SELA success!

Today on the blog we hear from Bethany Jim, a second year undergraduate studying Materials Science and Engineering here at Sheffield. Bethany is one of four female students on the first cohort of the SELA programme and we asked her to describe how the experience had affected her.

Sheffield Engineering Leadership Academy (SELA) is an extra-curricular leadership programme launched by the University of Sheffield. I first heard of its existence and an opportunity to apply to the academy in the middle of my first year studying Materials Science and Engineering, and thought, ‘What’s the harm in applying?’ SELA appealed to me because I wanted a chance to develop my own skills and confidence as a leader to follow the path I want in engineering, especially as a female in the field.

After a concentrated effort with the challenging online application, I was invited to attend an interview and give a pitch to the SELA board. The thought of doing so made me extremely nervous, but I knew how much I wanted to seize the opportunity to better myself. Doing the interview and pitch alone gave me confidence in spades, so I was both surprised and excited to be offered a place on the first-ever cohort of SELA.

After a brief meeting with the other members at the beginning of the year, the first thing we were all required to do was attend a ‘leadership boot camp’. The title of the event had me imagining crazy scenarios. The only information we were given was a web link to the majestic-looking hotel we were to stay at in the Peak District, and a time and place to climb aboard the bus which would take us there. An air of mystery floated through the bus, and upon arrival at 9am, we were greeted by a glorious view complete with golf course. The SELA board members and our mentors for the weekend appeared in the doorway of the hotel shortly after and we were led to the luxurious suites where the boot camp was to begin.

The modules in which we participated over the two days included role play, which required a decision of whether or not to race a Formula 1 car; skyscraper building using spaghetti and marshmallows; and how to negotiate as business owners. We also learned new ways of thinking using different brightly coloured hats, what our working styles and drivers are, and how to effectively problem-solve in time-pressured situations. I found the modules were brilliant for understanding the importance of communication and learning how to differentiate between technical and business aspects. We worked in multi-disciplinary teams for the modules, ensuring healthy debate.  

On the Saturday evening, we relaxed and admired our bathrooms, wandered the grounds, and swam until the dinner bell. A delicious three-course meal was had by all and a ‘pitch club’ followed – we were told to pitch a product which would be useful for elderly people, and the winner would be awarded a beverage of their choice. After working hard at the modules the next day, our long-anticipated year’s project was revealed to us. We, as a cohort, now have the task to raise £10,000 to organise the following year’s boot camp in September 2015.

Now that I’m in my second year, I am focused on maintaining the best grades that I can, and as part of SELA, I receive mentoring, attend skills workshops, guest lectures and networking with leaders from industry and academia and will continue to do so alongside project work for my third year too, before I hope to complete a Masters in materials. One particularly memorable workshop I’ve had so far was on networking; I never knew how to approach people in networking events. After being thoroughly trained by a brilliant professional, I now finding the prospect of talking to people that I don’t know much less daunting, and I look forward to making connections with a wider circle.

To become a member of SELA, each cohort member is required to have a range of attributes, but I will never undervalue the simplest qualities of ambition and willingness to improve. I am one of only four girls selected for SELA this year, bearing in mind there are eighteen members in my cohort. I have tried not to let being a part of any ‘categories’ of people dissuade me from trying to achieve and I don’t believe anybody should let it dissuade them either. I want to grasp opportunities, generate new ideas and close the gender gap in STEM subjects as a young female engineer, whilst inspiring others to do the same. Since coming to university and winning a place in SELA, I have found the inner confidence to really go for the things which I want, and I hope it can be beneficial to my career in the future. It is impossible to avoid rejection completely, and in times where I have faced rejection, I have tried to learn from my mistakes and continue being brave. If I hadn’t mustered the confidence to grasp opportunities including SELA with both hands I don’t believe I would be typing this article.

Congratulations, Bethany - a brilliant message. We're hoping to hear more from Bethany about her fund-raising efforts this year and will keep you up to date on her success.

Dr Cecile Perrault is the latest Sheffield engineer on our Wall of Women!

 
Cecile's research combines biology, medicine and engineering. As a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering she studies the application of mechanical forces to replicate the effect on human cells of the range of environments in the human body. This knowledge can then be applied by industry in the production of pharmaceuticals.

