Engineering Leaders Scholarship Mentoring
Background
The Royal Academy of Engineering has been running the Engineering Leaders Scholarship (ELS) programme for nearly 30 years, supporting undergraduate engineering students in UK higher education institutions who demonstrate not only a passion for engineering but also the potential to become leaders and innovators in engineering and role models for future generations of engineers.
The award provides successful candidates with £5,000, to be used over three years, towards career-related personal development, dedicated training events, the support of a mentor, as well as many other community benefits.
Aim of the Program
The ELS programme is awarded to outstanding engineering undergraduates studying at universities around the UK. The scholarships enable ambitious undergraduates, in engineering and related disciplines, to undertake an accelerated personal development programme that will help them to gain the necessary skills to become engineering leaders soon after graduating. The programme supports the Academy's goal of creating a world-leading, truly diverse and inclusive engineering workforce.
As part of this programme, the undergraduates are provided with support from an Academy mentor. The mentoring programme aims to enable mentees to find mentors who can provide the support they are looking for, keeping administration to a minimum whilst ensuring the information on the progression of the relationship is easy to track and access.
Our Solution
We worked closely with the Royal Academy of Engineering to identify the key matching criteria that they wanted mentors and mentees to input onto their profiles, including industries of interest and areas of support. The aim was to keep the information required to be input to a minimum, whilst ensuring that the key areas where support might be required were covered.
The platform provides mentors and mentees with the tools they need to organise meetings, record meeting notes and actions, and to set and track goals for the mentee to work towards.
Results
The platform was launched in June 2022 and the automated matching process has proven to be very valuable in helping reduce the administration burden of manual matching. As a result of putting the platform in place we have been able to significantly upscale how many relationships we have been able to facilitate. The platform has proven to be easy to use and had good engagement from mentors and mentees from day one. The platform offers to match mentees across a wide range of areas of support, but the most popular areas reflect that the mentees on this programme are highly ambitious, looking for support in early career development, leadership expertise, start-up experience and in holding a senior role at an early age. So far, we have had 89 mentors register, 71 mentees register, and 52 mentoring connections formed to date.
Client Feedback
Lauren Pattle, Higher Education Bursaries and Scholarships manager at the Royal Academy of Engineering remarked that 'as the administrator for the ELS mentoring programme, PLD made sure that I was fully equipped to manage the platform, making the process of onboarding mentors and mentees swift and straightforward. PLD have continued to support me with tried and tested ideas for promoting the platform, as well as with ad hoc technical support, and bi-annual check-in meetings to look at any elements of the onboarding process which I wish to update.'
Lynda Mann, Head of Education Programmes at the Royal Academy of Engineering, said 'mentoring had been requested by our ELS awardees as something that would enhance and add value to their overall experience of the scheme. There were several considerations to implementing such a scheme, including administrative requirements and the need to ensure an accurate matching process and a safe environment in which our mentees and mentors can communicate. The solution provided by PLD addressed all these considerations and we are happy with the outcome'.
Mentee Feedback
Feedback from mentees have shown that they have found it a valuable process. One mentee commented, 'I very much enjoyed the mentorship programme. I found it easy to connect with my mentor who helped me make strategic decisions and enhanced my career prospects.' Another mentee stated, 'I have thoroughly enjoyed the mentor scheme and have been provided with a lot of opportunities because of it. It is definitely something which should continue in the future.'
