Samiyah Salahuddin first stepped onto Imperial’s campus in 2017 aged 11 for the Sutton Scholars programme which was funded by the Sutton Trust. It was an experience that had an impact on not only Samiyah but her whole family. Dinner table conversations quickly changed to discussions on coding and robotics, Samiyah’s younger sisters followed in her footsteps joining STEM clubs and outreach programmes, and, seeing the transformative value of these activities, her mother began volunteering on STEM engagement activities, collaborating with Imperial and becoming a champion for girls in STEM.

Delivered in partnership with The Sutton Trust between 2016-2020, Imperial Sutton Scholars was a two-year programme for students in Years 7-9 focused on coding and robotics as well as STEM more broadly. “Three of us from my school were selected to take part," says Samiya. "We went to Imperial once a month on Saturdays learning about different programming languages and applying this to robotics. At the end of each day, we gave a presentation to our parents showing what we did, and in year 9 we had the opportunity to stay on campus for a week to get a sense of what it’s like to go to university and live in halls. It was such an amazing opportunity.”

There were sessions for the parents too. Samiyah’s mother Shanaj, a civil servant in the Department for Education, remembers a talk from Dr Mel Bottrill, an Imperial alumni and now Head of Outreach, who was responsible for the Sutton Scholars programme at the time. “She shared her own journey to Imperial and talked about Imperial’s strategy for outreach – what they’re aiming to do and why. It sounded fascinating. So much has unfolded since that moment,” she reflects. “It just opened my eyes up, and my husband’s and Samiyah’s sisters. We’re all doing so much in STEM now.”

Sutton Scholars was launched to address figures showing that high-achieving pupils from low-income families were less likely to finish secondary school in a position to apply to top universities. The Sutton Trust’s Missing Talent report had found that around 7,000 students each year who were in the top 10% of achievers nationally at the end of primary school, later received GCSE results that placed them outside the top 25%.

The programme was about more than results though. For Shanaj, she saw a transformation in her daughter’s confidence. “Samiyah has always been a bit reserved in presenting in front of people and this really helped her come out of her shell. Every month she would give her presentation and I would hear more of her voice.” But it was the very last one that stood out. “For the end of the programme, she’d been chosen to give a talk in front of 250 people. I remember seeing her stood up there so poised and confident. It was amazing to see.”

“Presenting was definitely out of my comfort zone,” says Samiyah. “But I'd done it so many times on the course that it made the last one easier. It's not something I had the opportunity to do much outside the course so it was great that I could practice.”

The ripple effect

Though the Sutton Scholars programme has ended, the Sutton Trust continues to work with Imperial and the ripple effect of this programme continues to make waves. “It really snowballed,” says Shanaj. “Coding and programming was something I wasn’t very familiar with at the time and thought you’d have to be quite tech-savvy to understand it. But going in and seeing what Samiyah and the others were doing, then realising that we can do some of these things at home, was a game changer. It inspired me to take up a Python coding course which I did at Imperial.”

Samiyah brought coding kits home and these became shared learning resources for her younger sisters, sparking their own curiosity. The whole family got involved, with her sisters attending Samiyah's presentations too. Shanaj says the programme inspired the family to think more deeply about educational opportunities both at home and in school. “The knowledge and the skills they gained really came through and it made us think about how we could do more."

Back at school, Samiyah founded a coding club to share the knowledge and experiences she gained with other pupils. With her mother's help, they brought Imperial students into the school to give talks and even arranged visits to Imperial. There was one issue though, her mother explains – Samiyah's school didn’t yet have a computing teacher. Shanaj urged the Headteacher to make some hires and shortly after, a computing teacher was in place and now four staff make up the school’s Computing Department.

Samiyah went on to choose Computer Science at GCSE and did maths and engineering masterclasses on top of her studies. “I found direction,” she says. “Before the programme, I enjoyed a lot of subjects, but the course made it clear to me that I wanted to do STEM.” She now studies Pharmacology at King’s College London and will shortly be starting a one-year Clinical Programming Industrial Placement at GlaxoSmithKline - combining her love for coding and her passion for pharmacology.

Through the Sutton Scholars programme, Shanaj met Dr Jackie Bell, a Senior Teaching Fellow in Imperial’s Department of Computing, who runs a range of outreach activities including the Hello World Hackathon. Shanaj brought 29 children from her daughters’ school to these events and arranged for Jackie to visit the school. “Jackie also introduced us to Girls into Coding and Stemettes,” says Shanaj.

Stemettes is a social enterprise that runs talks, workshops, events and mentoring to support more young girls in pursuing STEM. Samiyah signed up for their mentoring programme during her A-levels. “It helped me work out that pharmacology was what I was most interested in,” she says. “The reason I signed up for that was because I knew how beneficial these programmes can be based on my experience at Sutton Scholars. My time at Imperial was instrumental to my STEM journey."

Samiyah’s sister Aiza, a keen attendee of Stemettes events, featured in a BBC interview covering a demonstration campaigning more women to be featured in the STEM national curricula. At just 11 years old, Aiza was also the youngest inspirational speaker at a Girls into Coding event. Samiyah’s youngest sister, Yusra, became a member of the Stemettes Futures Junior Board and was recently nominated as Leader and Changemaker by Festival of the Girl for her role as a STEM advocate.

