Tag: Women in STEM

Boosting Female Participation in Degree Apprenticeships

Author engineering | Posted on

UWE Bristol is proud to announce the positive impact of its recent project, supported by funding from the Office for Students (OfS), aimed at increasing female participation in engineering and built environment degree apprenticeships. This initiative is already driving growth and fostering inclusivity in these vital sectors.

The OfS funding supports the following UWE Bristol degree apprenticeship programmes:

A core focus of the project is addressing gender imbalances across engineering and construction. Building on the success of the Women Like Me mentoring and outreach programme, we are thrilled to see a significant rise in female applicants, with women making up 37% of applications in 2024/25, compared to 20% the previous year. We expect that over 30% of new starters in several STEM apprenticeship programmes will be women—far exceeding the national average of 16% female representation in engineering.

Associate Professor Laura Fogg-Rogers, who leads the Women Like Me programme, highlights the importance of role models and mentors:
“It really brings home the saying that ‘You can’t be what you can’t see!’. Mentors in the Women Like Me programme are critical to support young women making their way into male-dominated professions, and feedback shows they make such a difference to career progression. Junior women thriving in apprenticeships are fantastic role models, inspiring the next generation to pursue impactful careers in engineering, property, and construction.”

Employer engagement is another vital aspect of this project. Roundtable events focused on diverse recruitment have drawn interest from a range of businesses, including new participants such as Boeing and Bristol Airport. David Barrett, Director of Apprenticeships at UWE Bristol, emphasizes the collaborative nature of the initiative:
“This project brings together employers and the University to make a real impact on the recruitment of women in STEM apprenticeships. We are already seeing the positive effects of this partnership approach in widening the talent pool and addressing skills gaps in key STEM industries.”

Simon Flenley, Assistant Director of Apprenticeships, notes the growing interest from employers:
“We’ve seen a 58% increase in employer engagement for these programmes from 2023/24 to 2024/25. It’s encouraging to see so many businesses committed to addressing skills shortages while also focusing on diversifying their workforce.”

For more information about this initiative and how it’s shaping the future of STEM apprenticeships click on the links below:

Women Like Me – Projects | UWE Bristol

Higher and degree apprenticeships – Courses and applying | UWE Bristol

Women Like Me Mentoring Programme – Now Open for Second Cohort in 2024!

Author engineering | Posted on

We are excited to announce that our Women Like Me mentoring programme is now open for recruitment for a second cohort in 2024!

Thanks to additional funding from the Office for Students, we’re expanding this successful initiative, offering even more women the chance to benefit from tailored mentoring, support, and development opportunities.

For the past five years, UWE Bristol has proudly run the Women Like Me programme, a mentoring and outreach scheme designed to support women in male-dominated industries. We have already supported more than 300 women, pairing senior women with junior counterparts to foster meaningful mentoring relationships. These connections are strengthened by access to training, networking events, and dedicated mentor guidance.

What’s New in 2024?

This year, we’re introducing some exciting changes to the programme:

  • A Second Cohort: For the first time ever, we’re offering a second cohort of participants in October 2024.
  • Expanded Scope: In addition to supporting women in a variety of industries, we’re now able to widen the breadth of sectors covered by our programme. We’re opening doors to even more professional opportunities, helping women across new fields to grow their careers.
  • Degree Apprentices Welcome: Thanks to the additional funding, we’re excited to welcome degree apprentices into the Women Like Me programme. Apprentices will not only gain valuable mentoring support but will also have the chance to inspire future generations by participating in outreach activities with local schools.

Who Can Take Part?

  • Mentees: We’re inviting degree apprentices* and women with less than five years of industry experience to take part as mentees. This is a fantastic opportunity to receive tailored guidance and support from experienced professionals.
  • Mentors: If you’re a woman with at least five years of professional experience, we encourage you to sign up as a mentor. As a mentor, you’ll receive training and support to help you guide your mentee through the year.

