Term One Charli Keane has overseen the STEMgc First Robotics Competition team. This has seen a team of students designing, building and coding their robot. 

To spread the word about our STEAM club that meets at lunch on Tuesday and Thursday during lunch our esteemed STEAM leaders (Emily, Vivian, Leia and Juliette) put together an excellent stand for the Student Clubs Expo. Furthermore, they gave generously of their time to set up and run a display at the pedal powered cinema. 

It has been great to see the way the incumbent members of the STEAM club have welcomed our new Year 7 members. However, when we have engaged in some civil engineering challenges things have been “less civil” as teams have vied to build the tallest tower or make the strongest structure from a single sheet of A4 paper. Charlotte Baker crushed Mr Greenwell’s dream of being the best engineer when her triple column tower managed to support 8.45kg! 

Looking to the future we have teams entering in a range of competitions. Harriet Morrisby is heading up a team putting together a video for the Sleek Geeks science communication competition. Simultaneously, Isabel Wu is building a team to design a video game for the 2025 STEM games challenge. 

All in all it has been a great start to the year. Special thanks to our STEAM captains and Mr Greenwell for their unwavering support. 

Cameron Senn-Sanger 

STEAM Leader

First Robotics Competition: Reefscape 🐟

Over the Labour Day long weekend, six students from Years 8 to 12 competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Southern Cross Regional in Penrith, NSW. This is the team’s second year competing in the Regional competition, and it was a great success!

From the start of the Competition Season in January 2025, the school’s FRC team ‘STEMgc’, consisting of 10 students, have been eagerly working to design and build a drivable robot to compete with and against other robots from 44 other teams across Australia and the Asia Pacific Region.

The build season allowed STEMgc to experience first-hand what is involved in mechatronics, and with the help of our supporters, opportunities to learn new things and refine valuable technical skills, such as coding, engineering design, electronics and mechanics. Furthermore, the competition taught the students resilience, team building and challenged them to their fullest capabilities during the high-stakes matches. 

The team performed incredibly well during the competition, qualifying 12th out of 44 teams, and at our highest point 8th. A big congratulations to all these aspiring achievers and best of luck to STEMgc who will be competing in the Melbourne Robotics Tournament in July! 

FRC Sessions run every Tuesday and Thursday after school in the STEAM wing.

Emily Pilepich

Senior STEAM Captain 2025