Events

Engineering engineering: A provocation

free

Date: 6 Jul 2021

Time: -

Basic Info
Event recording

A provocative exploration of the challenges facing UK engineering education, exploring radical solutions.

Given the skills shortages in engineering and the high rewards, surely there should be a flood of people wanting to become engineers? Why then does demand seem more like a trickle – especially among women? Are we making systemic mistakes in UK engineering education that create barriers and misrepresent the sector?

This event will mark the launch of Engineering engineering: a provocation –a personal reflection by Prof Kel Fidler CEng HonFIET FREng, former Chair of the Engineering Council and former Vice Chancellor of Northumbria University, in which he seeks to diagnose the problems facing engineering education and offer some radical solutions including the division of Engineering into design-led and science-led approaches, abandoning existing initiatives to attract young people into engineering, and adopting a new approach to the media representation of engineering.
In particular, this event will examine four themes from the paper:

The role of outreach in promoting engineering
How we might attract more women into engineering
The public perception of engineering
The disctinction between design engineering and engineering science

To explore these ideas and look for other solutions, we have a panel of experts, chaired by Prof Colin Turner, EPC President:

Prof KelFidler, Author, Engineering engineering: a provocation
Elizabeth Donnelly, Chief Executive, Women’s Engineering Society
Hilary Leevers, Chief Executive, Engineering UK
Tom Sheldon, Senior Press Manager, The Science Media Centre
Prof Mike Sutcliffe, Deputy Dean, TEDI-London, and EPC President-Elect

Prof Fidler’s paperEngineering engineering: a provocation is available to download here.
This event will be followed by the EPC Annual General Meeting.