Students in running for scholarship
Two students from Wolverhampton have made it to the final five in a competition to award a free university scholarship.
Feargus Flanagan and Caitlin Cooper, both 17, have been shortlisted from nearly 100 West Midland applicants in this year’s Millennium Point Trust Scholarship programme.
Hoping to secure the fully paid-for degree to study at Birmingham City University, the pair will each give a presentation on a topic of their choice to a panel of top industry judges during a live event at Birmingham's Millennium Point building on March 27th.
Feargus, from Bradmore, is a sixth-former at Highfields School, while Caitlin, from Penn, is studying at Halesowen College.
Millennium Point is a major educational building which is home to the university's faculty of technology, and also the Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum.
Alongside Feargus, who is looking to study music technology, and Caitlin, who wants to read computer forensics, the other candidates include Jerome Adrien, 19, from Birmingham, who has applied for automotive engineering; Moses Mbikayi Mukendi, 17, from Coventry, who wants to study computer games technology; and Laura Jane Avis, also 17, from Redditch, who hopes to study film production technology.
Millennium Point commercial director Rebecca Delmore said: “This year we have seen the highest number of applications for the scholarship to date, so shortlisting Jerome, Laura, Moses, Caitlin and Feargus was a really tough job.
"The sheer quality of applications, number of entrants and the variety of courses chosen really highlights the growing interest in science, engineering, engineering and mathematics (Stem) subjects and the Millennium Point Trust Scholarship, an initiative we are so proud to encourage.
“We are really excited to hear their presentations and would like to wish our five finalists the very best of luck for next month’s final.”
The scholarship programme, now in its fifth year, is the flagship initiative from the Millennium Point Charitable Trust, and is fully funded by the charity, which in 2018 invested more than £4.8m in Stem-related organisations, projects and initiatives, based in the West Midlands.
All of the commercial activity that takes place in the Millennium Point building feeds back into the charity, which supports Stem-related organisations, projects and initiatives.