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Schemes for Undergraduates
Engineering Leadership Advanced
Award Scheme, Best Programme
A programme to provide support
and motivation to some of the most exceptional
engineering undergraduates in UK universities.
Aim of the awards
These Awards help ambitious
and inspiring engineering undergraduates, those who
want to become leadership role models for the next
generation of engineers, undertake an accelerated
personal development programme. They will get the
opportunity to acquire the skills needed to fulfil
their potential, moving into an engineering
leadership position in UK industry soon after
graduation.
Who are the awards for?
Engineering Leadership
Advanced Awards are highly prestigious and the
Academy expects to award no more than 40 in any one
year. Naturally they are sought very keenly by
students and a great deal of interest has been shown
by universities.
The awards are made only to
the most outstanding undergraduates, who are
selected during the course of their second year (of
a four year course) or third year (of a five year
course). By this stage they have had the opportunity
to prove themselves in the first year of their
course, yet will still have time to make good use of
the award before they graduate.
It is a requirement that
students are on four- or five-year MEng courses. In
making the selection, the Academy is seeking to
identify individuals who have the desire and the
capability to reach the top of engineering or
manufacturing businesses and who, once established,
will lead their companies as successful and
competitive operations. We are ever mindful that
industrial leadership requires more than academic
ability.
What does an award offer?
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The Academy organises an
annual training and social weekend at which all
the award holders from the different year groups
are brought together.
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Each Award holder will be
allocated a mentor
who will offer advice on their personal
development and career options.
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Assistance will be
available from the Academy to create Personal
Development Plans, enabling Awardees to plan the
use of their Award in the short term, and
outline their intentions in the medium and long
term.
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£5000 will be allocated to
each Award holder so that they may act on their
Personal Development Plan over a period of three
years.
What do students use their awards for?
The uses to which students
have put their awards so far have varied
considerably, including UK and overseas work
placements, overseas language courses combined with
industrial visits, and attendance at appropriate
conferences. Students are increasingly aware of the
need for the development of core skills, and
attendance on short courses addressing various
personal development and management issues is a
common request.
ELA awardee James Martin
Personal Development Plans
Central to the theme of
accelerating the professional development of the
individual is the need to encourage the student to
look ahead to where they think their career is going
and to start planning for it. Once an Award is
confirmed, the holder is expected to draft a
Personal Development Plan. This not only provokes
thought about their longer-term career, but provides
a structure around which to plan the use of the
award itself.
Training and support
Many of the ideas about how to
use the award come from fellow award holders. The
annual training event provides a welcome opportunity
to get to know other award holders. It is also the
occasion when the Academy can provide training in
areas of interest to all award holders. In addition,
students are given assistance in career planning and
the drafting of their personal development plans.
Every Engineering Leadership
Award holder is allocated a personal mentor who is
either an alumnus of the scheme or a Sainsbury
Management Fellow. The Sainsbury Management
Fellowships is a scheme that has been run for a
number of years by the Academy to enable high-flying
Chartered Engineers to study for an MBA at an
international business school. Many graduates of
both the Sainsbury Management Fellowships scheme and
the Engineering Leadership Advanced Award Scheme are
now in influential positions in industry, and in
many ways represent role models for the aspiring
undergraduates. It is their job to offer informal
advice on their personal development and career
options.
For further
information please visit the Engineering
Leadership Awards website at
www.engineeringleadershipawards.org.uk
[E-mail
ELA team]
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