An inaugural conference and presentation of the “STEM Academy” project was held, with Toni Milun and Marin Trošelj participating in the panel discussion

This Monday was the inaugural conference and presentation of the STEM Academy project implemented by the Croatian Office for Creativity and Innovation (HUKI), a non-profit organization founded to promote entrepreneurship, social innovation, networking and mutual assistance in developing personal skills for employment and personal advancement.

The implementation of the project started on 29. June 2021 and will last two years during which HUKI in cooperation with civil society organizations and academic partners in the project will seek to promote the STEM area among children and youth by conducting STEM workshops, STEM festivals and one-day events and creating online content to develop STEM-related skills. om.

“There is no top STEM without top humanities”

A panel discussion was held as part of the conference “Development of STEM skills in children and youth – popularization and challenges” where the panelists were a famous mathematician and professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Algebra Tony Milun and Marin Trošelj , co-founder of the successful Croatian startup STEMI, and the duo expressed their thoughts on the importance of STEM in education and employment, but also their personal experiences in the effort to popularize STEMI.

“I manage to motivate my students by getting involved in projects, it is very important for them”, explained Toni Milun and added: “There is nothing without STEM! Because what is STEM developing? Creativity, innovation, problem solving, project tasks, interdisciplinarity. This is actually all that is required in today’s occupations, and it will be especially demanded in the future when all manual occupations will die out, ie those that will be taken over by robots. This is extremely important today. Even if you don’t want to, or you will be an artist… When I look at today’s startups, they are very often related to new technologies and STEM areas, where they often need some artist to draw something, but this collaboration is very important. an artist and an individual from another profession actually understands what this is all about. So, really, STEM is extremely important and useful for everyone, and secondly, it will be a link and a skeleton in a way. ”

“STEM is very grateful because it can be based and you should have been based on project teaching. In fact, all that Toni pointed out is, it is much more important to develop everything he stated than technical skills because technologies change very quickly and what needs to be developed is that “Mindset” , ie engineering and scientific “mindset” and how to teach children to think like scientists, engineers, mathematicians… And how to stop looking at the world through categories, e.g. “This is chemistry, this is biology” and the like, and to start looking at the world holistically , holistically, “said Marin Troselj , appealing that children need to be provided with technologically entertaining moments to remember, and said:

“There is no top STEM without top humanities.”

Workshops for children from all over Croatia

STEM Academy is conducted in cooperation with partners Institute for the Development of Education, Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering, University of Zagreb and the University of Algebra, and in February next year Zagreb’s Algebra is preparing free STEM workshops for children from all over Croatia. Applications will be open in early December, and more information can be found on the official project website.

The project was co-financed by the European Union from the European Social Fund. The project was co-financed by the Office for Non-Governmental Organizations of the Government of the Republic of Croatia. The total value of the project is HRK 1,224,392.86.