They are pioneers in participating in this program, so their example will serve as a guide for all students interested in participating in the so-called STEMBach, Baccalaureate of Excellence in Science and Technology, an initiative supported by the Xunta de Galicia and the that the University of Vigo joined from the first moment. The secondary schools of A Sangriña in A Guarda and Plurilingual A Paralaia in Moaña were two of the centers that first joined this experience and, two years later, its students are also the first to publicly defend their work. They have been working in those research projects for the last two years.
Although the forecast was that these projects were defended before May, the situation caused by the health emergency made it necessary to delay these dates and, only these two centers chose to defend their projects in May, virtually through the UVigo Remote Campus classrooms. A few days ago the students of the IES A Sangriña did it, supervised from the Faculty of Marine Sciences by research staff from the Marine Research Centre (CIM), and this Monday they continued their projects defense, in this case in the Faculty of Biology, with the students of the IES Plurilingual A Paralaia. The rest of the centers decided to transfer the presentations to the month of July in the hope of being able to do it in person.
Two courses of voluntary work
Seven students from IES A Sangriña and nine from Paralaia participated in the presentations. These young women and boys, divided into groups, have been working hardly throughout the last two years on these scientific projects, on a completely voluntary basis as an extracurricular activity developed outside their school hours, with the support of teachers at their institute and university. But the effort was not in vain, during these presentations they had the opportunity to demonstrate in the evaluation panel that they know how to prepare and defend a research project.
The students of the IES Plurilingual A Paralaia, divided into three groups, defended their work before an evaluation panel made up of the institute’s director, Álvaro Rodríguez; the coordinator of the STEMBach program at the center, Carlos Velasco, and professor at the Faculty of Biology, Diana Valverde. They were supervised by Professor of the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Immunology, Emilio Rolán. The first group presented a work on the polymorphism of the color of the shell in an intertidal marine snail; the second, supervised by professor Paloma Morán, delved into the genetic identification of animals following the strategy of the Barcod + ing of life project, a methodology which allows the identification by genetic methods of any species.
The third group of students were supervised by professor of the Department of Functional Biology and Health Sciences, Manuel Megías. The project consisted of delving into the knowledge of neurons through antibodies. This work was aimed at identifying, observing and characterizing populations of neurons in the cerebral cortex, for which they used rat brain sections, both in paraffin and in flotation.
Approaching scientific laboratories “with great curiosity”
“I think that for the students the most important was not the knowledge acquired, but the process by which they could acquire it,” professor Diana Valverde explains, who stresses the fact that through this program these students had the opportunity to approach “With great curiosity and respect” to the scientific laboratories, and “they saw complex techniques and procedures in a very direct way, thus awakening vocations”.
“They did not know what they were going to do, what they were going to find … Now, two years later, they know, at small scale, how the university works and how research is carried out in it, an important question if we bear in mind they are students of scientific baccalaureate ”, professor Carlos Velasco explains, to which he adds that today these students know how to prepare a research project and defend it and that places them with an advantage compared to the rest of their classmates at the time to carry out their Final Degree Projects. “In addition, the fact of facing new and unknown goals of which until now they were doing, will help them in the future to face the challenges that life will present them with a previous experience.”
From the point of view of the university teaching staff, Valverde explains that this experience involved a great effort, since everyone had to adjust schedules and activities, “but it was something that was done with great enthusiasm and, seeing the great interest that the proposed topics aroused among the students, the effort is compensated”.
16 UVigo centres participate in the STEMBach program
From the beginning, most (16) of the UVigo centres expressed interest in participating in the STEMBach program, although today there are ten schools and faculties that have active projects with secondary schools, both in the provinces of Pontevedra and Ourense as well as A Coruña. “In addition, there are two other centres that are currently working with different institutes to join the program immediately,” explains the vice-rector for Student Recruitment, Natalia Caparrini, says. She explains that the centres with active programs are the Computer Engineering schools, Aeronautics and Space, Industrial Engineering and Mining and Energy Engineering, together with the Faculties of History, Philology and Translation, Biology, Economic and Business Sciences, Marine Sciences and Chemistry.
These centres currently collaborate with ten institutes: eight in the province of Pontevedra, one in Ourense and the other in A Coruña. “For us as a University, this experience has been very positive from the first moment. Firstly, due to the response from the UVigo faculty and centres, who quickly joined the initiative of the Xunta de Galicia and who are working closely with the secondary school institutes in a totally disinterested way, but also for the objective of the project, to encourage a vocation for research and for scientific and technological studies, a priority in the framework of the STEAM activities that are being promoted from this vice-rectory”, Caparrini stressed.