*This programme focuses on the following UWE Bristol degrees:

  • Aerospace Engineer
  • Manufacturing Engineer
  • Civil Engineer
  • Construction Site Manager
  • Building Services Design Engineer
  • Chartered Surveyor
  • Cyber Security
  • Digital and Technology
  • Product Design
  • Electronic Systems
  • Nuclear

How to Get Involved

Whether you’re a mentor ready to share your experience or a mentee looking for guidance in your career, this is your opportunity to be part of an empowering mentoring community. By joining the Women Like Me programme, you’ll gain access to a network of support, tailored training, and the chance to make a real difference—both in your career and in your community.

Don’t miss out! Enrol now on the link below and help us continue to create an inclusive and thriving environment for women in industry.

Women Like Me – Projects | UWE Bristol

Join the 2024 Women Like Me Mentoring Programme!

Author katcorbett | Posted on

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

Check out our impact video: Women Like Me (vimeo.com)

Thank you for your ongoing support! Let’s make the 2024 Women Like Me Mentoring Programme another resounding success.

A toolkit and training for youth climate social action

Author engineering | Posted on

A toolkit and training for effective youth climate comms and social action

UWE Bristol’s Science Communication Unit (SCU) is launching a new Youth Climate Action Toolkit to empower young people to act on things that matter to them. The toolkit is suitable for 16-24-year-olds, and we encourage you to please download and share the kit with any (young) person you think may benefit from these tools!

The newly developed toolkit has been produced in partnership with young people from the Avon Schools Eco Network, following pilot training held with the DETI Inspire team in the School of Engineering.

The pilot involved 12 young climate activists who learnt how to be more effective with their own campaigning, whilst forming the foundations of this new toolkit to support other young people. As well as empowering young people to act, the toolkit aims to speak with and engage diverse audiences that may not otherwise take part (e.g., through filmmaking, persuasive writing and interactive stalls, etc).

What is inside the toolkit?

To allow any young person to use the materials independently of the training, the toolkit has been designed to stand-alone or complement the training. It consists of four sections:

  • Section one: lays the foundations for effective team working, with a skills audit for young people to assess their baseline entrepreneurial skills for sustainability, and time set aside to define their action project based on need
  • Section two: encourages readers to understand different worldviews – including those from different sides of the political spectrum, and people in positions of power and influence
  • Section three: drills down into the communication methods, allowing readers to select the right method for their audience and to prototype and test their communications
  • Section four: encourages readers to reflect on their learnings, re-assess their skills and evaluate the impact of their communications

Training in the community

The SCU team have also been delivering the Youth Climate Communications to local colleges and youth groups. The training is modular, which allows it to be adapted to suit the needs and interests of the organisations involved.

The training is already being modified to suit the needs of one college, where they have aims to support a more sustainable educational environment by delivering to their students over a two-week period at the end of term. Students will vote on a priority for action within their college and then work in teams, with the support of a coach, developing a communications and behaviour change campaign which could then be delivered in the following term.

The young people’s experience of the programme is being evaluated to better understand whether their attitudes, skills and behaviours relating to sustainability, change as a result of the training. Findings will be shared on this blog later this year.

For empowerment programmes

Meanwhile, aspects of the training are also being delivered to participants of more established empowerment programmes, such as this year’s Catalyse Change programme, Bristol Education Partnership’s Climate Challenge and The Global Goals Centre’s Groundbreakers awards, with the toolkit also featuring in the Groundbreakers’ action pack.

A future aim of the project is to deliver the training online to youth groups and educational establishments across the country, and beyond, with training provided to educators to deliver the programme themselves. For a taster of what this training could look like, head to our YouTube where you can access the social media component of the training.

Where it all began

The training emerged from conversations among the SCU and colleagues about the desire to share our knowledge on climate communications and active citizenship more broadly, so when a funding opportunity arose the Unit was quick to pull together a team to make their dream a reality. The all-female team consists of academics and researchers in disciplines ranging from human geography, engineering, and environmental anthropology – to building physics and entrepreneurship. What unites them is a common interest in supporting young people to develop the skills and confidence they need to take action about things that matter to them.

This training is the first offering from UWE’s Climate Action Hub, also established by the SCU. The Hub is a place for researchers and students to connect with communities for climate action. There is already some work on campus doing just this, such as the children’s workshops delivered by DETI Inspire and Inspire Sustainability, but this is the first time training has been put in place to support the University and communities to do more.

