Borken. A win-win-situation. This is what scientists call a solution to a problem which makes all participants a winner. The “MINT” project is such a solution which started at the grammar school Remigianum in November 2008.
MINT stands for mathematics, computer science, sciences and techniques. All these disciplines are to be made more tempting to the students. Within the course of an internship, seniors majoring in physics therefore spent two days in local enterprises: disposal company Westmünsterland Gescher, TK Absaugtechnik in Velen, AS Antriebstechnik in Reken and Klöcker Bros. in Borken.
The winners of this project are not only the seniors but also the companies involved as well as the younger students who are about to choose their majors and learned about the project and the fun in sciences on the presentation day which took place in the school’s assembly hall yesterday. “We almost need to wow toddlers for sciences”, Dr. Heiner Kleinschneider from the society for business development joked. The students need to realize their prospects they have right here in their area when they decide for a career in sciences: “A company such as Klöcker is global market leader”. Teacher Günter Niehues underlines that girls are as sharp as boys: “Five out of the 16 students in his class are girls”. He additionally pointed out that – despite the prejudice – sciences are not that hard or only for specialists.
During their presentation, the seniors showed that they are specialists already today. “I checked the degree of rotting in a laboratory”, Annika Wagner says. She is happy that she had the chance to work with professional utensils. “We wrote programs for lamps at the computer and overwrote them to the controlling unit” Anna Wilmink says. She had no idea of computer science before, “but is was the combination of physics and computer sciences which made it so fascinating!” Since the project turned out to be a real success, it is supposed to be continued.
Source: daily newspaper “Borkener Zeitung”, January 22nd, 2009