Practice Papers

Document Type

Conference Paper

Abstract

The under-representation of women studying engineering in higher education is gaining increasing attention in Universities throughout Europe and other jurisdictions. This has led to underrepresentation of women in many of the professions in the Science, Engineering and Technology fields also. Numerous initiatives and programmes are being developed in universities to gain more information about the embedded issues in these disciplines that inhibit female applicants or lead to unsuccessful outcomes in university programmes. One such initiative that has been developed and piloted in Technological University Dublin (Ireland) is a mentoring programme called ‘Equality in Science and Technology by Engaged Educational Mentoring (ESTeEM)’.

This paper reflects on the development of the ESTeEM programme, which is a unique, award-winning mentorship programme for female students, including non-binary and transwomen in Science, Engineering, and Computing programmes. The ESTeEM programme has been piloted to students pursuing programmes at many levels in the university, including craft-based apprenticeship programmes, through to Higher Certificate, Honours Degree and Postgraduate programmes in Engineering, Science, and Computing. This paper outlines the origins of the ESTeEM programme, the experience of the facilitator and participants from the pilot programmes, as well as the initial contributions to the wider University community, through strategic priorities being achieved, in addition to increased participation and success of women, non-binary and transwomen successfully pursuing Science, Engineering and Technology Programmes. Finally, the paper concludes with lessons learned and suggestions for further roll-out and development of the ESTeEM programme.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/BWKS-4229

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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