We’re thrilled to announce that recruitment is now open for the 2024 round of the Women Like Me Mentoring Programme in the West of England area. As well as our cohort open to all women engineers or property professionals, we now have funding from the Office for Students for a specific cohort focussed on degree apprentices!
Women Like Me is a dynamic peer mentoring and outreach project aimed at boosting female representation in engineering and construction careers at all levels. Our unique program pairs senior women engineers/property professionals with their junior counterparts, fostering mentoring relationships supported through various events. Plus, we provide training and opportunities for junior women to engage in STEM education outreach within local schools. Since 2018, the program has empowered over 300 women, and we’re excited to continue making a positive impact.
Who can take part? Early career female engineers/property professionals (with less than five years of experience) in the Bristol and Bath area are invited as mentees. Senior women engineers, with at least five years of experience, are invited to participate as mentors.
If you’ve been part of the Women Like Me Mentoring Programme before, we encourage you to spread the word within your companies and among friends. Your support is crucial, and you’re more than welcome to join this year’s scheme as mentors.
For more details, and to enrol onto the programme:
Mentors (more than 5 years’ experience) apply here
Mentees (less than 5 years’ experience) apply here
The School of Engineering’s ‘Women Like Me’ programme forms part of new initiative to support engineering and construction apprentices.
UWE Bristol has been awarded £176,000 for six degree apprenticeship courses. The funded programmes include employer engagement and role model outreach work to increase female representation.
The OfS (Office for Students) made the funding award as part of a £12 million investment to expand the number of Level 6 degree apprenticeship courses and places available at 51 English universities and colleges.
David Barrett, UWE Bristol Director of Apprenticeships, said: “We are thrilled to have been successful in the first wave of the OfS funding competition. It is encouraging to see that the OfS recognise the ongoing importance of apprenticeships as part of the Higher Education landscape, and this investment to the sector is welcomed.
“Apprenticeships can play a key role in widening access and participation objectives for UWE Bristol, whilst also impacting the work of our employer partners across the region that will help us to develop new learning on diversifying apprenticeship recruitment good practice. We are excited to start working on this project and we look forward to seeing the differences it will make.”
Our bid for OfS funding focussed on addressing the significant underrepresentation of women in the engineering and construction industries, to increase the overall number of starters on the Level 6 engineering and construction degree apprenticeships and help address the significant higher-level skills shortages in these sectors by widening the talent pool.
The College of Arts, Technology and Environment (CATE) has an established apprenticeship provision, and the new activity will build on work and success already achieved. The University will work on an existing successful programme of STEM role-modelling outreach and information and guidance (such as the Women Like Me initiative), creating a tailored apprenticeship version. There will be a significant programme of employer engagement to better understand and influence employer gender diversity and skills recruitment plans.
Simon Flenley, Assistant Director of Apprenticeships, said: “This is a great opportunity for UWE Bristol to further build on our existing partnerships with employers, whilst opening possibilities for new collaborations. Employers are at the heart of apprenticeship success and we look forward to strengthening our offer as part of this project.”
John Blake, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the OfS, said: “Degree apprenticeships can provide a beneficial alternative route for students in higher education, which bridges the spaces between traditional study and the workplace. Our initial £12 million investment will support universities and colleges to accelerate their efforts to grow and develop these courses.”
The OfS funding will be invested in the following UWE Bristol degree apprenticeship programmes:
UWE’s School of Engineering is celebrating 5 years of running the Women Like Me scheme in the West of England. Since 2018, we have supported over 250 women from tens of local businesses to develop their careers in engineering. The programme pairs mid-career women engineers with junior women engineers in the Bristol and Bath area to provide career and public engagement mentoring. The junior women then undertake outreach activities in local schools and events. The scheme is still much needed, as only 16% of engineers and 18% of chartered surveyors in the UK are women.
This year the scheme has expanded to include women in the property business, where women surveying students are paired with women surveying professionals. The scheme has been supported this year by construction, property and management consultancy RLB. Previous support from the DETI project has enabled us to partner with STEMazing to provide mentoring support and outreach training.
