Uni encourages more women to study engineering
Thu, 20 Feb 2014 13:42:00 GMT
The University of Huddersfield aims to play a key role in the drive to recruit more women engineers. Students as well as staff are playing their part.
Four female undergraduates studying for engineering degrees recently won bursaries that enabled them to attend a large-scale conference organised by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES). Meanwhile, they have many role models at their University.
One is Senior Lecturer Dr Crinela Pislaru – a Chartered Engineer – who has become the University’s representative for the WES. She also chairs the West Yorkshire network of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and is developing plans for a series of public lectures given by inspirational female engineers.
They take place in early 2014 and at least one of the lectures will be at the University of Huddersfield.
Dr Pislaru, with a research background that includes intelligent transportation systems and mechatronics, said that the aim was to establish a new, contemporary image for engineering, so that women would be more likely to opt for the subject.
“In the modern world, engineering is about control, calculation... and clean hands!” she says.
Her colleague Dr Leigh Fleming – a metrologist based in the University of Huddersfield’s EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing – agrees that the public perception of engineering was still “dirty rags and fixing cars”, when it was in fact a profession which, on the Continent, has equal status with law and medicine.
There was no reason why women should not develop a passion for traditional areas such as automotive engineering, but there are many other dimensions to the profession, said Dr Fleming. She herself conducts research in fields that include medical engineering.
“If you are a good engineer, you are a good engineer. It doesn’t matter what gender you are,” she said. “But the profession is missing out on a lot of potentially good engineers. There are a lot of girls out there in schools who maybe disengage with the STEM subjects – maths and physics – but they are very able and capable and would enjoy engineering if they saw it as an option.”
The Women’s Engineering Society, which has been active since the First World War, is redoubling its efforts and in 2014 it is launching National Women in Engineering Dayin June.
It also organises regular Student Conferences and the latest – named Engineering Inspiration – took place in Birmingham and was attended by University of Huddersfield undergraduates Haley Liu, Eline More, Ruth Apuka and Bridie Bailey.
Bridie, whose studies began with an Engineering Foundation Year at Huddersfield – won funding from Jaguar Land Rover which enabled her to attend the event. The other three students received bursaries from the University’s own Department of Engineering and Technology.
The four Huddersfield representatives were among 105 female engineering students who attended the conference, where they took part in a wide range of sessions and gained special insights into emerging technologies. There were also opportunities to meet and talk to engineers from leading firms including Sellafield Sites, Capita Symonds, Morgan Sindall, Jaguar Land Rover, Malvern Instruments, Selex Galileo, Tata, GE Energy, Katalytik and Protean Electric.
