A new initiative by the Collingwood Football Club has been designed to connect young fans with science, technology, engineering and maths skills in application to solve a business challenge.
The program, Collingwood STEM Cup challenge, in partnership with Day of STEM, sees students use analytics and problem solving skills to select the football club player salaries for the 2017 season based on performance statistics.
A report by the former Chief Scientist for Australia, Ian Chubb, predicted that 70 per cent of Australia’s future jobs will require STEM-related skills, yet only 16 per cent of Australian tertiary students are pursuing this career path.
As a result, the program aims to give students insights into the possibilities of tech career paths and enables them to build a STEM resume for the future.
“Our club is very excited that the Collingwood STEM Cup program is now available to our fans, particularly young students interested in the maths and science behind footy,” said Collingwood Football Club chief executive, Gary Pert.
The program also features mentors from Day of STEM partners including Cisco IoT architect, Nathan Holland and SAS data analytics specialist, Sandra Hogan.
According to SAS chief operating officer A/NZ, Lynette Clunies-Ross, SAS wanted to showcase the possibilities of a data analytics career via female role models.
“It’s incredibly important for SAS to share the journeys of our women professionals, including SAS’ own Sandra Hogan, in order to inspire more young women towards careers in STEM,” she said.
“Sandra’s successful career in data analytics has relevance to a broad range of industries including sport and is a valuable example for young women entering the STEM fields.”
Cisco A/NZ vice-president, Ken Boal, added that Cisco’s involvement was focused around showing students the connection between technology and sport.
“The application of different networked technologies to measure performance in sports is a prime example of the harnessing the power of IoT.
"As an IoT Architect, Nathan works in a variety of different industry verticals to improve connectivity and results for clients.”
