Women in Innovation, Design and Engineering Conference at Walton Hall
By Claudia Eckert and Fiona Gleed
The School of Engineering and Innovation at the Open University has been organising Women in Engineering conferences, targeted at female students, since 2016. After a three-year break enforced by Covid, we have finally been able to go back to having a face-to-face conference in Walton Hall, our headquarters in the Milton Keynes, in July 2023.
Whilst Design courses at the Open University have a fairly even gender balance, this is not the case for Engineering where less than 20% of the students on the entry module[1] are female. At these ratios, tutorial groups often have just one or two women so targeted events provide an important opportunity for female students to meet each other. Female students are also less likely to already be working in engineering[2] than their male counterparts, increasing the need for networking opportunities and guidance on professional development.
About 60 participants come together from different parts of the UK and different qualifications offered within the school for Saturday evening and Sunday. We had about 30 students attendings, but also members of staff, Als and speakers from industry. On Saturday we started with an inspirational talk by Faye Banks, one of our Royal Academy of Engineering visiting professors, who told us her story from starting without qualification and working her way to becoming Director of Energy and Asset Management at Vital Energi via an engineering degree at the Open University. Her story of combining a career with study and motherhood resonated very much with many of our participants. Dr Phebe Mann ran a team building activity with the students on Saturday evening, ahead of a chance to socialise informally.
The Sunday started with a keynote from Emma Crichton from Engineering without Borders, who spoke of their work with student groups across the country. This session particularly inspired some of the participants, who are now looking into setting up an OU chapter; if you are interested please get in touch and we can pass you contact details on! There was also an industry career panel, where experienced women in industry talked about their careers and their experience of recruiting women and working with women. It was quite an eye opener for our students, that companies don’t necessarily just look for or want people who have firsts from top universities; They want people with tenacity and interest. This resonated very much in the talks of recent graduates who described their journeys through their degrees and into their current careers.
One of the highlights for many of our students was a tour of same of the research labs and the open STEM lab. They really enjoyed seeing more of our research and were reminded that in this respect the Open University is a typical University. They heard more about this when a recently finished PhD student talked about her experiences as a student. There were also a number of workshops, talking about the selection of study pathways and final projects; as well as discussing what more the OU could do to support their female students.
There was a real buzz being able to meet in person again. In their feedback many students highlighted how much they enjoyed connecting with others, identifying highlights as:
- “Networking and meeting so many inspirational people”
- “Connecting with students from all parts of the course. Listening to excellent women going out and smashing it daily. “
- “interactivity of talks and workshops, relevance to work and being with other women engineers”
We hope that this was the beginning of a post covid revival of face-to-face conferences. The current plan is to run a virtual conference in 2024 to give those who could not travel to Milton Keynes in person a chance to participate, with further conferences to follow in future years.
[1] McPherson, Elaine; Clarke, Anactoria; Gallen, Anne-Marie; Keys, Mary and Wolf, Petra (2022). Improving gender balance through a Combined STEM degree. In: 15th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, 7-9 Nov 2022, Seville, Spain. Available at: Improving gender balance through a Combined STEM degree – Open Research Online
[2] Morris, Carol and Organ, Sally (2018). Changing direction: understanding and promoting mature female entry to undergraduate engineering programmes. In: SEFI Annual Conference, 17-21 Sep 2018, Copenhagen. Available at: Changing direction: understanding and promoting mature female entry to undergraduate engineering programmes – Open Research Online
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