Students Wow Judges at SERC Annual Expo

You couldn’t help feeling the buzz if you attended any of the annual Expo events across SERC campuses this past week.

Stefanie Campbell, Deputy Head of Enterprise, Entrepreneurship, and the Environment said, “Well done to every student team who presented their ideas in Bangor, Downpatrick, Lisburn, Newtownards, Ballynahinch and Newcastle Campuses. Corporate and academic staff and visiting judges all remarked how wonderful it was to see students all together again and to witness the ‘buzz’ of enterprise.”

She added, “Judges were suitably impressed by the enterprising and innovative solutions to the challenges that the students presented. The efforts of students and staff in having prototypes, products and services pulled together for the Expos in such a short time is to be commended and we know that many of the judges were bowled over by what they heard and saw at each campus.”

Students presented ideas for children’s learning and development, for upcycling and repurposing clothes, for student learning pods, for dealing with waste and saving energy, for healthy and reasonable priced street food, for multicultural Makaton - just to mention a few. Real solutions for real issues.

Ten teams from across the College will now be selected to go through to the Dragons’ Den-style final on 28th September. Here, finalists will pitch to industry expert judges to compete for the top spot and prizes.

Thank you to all our judges, from internal teams and external organisations, who gave up their time to come along, meet the students, hear about their ideas and give them valuable feedback at the events in each campus.

Thanks also to Lidl, Eurospar and Decathlon who provided vouchers and food for the events.

Good luck to everyone.