Regional International Women in Engineering Day event hosted at Teesside University
Engineering students and academics at Teesside University joined together with colleagues from across the North East to celebrate International Women in Engineering Day.
Women’s Engineering Society (WES) Tyne and Tees Cluster invited all colleagues and students across the five universities: Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, Teesside, and Durham to celebrate the International Women in Engineering Day.
The event highlighted the works and achievements by women engineers within industry as well as engineering students and academics. It helped with sharing ideas and inviting students to get involved with WES activities and to show solidarity to all the women who either have or are working towards a career in engineering.
The discussions helped to break down the competitive barriers and proposed to start working in a more collaborative space.
This was a hybrid event which was held across the five regional universities with over 100 people attending in total.
At the Teesside University event, around 25 people heard industry speakers, Helen Hill from Johnson Matthey, and Paula McMahon from Sir Robert McAlpine (SRM) share the highlights of their careers, challenges they have faced, and their main achievements.
For the second part of the event, Teesside University joined together with the other four universities online.
The online session was opened by Elizabeth Donnelly, CEO of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), followed by a panel presentation and discussion with representatives from each of the participating universities.
Dr Tannaz Pak, Senior Lecturer in Energy and Environmental Engineering and one of the winners of Top 50 women in engineering award in 2021, said:
‘This was our first joint and hybrid event with the North East universities to celebrate the International Women in Engineering Day. We had this event earlier than the International Women in Engineering Day (which is on June 23rd) to allow celebrating with our students. This event successfully connected the women in engineering subjects within the five participating universities across the region. It was amazing to hear from the invited speakers and learn from their career journeys and be inspired by their achievements.
‘Teesside University aims to inspire, celebrate and drive real change for girls and woman wanting to embark on exciting careers in STEM subjects and this event showed just how students are able to achieve this.’
The Women's Engineering Society is a charity and a professional network of women engineers, scientists and technologists offering inspiration, support and professional development.
The charity supports working and inspires women to achieve as engineers, scientists and as leaders just like Teesside University.
Since 2021, the School of Commuting, Engineering, and Digital Technologies at Teesside University has worked on several projects to promote women’s contribution to STEM and in particular Engineering subjects. These include:
- Hello World! annual event
- Women in STEM Fellowships funded by the British Council through the AMIGO-Biochar project
- A range of STEM Scholarships and Mentoring
This project is led by Dr Tannaz Pak and Siobhan Fenton from SCEDT.
If you would like to get involved in these projects or would like to develop a new project with focus on women in engineering please do get in touch with Dr Tannaz Pak via email (t.pak@tees.ac.uk).
We are particularly keen to work with industry partners within the region and beyond to create more opportunities for women to work in engineering roles.
