Sound Advice offered to STEM Students

Casella (UK), a global provider of occupational monitoring equipment, has supported STEM Team East by donating sound level meters for students to use in order to enhance their education. Established in 1799, Casella has manufactured a wide range of quality measuring instruments since its inception.

STEM Team East is an education charity that works with schools in Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and Bedfordshire to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) and enhance the national curriculum in these subjects. In addition, STEM Team East manage a number of schemes throughout East Anglia and encourage young people to take progression pathways into STEM careers. The sound level meters donated by Casella will be used in various activities with students including an acoustics engineering workshop at the STEM fair in June, which will be attended by school children from Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire.

 Elizabeth Crilly, STEM Team East Director (and member of the Cambridge Science Centre Board of Directors) notes, “We’re delighted that Casella donated these meters to us and they will be used for a variety of activities, including the STEM fair and the Engineering Festival in 2015, where we’ll use them in a workshop to investigate building insulation and therefore inform students about careers in the construction industry. The meters are very useful in teaching the exciting physics of acoustics which can be explored with students. Overall, donations like this help us show young people that STEM subjects are varied, interesting and essential.”

Casella’s sound level meters are more commonly used in industrial settings where noise is monitored in accordance with the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 (in the UK). For any student who chooses a path in engineering, science and technology, the monitoring of noise levels in the workplace or the wider environment may well be part of their everyday lives. 

Neal Hill, Product Line Manager at Casella, is keen to encourage young people to take part in STEM subjects. “One of the reasons we were keen to donate the meters to STEM Team East was because we want young people in our area to take up these subjects. Casella has been running for over 200 years and, in the future, we will rely on those students to move the company forward.”