Women Like Me has the below exciting events coming up, which are particularly aimed at female engineering students and mentors. These events are supported by construction, property and management consultancy RLB.
Beyond technical brilliance: Using influencing skills to enable career success Caroline Gourlay, Business psychologist and leadership coach Online, Tuesday 28 November, 16.15 – 17.15
Celebration of 5 years of Women Like Me Panel talk: Career journey with Q&A and networking time
This is a hybrid event, held in the School of Engineering with the panel discussion being available online. The session is open to everyone who has taken part in Women Like Me over the past five years. People are to register via this link. The organisers will get in touch with everyone who registers to either send them a MS Teams link, or directions to the event and to arrange parking in the visitors car park. Monday 4 December 16.15 – 17.15
Some of the events are run by the surveying charity, Lionheart and their expert trainers. Whilst the Lionheart sessions are primarily open to surveyors and surveying students, there will be six additional spaces for non-surveying disciplines. These additional places will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.
To ensure yourself a space, please do sign up to events as soon as possible. You can register here, and links will be circulated to those who have registered. You can also contact the organiser Samantha Organ (samantha2.organ@uwe.ac.uk) for any questions.
‘Women Like Me’ is a peer mentoring and outreach project in the Bristol and Bath area aimed at boosting female representation at all levels in engineering. Senior women engineers are paired with junior women engineers and their mentoring journeys supported through various events. At the same time training and opportunities are provided for junior engineers to undertake engineering education outreach in local schools.
The programme has run with great success since 2018, and for 2023 we’re excited to be adding a new element to our mentoring support package!
In addition to our face-to-face networking and training events, this year we will be providing online mentoring support. Alexandra Knight, an award-winning engineer and presenter, who empowers women in STEM to be confident visible role models through her company STEMazing, will be heading up these online sessions, with particular emphasis on developing our Senior Engineers’ mentoring skills.
Junior women engineers are those with less experience than this, and can include apprentices, trainees, undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers – with less than 5 years experience in engineering. Please sign up to be a Mentee here.
Date for the diary!
Please sign up in January, as we’ll collect all enrolments and pair you up mentor-to-mentee in early February before our kick off event on 23rd Feb…
Women Like Me – 23rd February, 4 – 6pmat UWE Bristol (Frenchay campus in Filton).
This event will introduce you to the Women Like Me programme, with some top tips and discussion about mentoring and outreach. And hopefully include getting to meet your new mentee/mentor for the first time (!) as well as the rest of this years cohort.
Those are the core details, but if you’d like to find out more about the programme – including why we think women mentoring is important, more detailed plans for this year, expectations from mentor/mentees, past successes etc – please read below.
Why is this important?
Only 12% of engineers in the UK are women. In order to support female engineers, more girls need to connect with engineering as a career, with positive female role models, and more women need to be supported to make a difference in the workplace.
Women Like Me is addressing this by pairing together women engineers to provide career and public engagement mentoring. Participating engineers deliver engineering engagement activities in local schools and at local public events, providing positive role models for young girls. Through this approach, the project impacts the workplace today and the future of the engineering profession.
What will it involve?
Introductions – We offer various networking and training opportunities to all participants, this year the first session will be held face-to-face on 23rd Feb.
Goal setting – On 9th March, there’ll be an online goal setting session for mentors and mentees. Alexandra Knight (from STEMazing) will lead mentoring pairs through focused discussions to get their mentoring relationships off to a great start.
Mentor only coaching – This year will be a great opportunity for mentors to develop themselves as well as their mentees, with Alex leading four subsequent online ‘mentoring circle’ meetings for mentoring coaching and peer support. These sessions will be spread throughout the year and will be private sessions for mentors-only.
Mentoring meet-ups – We expect mentors and mentees to meet at least twice during the year – although we’d encourage more, if that’s possible for both parties. These meetings or conversations can take whatever form best suits each pair – something to discuss in your initial meetings in Feb/March.
