University of Manchester EngD centre wins IET award
(5 March 2015) - The Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Centre in The University of Manchester's Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences has been presented with a prestigious award which is normally the preserve of corporate companies.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has presented The University of Manchester’s EngD Centre with its long-term Accredited Scheme Award, given to organisations that have held IET accreditation for their Professional Development Schemes continuously for 10 years or more. The EngD Centre is the only university-based recipient of this award. The Centre manages the EPSRC-funded Nuclear Engineering EngD Programme in collaboration with 6 other universities and a range of industry partners, as well as a Manchester-only EngD in Engineering for Manufacture.
The Engineering Doctorate provides talented young doctoral students with a combination of taught courses and professional development workshops which run alongside an industry-led 4-year doctoral research project, leading to EngD. These elements combine to give a training experience which is recognised by IET as providing a fast track, quality-assured, route to chartership (CEng). The accreditation, which the Centre has held since 2001, is recognised as a high quality seal of approval and means it is seen as equivalent to company-based training schemes, such as those run by Arup and Rolls-Royce, for their graduate employees.
Dr David Stanley, EngD Centre Manager, said:
“It is extremely unusual for a university doctoral programme to win accreditation as an approved Professional Development Scheme, let alone to have held that accreditation continuously for 15 years, and it is a testament to my predecessors in this role who had the foresight to make the case for accreditation to the IEE (as it then was) and to the IMechE back in the late 90’s. They were able to satisfy these bodies that the EngD programme, which they had set up in 1992 and which we have since developed and improved, was capable of providing its students (or Research Engineers, as they are known) with a training experience equivalent to that provided by major employers such as Rolls-Royce.”
The EngD is about generating first class research and first class professional engineers. The accredited training provided by the EngD supports our students’ progress towards Chartership and prepares them for employment as future technical leaders in their chosen industry.”
Dick Balestrini, who manages Professional Development Accreditation for the IET said:
“The IET are very happy to present The University of Manchester Engineering Doctorate Centre with its Long Running Scheme award in acknowledgement of our continued and valued partnership in working to engineer a better world. The award recognises their achievement in sustaining and improving their IET Accredited Professional Development Scheme since 2001."
An Accredited IET Professional Development Scheme gives a developing engineer a quality assured pathway from when they join their scheme through to Professional Registration. These developing engineers are essential to the future success of industry and many of the current technical and business leaders in the engineering community started their career on such a scheme.
Dr Martin Goodfellow (pictured above with Dr David Stanley and Mary Jane Halstead, IET’s Regional Development Manager for the North of England) is an alumnus of the Nuclear Engineering EngD, obtaining his EngD in 2013. He was sponsored for his EngD by Rolls-Royce plc and now works for them on the New Nuclear Manufacturing (NNUMAN) programme in partnership with the University’s Dalton Nuclear Institute. He said:
“The IET accredited professional development programme that I undertook during the course of my nuclear EngD allowed me to formalise much of what I had learned 'on the job' in earlier roles. This provided me with a robust foundation that supported my career development as I worked towards CEng.”
Notes
- The six university partners are Imperial College London, Birmingham, Lancaster, Sheffield, Strathclyde and Surrey.
- The companies represented on the Nuclear EngD Centre’s Management Board are AWE, AMEC, EDF Energy, HSE, National Nuclear Laboratory, Rolls-Royce.
- (This news release was first published on the Dalton Nuclear Institute website.)
