KARACHI, (MILLAT/APP): Institute of Business Administration
(IBA) AMAN CED organized the graduation ceremony of its incubatee
STEMMERS at the Aman Center for Entrepreneurship Development (CED),
IBA Main Campus.
An official of the IBA said on Friday that STEMMERS is an
initiative to provide Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
and Management (STEMM) education to learners of grade 4 and above and
to produce tech-savvy future leaders in Pakistan.
They offer basic, intermediate and advanced level courses in
which students have the opportunity and resources to learn cutting
edge technologies in robotics, programming, 3D printing and even game
development.
STEMMERS were incubated at AMAN CED-IBA in September 2015 and
since then it has seen progressive growth with time. Several schools
collaborated with STEMMERS to offer STEM based courses in their
schools.
In his welcome address Dr. Shahid Qureshi, Director IBA AMAN CED,
welcomed the guests and talked about the Effectuation Theory, which
encourages people to have smaller dreams.
He also mentioned how the absence of money is a resource as it
encourages creativity. For instance, there have been start-ups in CED
managing their businesses with amounts as low as Rs. 5000-10,000.
Azad Ahmed Manager Incubation and Outreach Activities, gave a
brief introduction of how STEMMERS was launched at IBA AMAN CED.
Ahmed Paracha, founder of Stemmers, mentioned how STEM education
is taught at the primary level in schools abroad, but not in Pakistan.
He talked about the journey- how it was founded in September 2015 and
gradually began to expand across well-known universities such as NUST.
`Our target is to reach a level at which students can contribute to
society’, he stated. The aim is also to develop entrepreneurial skills
in children- indicating the change from the original name STEMERS
(Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to STEMMERS (Science,
Technology, Engineering, Math and Management).
Paracha elaborated that several schools collaborated with
STEMMERS to offer STEM based courses in their schools.
A Summer Camp was also offered, in June-July 2016 in
collaboration with AMAN CED in which over 200 students were catered
to. Recently STEMMERS has acquired a designed facility in DHA Karachi,
focusing on the CITIZEN SCIENCES concept and first Maker’s Studio for
school level students in Pakistan.
Paracha thanked Dr. Shahid, Dr. Imran, and all current and past
members of the team.
Towards the end, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed
between Ahmed Paracha and a private investor, Mohammad Rashid.