To find out more about the in-person and online toolkit or to connect to the Climate Action Hub, email project manager Sophie Laggan.

To download the toolkit click here.

Engaging Children in STEM Through Storytelling

Author engineering | Posted on

After the success of this year’s scientist storytelling program in schools, the DETI Inspire team alongside the West of England STEM Ambassador hub is once again offering the highly requested training session to scientists in the South West.

Training session is taking place on 13th July, 4 – 6pm at UWE’s Frenchay campus.

Once trained, STEM Ambassadors will take specially selected books into schools to read – the books are selected from a collection that features stories with people from minority ethnicity backgrounds, women, and those with a neurodivergent brain having fun with science! These stories, and the real-life scientists reading them enable children to see a more diverse picture of science , helping them to “see themselves” as scientists.

Get Involved

To ensure the continued success of this outreach activity and visit more schools and children, we’re looking for more ambassadors to sign up to the free training session.

If you are already an approved STEM Ambassador, you can view the offer and sign up to the event here:

https://www.stem.org.uk/platform/activity/5e4f397b-df05-4db5-94a2-357bd195851a

If not, you can register interest through the following Eventbrite link:

https://curiousstories.eventbrite.co.uk

We’re running the training as a hybrid event, with Zoom as an option if you can’t make it in, however, we highly recommend you join us face-to-face on the 13th of July  at UWE Bristol.

The session will last approximately 2 hours and will be led by an experienced primary educator (Jane Carter from UWE’s Education unit) who will teach  you how to present fantastic stereotype-challenging stories to children. And you’ll get a chance to have a go! Readings in schools will take place during the new school year (September 2022 onwards) and also during Bristol’s Storytale Festival in October halfterm.

Local Schools Take on Sustainable Transport Challenge

Author engineering | Posted on

School children from across the West of England came to UWE Bristol recently to share their sustainable transport designs with engineers and peers over a day full of fun and engaging activities.

Alongside the team from Graphic Science, the students designed in school vehicles that could cross both water and land, travel hundreds of miles, and sustainably achieve this feat. They were then invited to display their vehicles in the Engineering Building at UWE Frenchay Campus where they showed off detailed models and articulated how their journey could be achieved with as minimal waste as possible.

Students showing off their sustainable transport design.

After presenting their designs to their peers and members of the Engineering department at UWE, Students enjoyed an inspiring talk from a member of the Bristol Gulls team, Sarah Hunt, who rowed 3000 miles across the Atlantic in an Eco Ocean rowing boat built to have minimal impact on the environment. This was particularly popular with the children as they could see a real-life example of what they designed themselves, ask plenty of questions, and watch their teachers try the dehydrated curry and rice pudding enjoyed by the Gulls during their 47-day journey!

Additional events included an immersive mobile-planetarium show, “Engineering Our Future” made in collaboration with Explorer Dome, a sustainability tour of the award-winning Engineering building by the UWE Frenchay groundskeeper, and a Minecraft sustainable transport challenge led by the Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) Inspire team, tasking students to digitally engineer new ways to cross the Bristol Harbour in a scale recreation of the S.S. Great Britain area.”

UWE Bristol professor wins prestigious engineering award

Author anabristow | Posted on

UWE Bristol’s Head of Engineering Design and Mathematics has been recognised for her work to increase diversity in engineering.

Professor Lisa Brodie collected an Enginuity Skills Awards at a ceremony in London, seeing off competition from two shortlisted entrants in the Diversity in Engineering category.

The award recognises organisations, individuals or a team that has delivered a specific scheme, project, or initiative, that significantly contributes to shifting the dial of equality, diversity, and inclusion within the engineering and manufacturing industries.

Professor Brodie has overseen the development of the new School of Engineering building to ensure it has been designed with neurodiverse students in mind. The facility was co-designed in conjunction with a new engineering curriculum, to create a supportive environment for students from under-represented backgrounds. The building is equipped with individual study spaces designed to support students with sensory issues, such as people with autism who can benefit from features including white noise bubble tubes and adjustable, muted lighting.

In addition, Professor Brodie leads the Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) Skills programme, which aims to improve diversity in recruitment into STEM industries (particularly engineering) while also enhancing retention of skilled engineers in the industry.

