Wind & Marine Energy Systems & Structures Centre for Doctoral Training

It doesn't take a lot of commitment, usually meeting a couple of times a year and it could be for a coffee or over Teams/Zoom. During the meeting, the mentor and mentee would review the evidence accumulated by the developing engineer over the last two quarters, discuss goals for the next 6 months, and reflect on relative strengths and weaknesses.

We can support developing engineers working towards Chartership with any Engineering Institution, but in particular we are accredited by IET and IMechE; most developing engineers join one of these two Institutions. The role of the mentor is the same across institutions, but the IMechE requires slightly more involvement such as signing off on quarterly reports. For example, an IET mentor might spend 2-3 hours a year mentoring a developing engineer, whereas an IMechE mentor might spend 4-6 hours a year.

Our developing engineers are all undertaking doctoral research in wind energy or marine energy. They are based at Strathclyde, Edinburgh, or Oxford Universities. They come from various academic backgrounds, including engineering, physics, chemistry, and mathematics undergraduate degrees. They have all gone through a common academic training in renewable energy. Some will already have significant industrial experience, while others will have only their academic background or experience from different industries.

We will try and match the developing engineer and the CEng mentor based on mutual interests, career ambitions, and engineering institution.

CEng mentors assist the developing engineers in the development of engineering competencies by helping them set and review objectives. In the context of this scheme, CEng mentors give advice on the process of attaining professional engineering status as well as giving generic career development advice. As such, they can assess the strength (or “level”) that a piece of evidence shows against a UK-SPEC competence and advise a developing engineer on how their overall portfolio of evidence meets the different levels of competence.

Mentors are useful at any stage in a career but particularly at times of rapid development or major change. They are people who will listen, challenge and help developing engineers review their progress in order to encourage them to make the most of their opportunities and progress in their careers.

To be a good CEng mentor, you need to have the potential for good mentoring skills, be chartered yourself and be familiar with the engineering competencies in UK-SPEC.

We hold mentor training every year. This is delivered jointly by the CDT staff and the IET or IMechE. During that training, you would:

• Get to know about the CDT

• Understand the role of the mentor in the CEng process

• Learn about best practices in mentoring

• Hear from other CEng mentors and how evidence from doctoral research can meet the UK-SPEC competences

The student CPD coordinator (George Kampolis – georgios.kampolis@strath.ac.uk) would be the first contact for all matters and would be able to direct you to the most appropriate person to get an answer to any questions. He would also match you to a student mentee.

We have a lead mentor (Alasdair McDonald), who has mentored and supported more than 10 IET and IMechE doctoral researchers in their journeys to CEng. He would be the one answering any queries about mentoring.

Our scheme administrator (Drew Smith) will help with the administrative side of things.

If you need further training, we can organise this through IET, IMechE and we the CDT will also provide further training on specific topics. From time to time, the mentors will be invited to meet and share best practices.

IET and IMechE also provide some specific guidance for their mentors and additional support and training that you can access. More information from both institutions can be found here for IET and here for IMechE.

Besides their doctoral research and academic training, all of our developing engineers engage with the Professional Engineering Training Scheme(PETS). Organised by an executive committee, this includes activities that go beyond their day-to-day work activities. Your developing engineers might be involved in:

• Organising, delivering and participating in an annual conference with an audience of >150.

• Organising, delivering and participating in monthly research seminars, each with an audience of >30.

• Organising and delivering school outreach and STEM training.

• Organising and delivering external communications.

These activities help the developing engineers reach some of the management and communication competencies, complementing their technical engineering competencies.