Sticking with Stem - Arkwright Engineering Scholarships
Chartered Engineer, IMechE Fellow and former Royal Air Force engineering officer Tony Harris knows only too well the importance of encouraging more young people to enter careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths).
In the UK, STEM jobs are expected to grow at double the rate of other occupations creating 142,000 jobs by 2023, according to a 2017 report published by the Social Market Foundation. However, there is a critical shortage of candidates to fill these jobs as not enough younger people, particularly girls, are studying STEM subjects at school. “A lot of potentially brilliant engineers are lost to other careers”, says Tony, “A number of my contemporaries, who studied engineering at degree level, transferred to a career in finance”.
As a sponsor of the prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarships, Tony and the Brighton-based software engineering firm tlmNexus, the company he co-founded, is doing its bit to help Year 10 GCSE students embarking on technology-based A levels get the support they need to encourage them into a career in STEM.
tlmNexus has supported six candidates so far from all over the country via the Arkwright Scholarships programme, which matches students with suitable companies depending on their area of interest or research. The scholarships provide much needed financial support for students at a critical juncture in their lives when they could go in any direction. “The scholarship we sponsor helps students buy equipment and carry out research into areas of technology that they're interested in,” explains Tony. “The hope is that they're more likely to stick with STEM once they leave school and university”.
To be considered for the Arkwright scholarship, students have to submit a technology project which is judged by a panel of experts, including academics and tech business owners like Tony. The interview gives students the opportunity to talk about their STEM projects in more detail. The panel then scores each project and scholarships are awarded based on merit. “The quality of the candidates is second to none,” says Tony. “The standard, and their confidence and knowledge, is quite remarkable. There's such a mix of creativity in terms of the projects they have been doing.”
Students awarded a scholarship are also able to benefit from work experience. Tony explains, “The Arkwright students come to us and spend some time with our software engineers. It’s great to have the chance as a student to visit a software company and gain insights into the everyday life of a software engineer, which can help reinforce that this is something they really want to do. It’s also an experience they can record their CV.”
Tony says a career in STEM can take you in many different directions. It’s the creativity involved in building and designing things that ultimately benefit society, whether it is a giant engineering structure or a piece of software like that designed by tlmNexus' software engineers, which helps to keep the Royal Air Force's fleet of fighter jets safely in the air. “It's about creativity, the ability to think laterally to make things work,” explains Tony. “Creativity in STEM is ongoing, as you're always trying to improve things, and the environment is evolving at an incredible rate, driven by advances in technology, not least software, electronics and artificial intelligence.”