JPMorgan and SUTD’s programme opens students up to careers in STEM sector
Career Connect aims to help meet the growing demand for digitally skilled workers and spark teenagers’ interest in STEM fields
[SINGAPORE] When a group of secondary school students were asked to pitch ideas for a tech solution to everyday inconveniences, they had them at the ready: How about a digital bank that lets its consumers compartmentalise their spending into, say, food and medical bills? How about an alarm that sounds when the amount of cash in any category falls by more than usual?
Another group of students came up with the idea of a “smart” school bag powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that sends out reminders about unfinished homework.
The students were participants in the fourth edition of Career Connect, a global philanthropy programme that aims to nudge youth – including females aged 13 to 15 from underprivileged families identified by SUTD and the secondary schools – towards careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
The programme, jointly run through the month of March by JPMorganChase (JPMC) and the Singapore University of Technology and Design, was structured around design challenges, career activities, mentoring and workshops.
Ong Wei Han, JPMC’s chief administrative officer for the Asia-Pacific, said: “With Singapore facing a growing demand for digitally skilled workers, Career Connect is designed to spark interest in STEM fields from an early age.
“Through our non-profit partners such as SUTD, the initiative delivers an interactive and fun curriculum that brings out the best in our young participants, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
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Vaughn Langen, SUTD’s lead innovation designer at the Design Innovation Office, said that the goal of the programme has remained the same in the last four years, “but we evaluate and look to enrich the content each year”.
This year, an industry visit was included, and students had an opportunity to speak with, for example, industrial designers, mechanical engineers and electrical engineers; these chats would have given them an insight into a range of STEM professions, he added.
Tan Keyi, product manager at JPMC and a mentor to the students, explained that the project is about the students learning to empathise with people experiencing issues of everyday life, and then thinking about the STEM skills to solve them.
Citing the idea of the digital bank, named Ching Ching Bank, Tan said that the way it is supposed to work was “close to the heart of the kids”, in that such a bank would give them the agency to allocate their personal finances and save up for what they want to buy.
He added that there could, of course, be some refinements to their ideas. “Who knows, there could be a hackathon in future and a bank may adopt this idea!”
Sajida Khatun from Bartley Secondary, whose team came up with the idea of Ching Ching Bank, said that the course taught her to approach an issue from different perspectives, and that she might consider a career in a STEM field.
The AI bag idea, which came from Beatty Secondary School, was on Wednesday (Apr 2) awarded the first prize.
The team’s mentor, Syainda Abdul, a tech project manager at JPMC, said that the group leveraged AI to build the prototype school bag that could be a tool for students, reminding them of pending homework and sending alerts to their parents if they get lost.
JPMC runs Career Connect in nine markets globally, including Singapore, Japan, Australia and China in the Asia-Pacific, to equip young people with skills to compete for quality careers.
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