Simon

Cumbria

IT

A fair reflection I think.

It's something that has been recognised locally (Barrow in Furness) and the various engineering institutions have got together under the umbrella heading of Professional Engineers South Cumbria to 'market' engineering as something interesting. All the groups involved organise their own public talks, but they put out a combined list as a leaflet that is distributed around the area.

They have a schools bursary scheme with (modest) cash awards to pupils at local schools who show promise in technical subjects. And they also have a school science/engineering club type of thing going with a number of design&build projects for kids - there's some interesting prototypes come out of our garage !

Father keeps trying to recruit me onto the committee as a youngster of only 43, I think I would be the youngest by far and most of them are retired. I didn't even apply for full membership of the IEE until I was nearly 40 - it was (like you say) the norm to join as a student, but after that it just didn't seem to be relevant to the IT world.