Tag: Diversity in STEM

Don’t forget to sign up to the Tech3Shed careers event!

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The Women’s Tech Hub~Bristol are hosting a careers fair in March, aimed at increasing diversity in the tech industry in the South West. Running on 15th and 16th March 2019, it’s free to all and all are welcome (but please be aware that it is a recruiter-free event). See below for more information from the Hub, and sign up to attend here.

The Bristol and South West tech industry is currently booming and we’re all aware that finding talent and keeping them has never been so difficult. We also know that careers change, people can learn and there’s a wealth of amazing people in the area who simply didn’t take up tech as an option. That, along with a variety of Universities, Colleges and training establishments in the area all creating talented tech graduates who we would love to stay in the region.

With all of this in mind we decided that we could help sort out some of these problems by working together so with the HBB, WTHub and Desklodge we came up with the power of three, set out to curate a Careers Fair and named it Tech³Shed (everything is Bristol is called Shed so we thought we may as well follow the trend!).

We know that the best way of finding a great job, or finding a great team member is far easier in a relaxed atmosphere and through getting to know them. We also know that recruitment fairs can be intimidating and that the world of tech can be slightly confusing for those on the outside. So we decided that we would put the two together and run workshops to help demistify things, introduce trainers and other options to help get you into tech and invite our members down to chat to the candidates and show what they have to offer.

Please note that this is a recruiter free event, any recruiters found approaching attendees or exhibitors will be asked to leave.

For more details see https://tech3shed.org/

FAQs

Are there ID or minimum age requirements to enter the event?

The Event is for over 18’s – under 18’s must be accompanied by an adult and be over 14

Leaders Award online Engineering Extravaganza for British Science Week 2019

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The Leaders Awards are celebrating British Science Week 2019 by holding an Engineering Extravaganza in which they will hold two ‘Meet an Engineer’ interviews engineers every school day, starting from 8th March.

During British Science Week 2019 there will be two Live Online Engineer Events each day, available to all schools registered for the Scottish Engineering, Primary Engineer and Secondary Engineer Leaders Awards featuring:

  • Jenny Roberts a Mechatronic Engineer – Friday 8/3/19, 10.30 am-11.30 am
  • Gerry Ward – Manufacturing Engineer – Friday 8/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm
  • Iulia Motoc – Roboticist – Monday 11/3/19, 0.30 am-11.30 am
  • Mike Baldwin – Lead Mechanical Engineer – Monday 11/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm
  • Elaine Meskhi – Engineering Consultant – Tuesday 12/3/19, 10.30 am-11.30 am
  • Eleanor Davies – Structural Engineer and Women Like Me participant – Tuesday 12/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm
  • Yeff Karpuchenko – Mechanical Engineer – Wednesda 13/3/19, 10.30 am-11.30 am
  • Mike Jeschke – Materials Engineer – Wednesday 13/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm
  • Stephanie Alexander – Automotive Engineer – Thursday 14/3/19, 10.30 am-11.30 am
  • Lorna Bennet – Renewables Mechanical Engineer – Thursday 14/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm
  • Graeme Ralph – Manufacturing R&D Engineer – Friday 15/3/19, 10.30 am-11.30 am
  • Victoria Howells – Flight Simulation Engineer – Friday 15/3/19, 1.30 pm-2.30 pm

These events are expecting to very popular, so the Leaders Awards are recommending that schools who want to take part register their interest by emailing info@leadersaward.com as soon as possible citing the relevant engineer’s name and your school name in the subject line of the email.

Women Like Me engineer Rachel Kirkwood engages another 1161 pupils for Leaders Award

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Following a very successful online presentation for the Leaders Award in January by Rachel Kirkwood, graduate engineer at Peter Brett Associates and participant in our Women Like Me programme, she was invited back to deliver another! Rachel’s second presentation took place on Thursday 28th February 2019, reaching 1161 pupils in 10 schools across the UK.

Before the presentation, Rachel gave a taster of what she’d be talking about, and it sounds like she made a great impression on the students in her talk:

“We just wanted to say thank you very much for organising this event. Our pupils found Rachel’s talk very interesting and they were inspired by her passion for her job and for her enthusiastic responses to all of the questions. Thank you from all of us at Craigrothie Primary School.”

The Leaders Award is supported by UWE Bristol and asks children “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”. This free competition asks students to find a problem, invent a solution, draw it, explain and send it in. Pupils are encouraged to both interview engineers and watch the online interviews. If you’d like to take part in the Leaders Award as an engineer or school, please get in touch with the team.

