New university aims to attract women into engineering

Plans for the UK’s first newly built university for three decades were unveiled last week – specialising in engineering and aiming for women to comprise half of all its students and teaching staff, writes Richard Garner for The Independent.

The private but not-for-profit New Model in Technology and Engineering, or NMITE, aims to attract 5,000 students when it is fully operational. The new university will model itself on the Olin College of Engineering in the US city of Boston, and aims to be the first higher education institution in the country to match the American college’s unique record of achieving equal numbers of men and women among both lecturers and students.

Karen Usher, from NMITE, said Olin had been “incredibly successful” in recruiting women, and they may be open to taking on applicants without the usual mathematical qualifications to address the traditional gender imbalance.
Full report on The Independent site