The Inspire programme has had particular success, reaching over 7,000 children in the South West so far. Some 42 per cent of the schools participating in face-to-face activities have been from the most deprived 20% of the country. The children have been exposed to innovative engineering workshops that connect them with real-life, diverse engineering role models to widen participation and aspirations for STEM careers.

Professor Brodie said: “It’s just phenomenal to get this award. I’m really excited and proud. We’ve been working hard at the university to really make a change in engineering, particularly around autism and engineers and diversity. We need different minds. If we don’t have a diversity of minds, then we’re not going to get all the solutions we need.”

Tod Burton, Deputy Dean for the Faculty of Environment and Technology, said: “We are all very proud of Professor Brodie and the work her team have tirelessly carried out developing an inclusive Engineering community here at UWE. This prestigious award from Enginuity justly recognises her efforts and the influence Lisa is having across the sector – a true reflection of UWE values.”

This blog was first published by the UWE Bristol comms team, for more of the latest news visit https://www.uwe.ac.uk/news

New round of peer mentoring and outreach project, Women Like Me, for 2022

Author anabristow | Posted on

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:

Senior Engineers (over 5 years experience) please complete this survey

Junior Engineers (less than 5 years experience) please complete this survey

The project coordinators will then be in touch having allocated the mentor/mentee pairs.

Want some more info?

This project was first launched in 2018 and is based in the Science Communication Unit and School of Engineering at UWE Bristol. The project is organised by Dr Laura Hobbs with support from Ana Bristow and Dr Louisa Cockbill, and was initiated by Dr Laura Fogg Rogers. It is supported by the initiative for Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI).

You can read about the successes of the project in previous years and access the 2018-2019 project report. A paper in the Journal of Science Communication, Fogg-Rogers and Hobbs (2019) places Women Like Me in the context of recruitment and retention of women in engineering.

For any further information please email engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter for updates.

Women Like Me supports another 30 women in engineering

Author engineering | Posted on

Based in the Science Communication Unit and Department of Engineering Design and Mathematics at UWE Bristol and organised by Dr Laura Hobbs and Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, Women Like Me is a peer mentoring and outreach project, aimed at boosting female representation in engineering. It is supported by the initiative for Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI).

After launching a new round in November 2020, the project has recently inducted a new cohort. Thirty women in engineering have been matched into 15 mentoring pairs, connecting senior engineers with junior engineers. The junior engineers are being linked to outreach opportunities, which despite current restrictions are available to undertake through remote provision and online platforms.

Participating engineers in this cohort come to the project from a range of engineering fields, including aerospace, civil engineering, renewable energy, robotics and more. Outreach opportunities such as The Big Beam In are available to participate in, with more to come.

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.

Women Like Me addresses this by pairing mid-career women engineers with junior women engineers to provide career and public engagement mentoring. Junior engineers delivering engineering engagement activities in local schools and at local public events, provide 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.

Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI) is a strategic programme of the West of England Combined Authority (WECA), delivered by the National Composites Centre, in partnership with the Centre for Modelling & Simulation, Digital Catapult, the University of the West of England, the University of Bristol, and the University of Bath. Industry partners include Airbus, GKN Aerospace, Rolls-Royce, and CFMS, with in kind contributions from UWE, Digital Catapult and Siemens. DETI is funded by £5m from WECA, with co-investment from the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and industry.

WISE Webinar: Accommodating working parents in the tech sector

Author engineering | Posted on

“Why restrict our talent pool and drive away our most experienced people? Through this talk, I want to share our success stories, encouraging other companies to better accommodate working parents. A long-term career in technology is something that should be achievable for everyone, no matter what life brings you”

Jo Haslam

The Parent Trap: Accommodating working parents in the technology sector

Wednesday 12th February

2:00-2:30 pm

WISE members (which includes UWE Bristol) can sign up for this webinar on 12th February to hear from 2019 WISE Computing Award Winner Jo Haslam, as she explores how the technology sector is accommodating working parents.

You’ll hear about her experiences in the games industry, becoming a mother and being determined not to become another statistic.

Sign up here.

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