FREE event: Women Like Me – Boosting mentoring for women in STEM in the West of England

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As our Royal Academy of Engineering funded project, Women Like Me, draws to a close for this year, we are hosting a celebration event at UWE Bristol:

Wednesday 3rd April 2019

12-2 pm

Bristol and Bath Science Park, main cafe entrance (NB this is a change of venue from the original listing)

FREE

Sign up on Eventbrite

Women Like Me – Boosting mentoring for women in STEM in the West of England

The West of England is home to an impressive list of STEM industries, and all are working to improve participation for women in STEM. As well as recruiting more women into STEM, we also need to think about retaining our talented workforce. Mentoring Schemes can help to do just that, with research showing that mentoring from other experienced women is a key factor in creating a welcoming workplace culture.

This event brings together our leading players in women’s mentoring across the West of England, to explore how we can support each other and learn from best practice. Organised by UWE Bristol’s Women Like Me project for engineering mentoring, the network also connects with Women in Science and Engineering Bristol, the Women’s Engineering Society centenary and Curiosity Connections Bristol.

The event includes lunch and a keynote talk on women’s mentoring, followed by a workshop to develop further connections between mentoring schemes.

Please sign up to come and join us!

Hinkley C new drilling kit is named after SARAH GUPPY!

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Along with three tunnel boring machines named after inspirational women, new drilling kit which will be used at the new Hinkley C power station is to be named after Sarah Guppy – engineer, pioneer and subject of Show of Strength‘s recent stage show. Producer Sheila Hannon tells us more in this guest post:

‘Sarah Guppy’ will be used to dig sections of the water outlet structure for three 1,200 tonne boring machines that will construct the new power station’s 3.3 kilometers of tunnels to be built underneath the sea bed.

Sarah Guppy says, ‘I’m absolutely delighted and how very appropriate. The world’s first underwater tunnel was the Thames Tunnel, designed and built by my friends and fellow engineers Marc and Isambard Brunel. Their innovative ‘tunneling shield’ principle has been used for nearly 200 years. It’s taken rather longer for my contribution to engineering to be recognised, but I’m thrilled to be associated with a project that both connects the past to the future and acknowledges my family’s strong Somerset links.

My award-winning show SARAH GUPPY: THE BRIDGE, THE BED, THE TRUTH is available if you’d like to know more about my remarkable life and work.

Performer: Kim Hicks, photo Zuleika Henry.

Construction News’ Inspire Me Bristol Workshop – 28th February 2019

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Construction News’ campaign, “Inspire Me” promotes the role of women as leaders in the construction industry. See below and the Workshops and Events page for information about the campaign and the next workshop, to be held in Bristol:

” to promote the role of women as leaders in the construction industry. See below and the Workshops and Events page for information about the campaign and the first workshop, to be held in Bristol:

Construction News’ Inspire Me campaign aims to promote the role of women as leaders in the construction industry and inspire future leaders and promote the industry as being gender neutral, welcoming of women in all roles.

The principle aim of the campaign is to empower women with the knowledge and confidence to advance their careers to senior positions within the construction sector.

To this end we are organising regional workshop sessions, with prominent speakers drawing on their own experience and success as well as best practice, to deliver indispensable career advice to women.

And what’s more, they’re free to attend for you and your colleagues!

Each workshop breakfast will provide an opportunity to:

  • Network with prominent diversity ambassadors from both inside of and outside the sector.
  • Learn and be inspired by industry leaders and peers.
  • Get inspirational and practical advice on how to progress your career.

Inspire Me Bristol Workshop – 28th February 2019

The first workshop is at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel and is focused on ‘language as barriers’ with sessions on gender-neutral job descriptions, inappropriate language and vocal techniques. 

Speakers will include

  • Susan Room, professional voice and executive coach
  • Rick Lee, chief people officer, Willmott Dixon
  • Andrea Singh, director of HR, BAM
  • Nick Langdon, chairman, CGL
  • Lizzie Featherstone, head of business information tools, Taylor Woodrow

Tech3Shed careers fair – increasing diversity in SW tech

Author engineering | Posted on

The Women’s Tech Hub~Bristol are hosting a careers fair in March, aimed at increasing diversity in the tech industry in the South West. Running on 15th and 16th March 2019, it’s free to all and all are welcome (but please be aware that it is a recruiter-free event). See below for more information from the Hub, and sign up to attend here.

The Bristol and South West tech industry is currently booming and we’re all aware that finding talent and keeping them has never been so difficult. We also know that careers change, people can learn and there’s a wealth of amazing people in the area who simply didn’t take up tech as an option. That, along with a variety of Universities, Colleges and training establishments in the area all creating talented tech graduates who we would love to stay in the region.

