Bethlehem College offers all students opportunities to contribute positively and make a change to the world now and well into the future. iSTEM (integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is a subject that the College has offered its Year 9 and Year 10 students for the past four years. This subject teaches students to work collaboratively and develops their problem solving skills and their ability to think creatively and critically.

The projects covered by Bethlehem College students are very impressive. They include a Robotics project where students build their robots and coded software to operate them. Our current Year 9 group have made their robots dance. Our Year 10 group has used the design thinking process to enter the NRMA Future Transport Challenge and built solar cars to race against each other schools in the Sunsprint Challenge.

Our teachers work with Sydney University and the University of NSW to create interesting projects for students, including gel electrophoresis as part of the AMGEN Biotech Experience in the topic Biomedical Innovation. Currently, four Bethlehem iSTEM students are working on a project with an Astrobiologist at UNSW to investigate the possibility of life on Titan (one of Saturn’s moons).

iSTEM encourages students to take a chance, to not panic when things don’t work out and to use the engineering design process, design thinking and project-based learning to problem solve to reach the desired solution.