The WiE programme combines bursaries and a range of other activities from matching students with professional engineers in industry to leadership, communication and leadership skills training.
Dr Rosa Scoble, Director of Planning, Brunel, commented: “We are already one of the largest engineering departments in the country with ambitious plans to become the UK’s biggest. Like the engineering profession itself we are acutely aware that to continue to thrive we need to recruit many more women on to our courses. The pilot programme is already proving an enormous success both with students and with industry with professional engineer mentors volunteering their services from blue chip companies like Arup and BAE Systems. As well as the MSc scholarships we are extending the WiE programme to undergraduate students from 2015/16. We already have more than 400 female student engineers on campus and this year we are looking to scale up that number drastically.”
Amber Fahey, a former UCL undergraduate who is now studying for an MSc in Sustainable Energy Technologies and Management under the scheme, added: “Not only is my mentor Alex Knight of engineering consultancy Fraser-Nash helping me enormously in all kinds of ways, there is a strong team spirit among the nearly 100 female postgraduate engineering students here at Brunel and we think that will form the bedrock of an ever-growing network.”
“Details of the scholarships can be found on the Brunel website but we are also going to need many more volunteer mentors from industry as we extend the programme to embrace female undergraduate engineers. If you or an engineering colleague want to give something back to the profession please email WomenInEngineering@brunel.ac.uk,” added Scoble.