IChemE supports Tomorrow's Engineers Week

The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) will be supporting Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2014 by urging its members to support the campaign via social media, participating in #TEWeek14 events and engaging with young people, particularly girls, about their careers in chemical engineering.

Tomorrow’s Engineers Week (#TEWeek14) takes place this week from 3 – 7 November 2014 and aims to change perceptions of engineering among young people, their parents and teachers. It will celebrate the everyday engineering heroes that design, create and innovate to improve our lives.

Dr David Brown, chief executive at IChemE, said: “Showing our support for Tomorrow’s Engineers Week 2014 is very important to IChemE, and we fully encourage our members to promote the profession to young people, particularly girls, in the UK. More than a quarter of chemical engineering undergraduates are female, but we need to work harder to increase that number. We welcome Vince Cable’s clear support to that end.

“We also welcome the news that Shell is investing £1 million in the Tomorrow’s Engineers programme, and it’s encouraging to see that inspiring the next generation to study STEM subjects at school is top of the agenda for UK businesses. We hope that more young people will choose science and engineering, more specifically chemical engineering, as a future career option.”

Paul Jackson, chief executive at EngineeringUK, said: “IChemE and others like it are supporting Tomorrow’s Engineers Week. Engineering makes an important contribution to UK economic growth, so to ensure that trend continues we need to inspire more young people to become talented engineering heroes of tomorrow.

“Engineering companies will have over 2.5 million job openings this decade across a diverse range of disciplines. However, we need many more school children, particularly girls, choosing the GCSEs, A levels, apprenticeships, degrees or other vocational pathways that will lead to engineering careers¹.”