To celebrate International Women in Engineering Day we're sharing individual stories of women engineers from across UKCRIC member institutions.
Tell us about your role and what you find most exciting about it.
I am an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at UCL. I lead a very active research group and my principal research interests lie in the area of structural testing, numerical modelling and the development of efficient design guidance for (mainly!) steel and composite structures. I serve on a number of editorial boards, technical and scientific committees as well as accreditation bodies. I am a Fellow of both the Institution of Structural Engineers (FIStructE) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE). The first thing to say about my role, is that I love my job!! I love almost everything about it (apart from marking!). Narrowing down to my first favourite thing, I think it has to be working with students, of all levels…I love teaching first year students and trying to give them a love of structural engineering (they are a blank canvas, full of enthusiasm), right up to working closely with researchers and PhD students. I feel privileged that I get to engage with students at a time in their professional lives when everything is exciting, and there are few boundaries. Another thing that I love about my job is that I basically feel like I get to drive/control my own career…the more I put in, the more I get out, and I pretty much get to work in whatever field or topic that interests me, at least in research.
What inspired you to become an engineer?
This is quite a tough question to answer, because I often feel that I stumbled into engineering, and I was a little blind as to what I was doing! I attended an all-girls school, and engineering was certainly not a career path that was advertised to us. In order to study applied maths, I had to attend classes at the local boys school. I didn’t really know any engineers, and didn’t have any in my family. However, I was fortunate to have open minded parents, who took me to see a guidance counsellor (at a boys school, ironically!), and he was the first person to mention engineering to me as a possible career. I chose civil engineering, mainly because I thought buildings and bridges seemed interesting, and it all went from there. I’ve thought a lot in recent years about what an engineer really is, or a structural engineer in particular, like me is. I have decided that we are thinkers, designers and innovators, underpinned by sound technical knowledge – becoming as good as I can be, and helping my students to do the same, in accordance with this definition, is what inspires me daily!
How do you balance your professional and personal lives?
The short answer, is that I balance it with a whole load of help and an ever-improving ability to be efficient and to say no! I try not to do anything that is a waste of my time or that I won’t enjoy – which often means turning down opportunities or not doing some things that others might want me to do. I am in a period of my career now where I feel I could do nothing all day/week/month/year but bounce from meeting to meeting, committee to committee, spending all day reviewing/appraising and representing other peoples work. I think this is a real challenge and danger for women in engineering, especially as we progress (all these committees, panels and groups are looking for gender balance, and there are not enough women to go around!). So, learning to say no is key!! I feel extremely fortunate to be in a position and profession where I can do this. My life is full, both professionally, and personally, with a growing and well-established academic career as well as a family with two young daughters (and all the chaos that they bring!) at home. Ultimately, my girls come first, for both my husband and I, and our jobs (he is an engineer also!) are quite readily flexible around this. I also have a solid network of friends, supporters and school-parent friends to fall back on what I get stuck late at a meeting.
In your opinion is there more that can be done to encourage a greater diversity of people into engineering careers?
First, there is a lot being done now, compared with 20 years ago when I was leaving school. For me, we need to become better advocates, advertisers, and marketers of our profession – more self-promotion (in a selfless manner!). I have often wondered why engineering didn’t seem to even be on my radar when I was in school – a lack of role models was a big reason (I had never met a female engineer), a lack of open-mindedness amongst school teachers and society at large was another. I still think that girls generally only go into engineering if they are exceptional – excellent academically, great at maths, etc. Our female engineers and engineering students are brilliant, by and large. We’ll only know that we’ve cracked the gender imbalance issues when we start attracting more females to roles across a range of academic attainment. On the other issues of diversity (race, etc.) I suspect the lack of role models and opportunity are key issues.
What advice would you give for anyone interested in pursuing an engineering career?
Find an engineer, somewhere and somehow, and talk to them. This can be through university open days, or through professional institutions (e.g. IStructE, ICE, etc.). Talk about the job, the lifestyle, the opportunity and then decide if that’s for you! Try to keep an open mind about what you might want to be “when you grow up” and focus on what you enjoy right now – it should lead you to a fulfilling career.
Dr. Katherine Cashell is an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London