With all of this in mind we decided that we could help sort out some of these problems by working together so with the HBB, WTHub and Desklodge we came up with the power of three, set out to curate a Careers Fair and named it Tech³Shed (everything is Bristol is called Shed so we thought we may as well follow the trend!).

We know that the best way of finding a great job, or finding a great team member is far easier in a relaxed atmosphere and through getting to know them. We also know that recruitment fairs can be intimidating and that the world of tech can be slightly confusing for those on the outside. So we decided that we would put the two together and run workshops to help demistify things, introduce trainers and other options to help get you into tech and invite our members down to chat to the candidates and show what they have to offer.

Please note that this is a recruiter free event, any recruiters found approaching attendees or exhibitors will be asked to leave.

For more details see https://tech3shed.org/

FAQs

Are there ID or minimum age requirements to enter the event?

The Event is for over 18’s – under 18’s must be accompanied by an adult and be over 14

Women Like Me engineer Eleanor Davies reaches another 1000 pupils for the Leaders Award

Author engineering | Posted on

Back in November, our Women Like Me participant Eleanor Davies presented to over 1300 children in on online ‘Meet an Engineer‘ session for the Leaders Award.

Her talk was so successful and engaging that she was invited back, and presented again on 31st January. This time Eleanor reached 1042 children in six primary and one secondary school, across the UK. Eleanor is a Chartered Structural Engineer at BuroHappold Engineering; you out more about her and her career in engineering so far here.

The Leaders Award is supported by UWE Bristol and asks children “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”. This free competition asks students to find a problem, invent a solution, draw it, explain and send it in. Pupils are encouraged to both interview engineers and watch the online interviews. If you’d like to take part in the Leaders Award as an engineer or school, please get in touch with the team.

Female engineers come together for outreach surgery at Curiosity Connections 2019

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Curiosity Connections – Women Like Me is a Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious funded project. Curiosity Connections is a Bristol-based network for primary Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) teachers and science communicators, while Women Like Me pairs senior engineers with junior engineers for mentoring, with the junior engineers undertaking outreach activities with children and young people.

The Curiosity Connections Conference 2019 took place at UWE Bristol on 2nd February – more to follow about that! As well as the three fantastic workshop rotations on offer, we also provided an outreach surgery for our female engineers to come along, try out some outreach activities, talk through any thoughts they have about outreach and catch up with each other.

Run by Dr Laura Hobbs, research fellow in science communication at UWE Bristol and coordinator of Women Like Me, and Dr Debbie Lewis, technical team leader for molecular biology at UWE and experienced outreach leader, the session saw our engineers trying to cut A5 pieces of paper so that they could step through them (a fantastic resource provided by the Year of Engineering) and build towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows. We were also joined by our WISE Women Like Me partner Sarah Behenna, who was recently involved with the development of the new WISE resource My Skills My Life.

Credit: David Marshall (University of Bristol/Virtual Natural History Museum)

Such was the concentration and enthusiasm for the tasks – and encouraging and supportive atmosphere – that we decided to extend our scheduled 50 minute session to more than two hours, only stopping for lunch. Our endeavours with technical paper-cutting also caught the attention of exhibitors at the conference expo; the Virtual Natural History Museum stand soon became adorned with a perfectly-executed paper ring!

Female engineers engaged in women’s networks invited to participate in new research

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Dr Vanda Papafilippou, lecturer in Human Resource Management at UWE Bristol, is undertaking new research into engagement of female engineers with women’s networks and how this relates to their career identities. Please see below for details and get in touch with Vanda on
Vanda.Papafilippou@uwe.ac.uk if you’d like to take part, or for further information.

If you are a female engineer and relatively active in women’s networks (e.g. your company’s women’s network, WISE, WES, Bristol Geek Dinners, etc.), you are being invited to participate in a research project conducted by Dr Vanda Papafilippou (Lecturer in HRM at UWE Bristol.)

The study, aims at exploring how female engineers develop, enter, maintain and engage with women’s networks and the extent to which these networks contribute to their career identities. The findings of the study will enable engineering companies to (re)design their women-only networks in order to make sure that they empower and retain women engineers.

If you agree to participate, you will be invited for a one-to-one interview with Vanda (wherever works better for you). The interview will last approximately one hour and can be conducted any day and time between February and April 2019. The interview questions will be around: (i) your career history (background information); (ii) the range and nature of women-only networks you are currently participating in and (iii) if, and if yes how, your participation in women-only networks has impacted on the way you see yourself as an engineer (i.e. your career identity).

If you are interested in participating or if you require further information, contact directly Vanda (Vanda.Papafilippou@uwe.ac.uk)

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