Young Engineers, Engineering Careers, STEM and the EDT

By guest blogger: Martin Page
BEng, CEng, MIET - Technical Director at torin-sifan

With Engineers in short supply, companies such as ourselves actively engage in recruiting at the Graduate level and developing their own Engineers.  Over the years there has, however, been a noticeable shift in capabilities, expectations and requirements across the landscape of generations coming in to STEM careers.

 

This is of no greater contrast than within Engineering and the underlying causes need to be addressed if we are to have future generations supporting and competing within the areas of technology, innovation, product development and manufacturing.  One of the main questions that tends to be asked of employers by potential Graduate employees when recruiting at the Graduate level tends to be ‘What training will you be providing....’ and this highlights an underlying trend and fundamental issue.

 

Whilst there is a requirement for training, there is also a requirement for individual inquisitiveness and a thirst for knowledge.  An engineering career is a way of life and born out of an interest in ‘how things work’.  Whilst the theoretical aspects of the subject areas, the STEM activities, can be taught, what tends to be missed is learning ‘how to learn’.

 

By way of example, after employing a Graduate Engineer in the field of electronics with a good First Class Honours Degree, a discussion within the technical area relating to AC circuit analysis revealed a gap in the Engineers knowledge.  This gap was in an area of what would be recognised as being ‘underpinning knowledge’.  To be able to address this gap, the Engineer needed to gain and improve this underpinning knowledge.  To address this gap, there were many ways to go about it, but it quickly became apparent that simply providing a reading list and pointing the Engineer in the right direction was not going to promote the result that was needed; the concept of reading around the subject and setting up, working through and solving representative examples was lost.  In order to address this we put in place as part of a ‘Training Programme’ a course of lectures covering the expected ‘underpinning knowledge and first principles’.

 

It is for reasons such as this that we actively engage in the Year In Industry scheme, competitions such as Go4SET and promote STEM activities with the Engineering Development Trust.  At this level it is possible to engage with students, enthuse the learning concepts and introducing the concept of the importance of asking, and answering, the ‘why’ question.  Without this concept, the ability of our future Engineers and Scientists will be severely hampered.  It is particularly important for our future generations to understand not only the first principles of the STEM subjects, but to also have the capability to read and learn for themselves.

 

Whilst our education system at all levels has a focus on targets and league tables, there is a severe risk that the ability of our future engineers and scientists to innovate and have confidence in their abilities will be undermined.  They need to have the space to experiment, make mistakes, learn from them, read around a subject area and learn creatively.

 

The commercial world can be a tough place, rightly so.  Our future engineers and scientists will play a big part in it.  What they must not miss is the simple fact that for commercial success someone must have a clear understanding of the underpinning principles and that ‘someone’ will be them.  In order for them to have this capability, the principle of ‘how to learn’ and its focus needs to be engrained.  Whilst we continue to ‘teach’ our subjects and focus on targets and league tables rather than ensure that our future engineers and scientists have to ‘read’ for their subjects, there is a big risk that we will end up following the technology trends rather than leading them.

 

The EDT programmes aim to address this.  Without industry actively supporting the EDT programmes, there is a big risk that our future will be created with people who have all the qualifications, all the expectations, all the choices but none of the ability to innovate, develop, create and implement.