Who inspired early career Electronics Engineers?

The UK Electronics Skills Foundation’s (UKESF) latest report asks young engineers “Who Inspired You?”

Specifically, the educational charity surveyed early career engineers, who have either applied for or received a UKESF Scholarship. These would be either studying for, or graduated from, an Electrical and Electronics Engineering or related degree.

Who inspired you?

The headline findings include 31% being inspired by their parents or a family member, and 19% having been inspired by a teacher.

Notably, 18% were inspired by a high profile or successful scientist or engineer, highlighting the important role of STEM communicators.

Both Social Media and Video Games each accounted for just 1% of responses.

Family

The report quotes a number of respondents from the 80 who took part. For example, someone now working at ARM:

“Dad always took time to tinker with me, whether it was putting together every possible circuit in an electronics kit or helping me to add new add-on cars to a racing game. Some of my earliest memories were sitting down to the first 3D accelerated games available on PC, on a computer that we built together!”

“The passion he inspired has never left me, I went to work directly on GPUs as soon as I could; I simply had to know how those striking 3D graphics were made possible.”

Interestingly, 28% of those surveyed mentioned that their parent or grandparent is an engineer.

The UKESF concludes:

“The main conclusion from our research is that parental encouragement is the biggest factor. Having a parent as an engineer, or a parent that shows interest in experimenting or ‘tinkering’ with engineering, was one of the main inspirations to pursue a degree or career in Electronics and Engineering.”

You can read the full report on the UKESF website (PDF).

UKESF

The UK Electronics Skills Foundation is an educational charity established in 2010.

It works to tackle the national skills shortage in the Electronics sector, operating collaboratively with major companies and universities.

The UKESF also undertakes outreach and engagement activities. The aim is to ensure that more schoolchildren are aware of Electronics and the opportunities available in the industry.

Image: UKESF

See also: Are electronics graduates meeting the needs of employers? asks UKESF