Volunteering with ORiE

We have three key groups of people involved in OR in Education – volunteers (that’s hopefully you!), teachers and lecturers, and students. Our volunteers visit schools to deliver presentations, workshops and talks to students about the value of OR and maths in the real world, and what career options are open to STEM graduates. Alternatively, you may choose to accompany The OR Society when attending Careers Fairs to speak to students about your career, how you got there, and what maths you use.  

We are most commonly asked to provide:

  • Careers fairs – these involve attending a local school or university and being an exhibitor. The idea here is to man a stand and chat to interested students about what you do / where you work / how you got into OR. Generally these run from 11am until 3pm during the day. We will provide you with all the equipment such as tablecloth, banners, flyers, pens and keyrings etc.
  • Careers Talk – this involves talking to a group of school, college or university students about your experience. This is more formal than a careers fair and you are likely to have somewhere between 10 minutes to 40 minutes to talk about what you do. This could be in the daytime or evening. We have PPT templates, example talks and assistance to help you prepare for these events.
  • Maths workshop – This is where you would run an interactive exercise, demonstrating a real life application of OR (which has been simplified for student use). We have all the resources for this – including interactive exercises, complete instructions and worksheets / answer sheets.
  • Science Fairs – A cross between a careers fair and maths workshops. You will be exhibiting and talking to students but also providing them with interactive exercises to have a go at. Always great fun! We provide you with all materials for this.

What about the resources?

We’ll provide you with all the resources you need to attend a careers fair, school visit or university talk. If you’re attending a careers fair to promote OR we can provide you with branded freebies and flyers for you to hand out (we find freebies always go down well with students!). We also have banners and promotional material to ensure everyone knows you’re representing The OR Society. If you're visiting a school and running a workshop, our resources include teacher notes and worksheets that we will make available to you. The resources that have been developed for the workshops are all based on real projects and have been adapted to make the suitable for school use. They are tried and tested and are “off-the-shelf” resources, meaning there’s minimal prep involved.

We have some digital resources for OR in Education in our online Resource Centre.

Time Commitment

The OR Society understands that your time is valuable and we only expect you to volunteer once per year. Of course, you are welcome to volunteer more frequently than this and we find that most volunteers love attending events and get involved with events every couple of months.  

Training

We offer regular virtual training, where you have the opportunity to meet other volunteers, learn about the materials in a fun and friendly environment and get a brief overview of what we’re all about. We promise it will be lots of fun, and will equip you with the skills you need to run these workshops.

Interested? Sign up here

Volunteer sign up form