Mentees public engagement – Junior engineers will receive training in public engagement (Senior Engineers can also take part!) and we ask them to then undertake at least three engineering outreach activities with local schools and public events. Coordination of activity is provided and supported by UWE – we’ll send you opportunities over email and support you in these sessions.
Log your activities – we then ask mentors to log their mentoring meet-ups, and the mentees to log their public engagement – this helps us to track how the programme is going.
If you’ve not already done this on the links above, here they are again! To take part in the project this year, interested participants should complete the appropriate online survey:
Families from around Bristol recently came to UWE’s brand new School of Engineering building to enjoy a range of free science and engineering-based activities.
The families that came to the event explored different aspects of engineering such as coding and robotics through LEGO Mindstorm and Pepper (our humanoid robot), digitally engineering solutions to citywide problems through Minecraft, designing the best wind turbine blade in our craft activity, and other stations featuring, eco-houses, crafting and a free planetarium show from Explorer Dome.
The visitors to UWE’s new Engineering building were wowed by the space available to student engineers and also by an exhibition of children’s inventions. The inventions were submitted to the Leaders Award competition – a nationwide scheme that encourages children to solve problems using engineering thinking.
The event was a perfect opportunity to inspire younger children to think like engineers whilst having fun along the way, as well as introducing them to technology that they may not have been able to interact with otherwise. One 13 year old visitor exclaimed how much she loved the fun day saying one day she “would like to come here herself (UWE) and learn more” whilst another couldn’t wait to get home and try to make their own robots.
We would like to thank all the staff of UWE, helpers, and students that made this event happen for making it an amazing day!
The latest group of women to join UWE Bristol’s engineering mentoring programme, Women Like Me, took part in an online re-balancing workshop on May 11th, delivered by Developmental Coach, Joyce Birnie.
The workshop
Designed as a guided, self-coaching workshop, the session encouraged self-reflection and supported participants to explore some key questions about their own work-life balance, with the aim of helping them to:
make sense of what work-life balance means for them
identify opportunities for change
harness their strengths to create the shift in balance they want
Many participants found that when their life-work was in balance they noticed they enjoyed better sleep, felt more calm, confident and productive. When asked their thoughts on potential barriers to achieving balance, the most common response was the expectations of others.
Women Like Me 2022
This workshop was delivered as part of the 2022 programme for Women Like Me, a peer-mentoring and outreach project for women engineers, run by the School of Engineering and Science Communication Unit at UWE Bristol.
This year’s programme launched in March 2022 with a training and networking event hosted by the DETI Inspire team at UWE, in their new Prototype and Play outreach classroom within the new School of Engineering building. The launch event was very well attended, allowing mentors and mentees to meet in person, share their own experiences, and discuss the mentoring and outreach opportunities available to them as part of the programme.
Women Like Me participants discussing mentoring and outreach at the launch event in March 2022
If you would like more information on the re-balancing workshop, please get in touch with Joyce at joyce@joycebirniecoaching.co.uk, or if you would like to know more about the Women Like Me programme please contact engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk
This event forms part of our celebrations for Women’s History Month, and will explore the historical and future role of women in shaping our cities.
This March 24th, the DETI Inspire team at UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering will be hosting a live event to celebrate Women’s History Month – Empowering Women in Engineering.
During her talk, Trish will be sharing experiences of her career journey, including her current role supporting the conservation of Clifton Suspension Bridge – an engineering marvel, and iconic historical landmark in our city of Bristol.
There will be a Q&A plus Networking and Nibbles – an opportunity to meet and chat to other local women engineers and STEM professionals from the West of England.
Trish featured in our Engineering Curiosity card set, an educational resource for schools, which explores the diversity of engineering careers and people in the West of England
This event will be preceded by a training day for participants in the Women Like Me mentoring and outreach project. If you have any questions about the event or Women Like Me, please get in touch with the team at engineeringourfuture@UWE.ac.uk
Women Like Me is a peer mentoring and outreach project, aimed at boosting female representation in engineering.
