It’s been a busy year for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) outreach for L3Harris Technologies. Big advocates for STEM-related skillsets, given the critical role these play in delivering innovative technologies for their customers, L3Harris proactively promotes the importance of these subjects within the local community, be that at schools, colleges, universities or regional events. This year has been of particular significance for STEM outreach in the UK:

L3Harris UK Early Careers Network

L3Harris held its first networking event for early career professionals this summer in the UK. Held at the ADS Group building in London, members of the Early Career Professionals (ECP) Employee Resource Group came together to connect and learn more about the full range of L3Harris capabilities, participate in workshops and contribute to topical discussions.

“The group aims to enrich the new hire experience through meaningful connections and impactful professional development,” said Cherri Stevens, Chair of the UK ECP Chapter and Co-Head of HR for the UK at L3Harris. “By building a programme of participative activities for, and with, our members, we want to empower early career professionals to feel connected to the company and the community while helping to retain and grow future leaders of L3Harris.”

Cheltenham Science Festival

L3Harris sponsored Cheltenham Science Festival for the fourth time in June. An enthusiastic team of 15 volunteers welcomed over 9,000 visitors to their stand, which offered three activities selected to demonstrate links to L3Harris capabilities. Buildable electronic circuits gave insight into the intricate electronics work undertaken across electronic warfare capabilities, paper-based ciphers represented its portfolio of encryption devices and a controllable robot arm provided a clear link to its robotic systems. Their T7 robot itself even made an appearance, proving incredibly popular with attendees.

Head of HR, Lucy Forsyth also offered her thoughts on the importance of STEM and its career opportunities at a Key Stage 4 Career Panel discussion chaired by reporter and TikTok creator, Sophia Smith-Galer during the week of the festival.

Engineering Development Trust (EDT) Gold Award scheme

L3Harris has participated in the EDT Gold Award scheme for over a decade. This pairs mentors from local businesses with Year 12 students to deliver an engineering project from concept to completion. This year, experts from L3Harris led by Joshua Tyers and Simon Fawcett supported a group of seven students from Tewkesbury School in designing and producing a working model of their concept: a motor-controlled window that opens and closes based on environmental conditions. Controlled by a Raspberry Pi, python script and sensors, the window would open at a specific temperature and close if raining or cold. The project ran from October 2023 to July 2024, ending with a pitch from the students to industry assessors and a final celebration event.

ScratchVHDL in Schools

While Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) engineers are crucial contributors to the work L3Harris does, FPGA engineering is not widely acknowledged by school curriculums in the UK. Senior FPGA Consultant, Philip Abbey, was recently inspired to try and lower the barrier to entry for FPGA skills. Co-authored alongside his 14-year-old son, Abbey developed a ScratchVHDL toolkit designed to help educate comprehensive students about FPGA. The toolkit combines the theory of digital logic design with practical aspects using interactive tools, offering exercises from basic logic gates through finite state machines. So far, Year 12 students within two local schools have trialled the toolkit with great success. Three more schools have since expressed an interest in exploring the toolkit further.

Lego Robots at Alderman Knight

Following their sponsorship of Alderman Knight to enable students to attend Cheltenham Science Festival, L3Harris has begun work to establish a STEM club at the school. This involves providing Lego robotics sets for students to build and test during regular enrichment sessions. Led by Consultant Jon Glyde, members of our early career cohort are offering these sessions to small groups of pupils to nurture mechanical and engineering skills within the community. This will eventually result in the school entering the LEGO League, a scheme that sees teams from local schools compete by taking on various LEGO robot-related challenges.

Circle2Success Educational Outreach

Headline sponsors of business networking company Circle2Success’ debut educational outreach event in November, L3Harris helped to welcome over 1,000 students from many schools, colleges and universities in the Gloucestershire area to Cheltenham Racecourse. Students were given the chance to network with local businesses, attend informative workshops and discuss at length the transition from education into the workplace. For the event, the company revived its successful four-part code breaking challenge for students to enjoy while exploring the many exciting early careers opportunities currently available at L3Harris.

With the business’ Bristol, Tewkesbury and Fleet offices recently taking on new cohorts of early career professionals made up of graduates, apprentices, interns and industrial placement students, this seemed an appropriate time to reflect on the STEM outreach efforts made by the company this year. If you would like to find out more about L3Harris’ social value contributions, visit here.