Aug 14, 2024
By: Rhys Morgan, Education and Skills Director at the Royal Academy of Engineering
Since 2019, the Royal Academy of Engineering has led a national awareness day to raise public awareness of engineers. National Engineering Day will return this year on Wednesday 13 November, and once again we will celebrate the engineers making a difference. We will also highlight how engineering can shape the future and help to find solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.
Our theme for this year’s National Engineering Day is Engineering Role Models, so on 13 November, we will be shining a light on engineers whose achievements and stories can help us to raise the profession in the consciousness of all young people from all backgrounds. We will celebrate and champion engineers who are not just making a difference now, but could make a difference long into the future, by inspiring a new generation to see people like them in roles that are exciting, varied and aspirational.
We need the profession’s help this National Engineering Day, and we hope you will join us in seeking out the engineers who will inspire the next generation.
How to nominate
Think about those around you: your network, your friends, the people you’ve met and read about; which of them is a truly inspirational engineer? Who is the engineering role model who has had or will have a tangible, real-life impact that improves the lives of everyone, equally?
Young people born from 2010 onwards, known as Generation Alpha, are the target audience in our sights. Born as the iPad was launched, their parents are heavy social media users, and they were at school when the world was changed by COVID. The role models they look up to have innovative mindsets, are ethically and environmentally responsible, are adaptable and resilient, and they are creative, engaging and inclusive. We know that engineers are all of these things – and we want to make them role models for Generation Alpha.
So who do you think would inspire these young people on their journeys into engineering? Who is the person you know who is contributing to or creating a feat of engineering that has will make a difference to the world?
We’d love to hear about engineering innovators like Lucy Hughes whose bioplastic innovation – Marinatex – turns organic fish waste ordinarily destined for landfill into an eco- replacement for single-use plastic; or Navjot Sawhney who created Divya (the world’s first flat-pack manual washing machine) that makes it easier for people without electricity to wash clothes.
We’d love to hear about those individuals or teams who make the impossible possible: the unsung heroes whose contributions are making or have made a significant difference to the success of a project that have yet to be publicly acknowledged. We particularly welcome nominations of engineers who are women, LGBTQ, disabled, from Black, Asian or minority ethnic groups and those from lower-socio-economic backgrounds.
On National Engineering Day we will be unveiling statues of the role models. We want young people to physically look up to these engineering role models, and find out about their achievements and feats of engineering. We want young people to be inspired by these stories and follow them to into their own engineering careers. We also want parents, teachers and influencers to see those same stories. Raising awareness of engineers and engineering is, after all, at the heart of National Engineering Day.
Do get involved in nominating inspirational engineers, and do join us on National Engineering Day in celebrating all the engineers that are making a difference. Our profession is made up of individuals and teams who are striving to make the world better. They are constantly innovating, determined to find solutions to complex problems. Our profession will get stronger, our capacity to make genuine, meaningful change will improve, and our ability to engineer an equitable and inclusive future will grow only when we attract more young people into engineering. We can all do our bit to share these stories, because around each and every one of us are engineers whose work will inspire a future engineer. It is up to us to tell their stories.
Nominate an engineering role model here: https://raeng.org.uk/national-engineering-day
*Nominations close on 16 August 2024.
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