How does it work?
Women Like Me pairs senior women engineers with junior women engineers to undertake mentoring and engineering education outreach in the Bristol and Bath area. Engineering is a creative, socially conscious, and collaborative discipline, and this project aims to support girls and women to make a difference in society.
Why is this important?
Only 12% of engineers in the UK are women. In order to support female engineers, more girls need to connect with engineering as a career, with positive female role models, and more women need to be supported to make a difference in the workplace.
Women Like Me is addressing this by pairing together women engineers to provide career and public engagement mentoring. Participating engineers deliver engineering engagement activities in local schools and at local public events, providing positive role models for young girls. Through this approach, the project will lead to impact both in the workplace today, and for the future of the engineering profession.
Who can take part?
Mid-career and early career female engineers working in the Bristol and Bath area can get involved in the project. Senior women engineers are those who have been working in engineering for at least five years. Junior women engineers are those with less experience than this, and can include apprentices, trainees, undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
What will it involve?
We will offer networking opportunities to all participants at the start (spring 2022) and end (winter 2022) of the project. We have an online training session planned for February, followed by an in-person networking event in March which will take place at UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering.
Senior engineers will receive support in mentoring and should meet with their junior engineer mentee at least twice during the project. This can take any form that best suits each pair.
Junior engineers will receive mentoring support from senior engineers and training in public engagement. They will then undertake at least three engineering outreach activities with local schools and public events. Coordination of activity is provided and supported by UWE.
Upcoming outreach activities include STEM workshops for schools and community groups, opportunities to get involved with regional competitions and celebration days such as the ‘If you were an engineer what would you do?’ competition by Primary Engineer, The Lego League, and the Great Science Share for Schools.
Minecraft engineering school sessions
Community STEM clubs
Engineering & Sustainability Summit at We The Curious
Examples of outreach activities that took part during 2021
How do I sign up?
To take part in the project this year, interested participants should complete the appropriate online survey:
The Engineering workforce in the UK is made up of only 12% Women and 7% of people from black, Asian and minority ethnicity backgrounds – so no wonder the sector is experiencing an employee shortfall! Engineering Industries are missing out on over half of the population, as well as, the vast range of experiences and perspectives that a diverse employee base brings to the table.
Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI)’s Innovate team at UWE Bristol wants to address the shortfall of engineers by finding how to best enable these underrepresented groups to enter and progress in the world of Engineering.
We asked Women, those with Neurodiversity, and people from Black, Asian, Brown and dual-heritage backgrounds, in the West of England – to tell us what they needed – check out the summary doc below to find out more.
Engineers on our Women Like Me programme are currently undertaking engineering outreach and engagement with children in the Southwest. Recently, Whitehall Primary School in Bristol asked if our engineers could answer questions from their Year 2 pupils as part of their ‘Amazing Engineers’ topic.
The children’s perceptive questions ranged from ‘Why did you want to be an engineer?’ to ‘Did you play with Lego when you were 7 years old?’:
Why did you want to be an engineer?
Do you know what your next invention/work will be?
How hard is engineering?
Did you play with Lego when you were 7 years old?
What kind of things do you use at work?
What kind of engineer are you?
Do you like your job?
Did anyone help you with your first project?
Four women in engineering, three from our current cohort and one a Women Like Me alumna, produced videos in which they answered the children’s questions, giving them both insights into the varied roles in engineering, and representation of diversity within the sector.
With women making up only 12% of engineers in the UK, more girls need to connect with engineering as a career, with positive female role models, and more women need to be supported to make a difference in the workplace. Find out more about the importance of diversity in engineering here.
More ‘meet an engineer’ videos can be found in our playlist.
The school described the connection with engineers as a “great experience for the children”. They really enjoyed watching the videos and hearing from real-life engineers answering their questions.
The children absolutely LOVED the videos! They were talking about them for days – really excited and buzzing! We’re so grateful for the time taken by your engineers to record them.