City University, London partnership with Engineers Without Borders UK
City is delighted to be partnering and making history with Engineers Without Borders UK. This outstanding charity is establishing its first-ever strategic partnership with our university and deepening its five-year relationship with our School.
Professor Rajkumar Roy, Dean of SMCSE
City, University of London has announced a partnership with Engineers Without Borders UK representing the first-ever strategic university partnership initiative undertaken by the engineering charity.
The City University of London, established in 1894, has been at the head of a UK national initiative to embed social responsibility into the STEM professions, as well as the university itself. The school works closely with professional institutions and has a reputation of graduates being fast-tracked towards professional qualifications.
The collaboration will strengthen the national initiative on “Developing Socially Responsible STEM Professionals”.
Engineers Without Borders UK is a charity and a global movement with responsible engineering at its core, consisting of over 60 Engineers Without Borders organisations. They inspire and develop future and current engineers and leaders in schools, colleges and innovative organizations through various educational activities and projects to become socially and globally responsible engineers.
A report of a survey from February 2021 by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) reveals that only 7% of engineering companies in the UK with a sustainability strategy say they possess the skills necessary to fulfil it. 43% of engineering employers claim when hiring new staff that university graduates do not have the necessary skills needed to work in their industry. To prepare the students for the work requires a transformation in how to educate future engineering workforces.
The partnership aims to use collaboration, cross-disciplinary learning, ethics, systems thinking, inclusive approaches and real-world examples alongside technical education to teach STEM students how to produce globally responsible solutions.
This three-year plan will include various projects, steps and tasks such as:
- Designations and Design Challenges project for all STEM students either as a part of the curriculum or as an extracurricular activity
- Creating a real-world educational resource and accelerate training of early-career academics
- A programme worked out together with educators to support and create volunteering opportunities for a group of people with abilities to educate the students
- Support of research on socially responsible STEM technologies and solutions
- Share of co-work, approaches and findings to influence a wider sector change and reflect on experiences to improve and focus on actions leading to socially responsible graduate
Professor Rajkumar Roy who is a Dean of City’s School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering (SMCSE), said:
“City is delighted to be partnering and making history with Engineers Without Borders UK. This outstanding charity is establishing its first-ever strategic partnership with our university and deepening its five-year relationship with our School. This will further our commitment to educating socially responsible STEM professionals, clearly illustrated through joint innovative engineering design programmes, such as the Engineering for People Design Challenge and our soon to be launched, Efficiency for Access Design Challenge.”
Emma Crichton a Head of Engineering at Engineers Without Borders UK shared too the enthusiasm over the collaboration saying that exactly this kind of partnership is necessary to create a future workforce prepared to work creatively with new solutions to the future challenges.
Sharing the common vision of both sides will help to grow a generation of responsible engineers for a better future globally.
