New university aims for 50% women
5 Mar 2015
A new engineering university located in Herefordshire aims to attract more women into the industry.
The New Model in Technology & Engineering (NMITE) university will achieve this by ensuring half its students and teaching staff are female.
“The planned New Model in Technology and Engineering university in Hereford represents a very positive step forward for UK engineering and education,” said Colin Brown, director of engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).
To have a university where half of the students and teaching are women is a genuinely innovative approach for this country
IMechE director of engineering Colin Brown
“To have a university which specialises in engineering - and where half of the students and teaching are women - is a genuinely innovative approach for this country,” he said.
Brown said that research undertaken by the IMechE suggests that young women tend to have a much greater affinity to engineering than some may have thought.
“By connecting with their interests which predominate in design, medicine, sports and the environment, we will inspire ever more to pursue engineering studies,” he said.
The NMITE is backed by the universities of Bristol and Warwick, alongside the Olin College of Engineering in the US, and is designed to radically change the way engineering and related technologies are taught in the UK.
“The combination of widespread backing from three world-class academic partners means that our doors will open in Autumn 2017 for the first [300] students to enter this ground-breaking new university in a brand new campus in Hereford’s historic centre,” said Karen Usher, co-leader of the NMITE.
“It will be about not just giving Britain more great engineering graduates, but importantly graduates who will be equipped additionally with the broader business, innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership skills that British employers need but find to be in very short supply,” Usher said.
The university will focus on four key sectors: Defence, Resources & Data Security; Agri-Technology; Advanced Manufacturing and Green & Renewable Technologies.
It will award a degree in Liberal Engineering Sciences.