In 2023, the family returned to Imperial as Stemettes celebrated its tenth anniversary there. The event taking place in the same lecture theatre that Samiyah gave her Sutton Scholars presentation in. "I felt very emotional," says Samiyah. "I'd come full circle. Imperial really is such a big part of my life when I look back and see how much of an impact it’s had.” 

Reflecting on the programme and her daughters’ subsequent enthusiasm for STEM, Shanaj is determined to help close the attainment gap between disadvantaged and advantaged families. “These programmes are helping. Please keep running them. Keep engaging young children,” she urges. “Because the earlier they get that exposure, the more that passion can grow.” Indeed it is estimated that socially entrenched stereotypes, generally considered to impact decisions in later life, are formed by as early as 11 years old. 

Inspired by their experiences with Imperial, Samiyah and Shanaj are now setting up a community interest organisation with a key focus on delivering coding workshops and STEM events for their local community. “This is an exciting project as we do not have anything like this in our community,” says Shanaj. “We are eager to pay it forward and make a positive impact.”

Anshu Bansal is the Commercial Development Project Manager in Imperial’s Enterprise team and, through partnering with the Outreach team, has played a central role in unlocking the power of partnership through the development of STEM Futures. STEM Futures is an Outreach initiative launched in 2022 to support students from Black heritage backgrounds explore STEM degrees. It is a two-year programme for students in Years 10 and 12 featuring lectures, workshops and sessions around careers, personal development, and study skills. Each Year 12 cohort kicks off with Enterprise Week – a programme developed by Anshu.

“Enterprise Week is an opportunity to showcase where STEM can lead,” she says. A version of Enterprise Week existed prior to STEM Futures, Anshu explains. “We wanted to explore working with young people and engaging them the ideas of entrepreneurship. It's also a great way to showcase where STEM can lead. So we partnered with a charity – Generating Genius – that helps students from underrepresented backgrounds, and we organised a work experience week. This included exposing students to different points of the entrepreneurial journey – from how an idea starts in the research lab, to how you develop it further and what do you need to make it into a viable business proposition. 

"That work experience week really opened my eyes," says Anshu. "Working with these really brilliant 16-18-year-olds and seeing how quickly they grasped the ideas and concepts and how engaged they were with the programme, was amazing. Their willingness and ability to learn new things and ask questions really inspired me.” 

As the programme grew, Anshu contacted the Outreach team to ask if some Student Ambassadors could help with a campus tour as part of it. “They asked more about what we were doing and I think this piqued Hanna Jama’s interest. She came along to some of the sessions to see what we were doing and said it would be great to do as part of the STEM Futures programme she was setting up.” 

Anshu was keen to be involved. “It’s important for Imperial to make sure that the brilliant education opportunities and life-changing experience that it provides is more widely accessible. That felt like something important that Imperial’s already striving towards and I wanted to be part of that.”  

The renamed ‘Enterprise Week’ is now the first thing STEM Futures students do as part of their journey on the programme. It takes place as a week-long programme over February half term or the Easter break. Hanna says that doing this as part of the programme welcome really sets the tone for the participants and it has become one of the most popular parts of the programme.

Curiosity is encouraged throughout Enterprise Week. “We say, ‘Don't be shy. This is an opportunity for you to know more about careers in science. Open your minds to the other things that you can do in science related fields.’ And the students really run with it!” Anshu says.

“It was brilliant to be working with our Outreach team," says Anshu. "And to support the efforts that are already happening to engage young people from underrepresented backgrounds, to expose them to what Imperial does and the brilliant things we do and how that might motivate them to take up STEM in their future studies.” 

In true Outreach spirit, the programme has evolved year-on-year. For the most part, this evolution comes from student feedback. “Some feedback from the students was that they really wanted to see role models. Not from lack of trying, but in previous years we didn't have so many Black entrepreneurs or academics coming and talking to them. So in the last one that we ran, we made sure to reach out to people well in advance and we had some brilliant speakers. Bosede Ogunleye, who was previously part of Imperial Enterprise Lab, ran a session for them. She also ran podcast series called Black and Found showcasing Black student entrepreneurs.” 

They also added talks from Black student founders like Debra Babalola. “She was a winner of our Venture Catalyst Challenge, pitching her start-up, Dotplot. She talked to the students about her entrepreneurial journey and offered advice. We also had Dr Wayne Mitchell [a Teaching Fellow at Imperial and the university's Provost for EDI] as a judge on the last day and that was well received by the students. That's quite important, isn't it?” She reflects. “To see role models.” 

This year being the International Year of Quantum, the team introduced sessions on quantum science and technology. They heard from researchers like Dr Jess Wade in the Department of Materials and an Imperial alumnus Lia Li who founded a quantum startup, Zero Point Motion.

Anshu says she is constantly inspired by the passion and enthusiasm she sees in the young people on the programme. "They make me want to continue developing it, to make sure they are getting as much benefit out of it as possible. To share the brilliant work that happens at Imperial and to see the students so willing to learn and so capable of doing great things in their life and to be play even the smallest part in enabling that, is quite brilliant.”