ESTeEM – the TU Dublin City Campus mentoring project supporting female engineering and IT students

WITS were present at the closing mentoring lunch organized by ESTeEM on March 28th, with mentors from SAP, Phorest, Arup, Vodafone, Amazon, Mastercard, Schneider, ESB and Accenture (both WITS corporate members) and guest speakers Jennifer Kavanagh and Nicola Murphy from SAP. The topic for this event was titled: "The value of my personal brand and how to build it!"

On the aims of the ESTeEM programme, Leslie Shoemaker, Programme Facilitator in the TU Dublin City Campus and WITS member said, “Research shows that mentorship works. Our goal is to provide female students with role models who can offer guidance about career opportunities in engineering, provide support and tools for navigating this male-dominated industry, and entice and retain more women in the field. We need to dispel the myth that this is a male-only profession. We need young women to know that engineering is an option.”

The structured mentorship programme, which goes by the name of ESTeEM (Equality in Science and Technology by Engaged Engineering Mentoring), sees each mentor paired with 2-3 students for the duration of the year. During a series of lunches that took place throughout the academic year, students could chat informally with their assigned mentor. At each event, there has been a short talk by one of the mentors, which was followed by a focused mentoring session.

ESTeEM is in its second year and due to its success, in early 2019 Athena Swan singled out Leslie Shoemaker's programme as an example of best practice for diversity, inclusion and equality.