Find out more about Cecile's work here.
  

One to Watch: Bioengineering student Shruti Vasudev makes her mark on her placement year.

Last year Shruti spoke to us about choosing Sheffield and her experiences so far at the University. A year on and she has made the most of the opportunities that have come her way by actively seeking out further career opportunities and training to add to her ever-growing knowledge and experience of engineering.

Being highly motivated and ambitious one of Shruti’s greatest achievements over this past year took place on her placement year with National Instruments (NI) where she led a team to victory working on a robotic arm draughts opponent.

Tell us about the team you successfully managed to victory:

Each year the Application Engineering (AE) department at NI divides itself into four teams to participate in the four-month long AE projects competition alongside our daily roles. Rather than sit back I nominated myself to become the project manager for one of the groups which saw me lead other interns as well as graduate experienced employees by creating an automated draughts opponent using LabVIEW and the new NI myRIO. We were announced as winners and treated to a lovely day out and gifted an NI branded polo shirt with 'AE project winners 2014' written on the back. 

The experience helped me realise my passion for management and I decided to enroll onto an external self-funded course called PRINCE2. This course is a project management course that many companies follow the principles of and I passed both the foundation and practitioner exams for the course and am now officially a PRINCE2 Practitioner. NI have offered me a graduate job to be taken up upon the completion of my degree after seeing my work and enthusiasm over the year.

How did it feel managing a group of engineers?
Part of my group was made up of interns who started with me and had similar levels of technical knowledge and experience as me so it was easier than I thought. The experienced engineers are great at what they do and with them I took the approach of learning from their individual management styles and experiences. I would ask them for their opinions on how a task should be done and then use the advice that made most sense to me and matched my project plans. When I nominated myself for the role I knew this was my one chance to learn about project management from the experienced team members on this team who had had previous experience at managing teams and were willing to teach me as we went along .

You said you nominated yourself - do you feel pressure to 'step forward' and be seen because of your gender or are you a natural leader?
No, I did not feel pressured at all. I do agree that there are fewer women than men in the engineering industry but that is changing and if you work hard and prove yourself to be worthy of a role then people will respect you irrespective of your gender. I feel I am a natural leader who thrives in management related roles and am constantly trying to improve and further develop my leadership skills by learning from the people around me. 

Every team in the project had a mentor and I took a lot of guidance from our mentor for my project manager role. My mentor helped me develop my management style and advised me on different approaches to managing the different people in the team and I learned a great deal as a result of this.

What’s been the biggest learning curve?
Very early on in this internship I realised that I am here not to prove myself or the skills I already possess but to try and acquire new skills and knowledge from the pool of brilliant, talented and experienced engineers I was working with. This attitude and willingness to learn is what I feel, has benefited me most during this placement year. It has enabled me to have no inhibitions when working with more experienced people in the department and ask them to teach me something they are good at. 

What else are you working on at National Instruments at the moment?
I joined NI as an Applications Engineer, where after my intense training of two months, I began supporting our customers. NI has about 35,000 companies as customers around the world in different sectors of engineering and my role as Applications Engineer is to support these customers using our products. I have to understand their engineering applications which could range from medical to aerospace to radio frequency related. Many at times I need to recreate their problems in our lab using the same products and then try and find a technical solution for them.

I was also given the opportunity to do a three month stint/rotation in the technical sales department as a technical sales engineer. These three months really opened my eyes to the business side of engineering and gave me a different perspective of the industry. My role was primarily understanding the application needs of our customers and supporting them by advising on the right software and hardware products to satisfy their needs. Many at times I had to match their specifications with our products and produce a product list and quote for them. I was mainly in-charge of business in Scotland and North East of England and worked with a Field Engineer based in the area to support our business in the area.

Tell us more about the rowing event you organised as part of the NI team:
This was a fun event. Every year the Newbury Round table organises a massive charity event called Crafty Craft which involves building your own boat, forming a team and taking part in a boat race in the canal in Newbury. This year I was in-charge of organising our team. I began working on oganising teams to work on this event with me and I got some very talented people to fix our boat, paint it and also got some great rowers from the company. The theme for Crafty Craft this year was 'Brazilian Adventure'  and we named our team 'myRIO Car-NI-val' – a pun on the latest NI product myRIO and NI for National Instruments.