Project title: EDI engineering employability learning toolkit
Funding awarded: £95,568.90
Summary:
The School of Engineering, Technology and Design is launching a new equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) focused engineering higher education toolkit. This aims to increase the pipeline of women, Black, Asian and minority ethnic, and low socioeconomic status students to address the regional and national skills gap. Employers need diverse engineers that can graduate seamlessly to industry, addressing skills shortages. However, gender, ethnicity, and social background all impact engineering students’ employment prospects, which is disappointing, as diverse teams improve the economic growth of enterprise.
This project will develop an EDI engineering employability learning toolkit that has the potential for wide higher education adoption. The toolkit will build upon Canterbury Christ Church’s Future 360 Framework that incorporates the Graduate Capital Model, the internship framework and the principles of social capital learning.
What need does the project address?
The toolkit will support Christ Church University students by improving their immediate and long-term social capital and employability. By working closely with EqualEngineers and other stakeholders to research and develop the toolkit, the final product ultimately enable students to showcase their engineering talent to employers (e.g. through profile, portfolio, micro-credentials and network) using digital recruitment practices such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn has benefits for employers (Bortot, 2021; Drevet, 2022) and employees (Li et al, 2021, Ward et al, 2021; Miller et al, 2022). The toolkit will be deployed within the university and evaluated across all stakeholders in terms of engagement and impact on employability using qualitative and quantitative methods.
What will the students experience?
Students involved in the project will co-lead in the Toolkit creation and also shape the EDI Toolkit during its pilot and final stage. Over the course of the project, beneficiaries will participate in activities such as networking and work placement, whilst also developing skills in work readiness, curriculum and personal development skills and more.
What are the expected outcomes?
By the end of the project, students will have participated in the creation of an EDI Toolkit which has been custom-made to support students who are female, BAME and low socio-economic students during their transition into employability.