Diversity, equality, and inclusion

Posted on: 1 June 2022 by Richard Finch in Connections in action

Electronic Engineering & Electronics students engage with industrial issues around diversity, equality, and inclusion.

During Spring 2022, Electronic Engineering & Electronics students had the opportunity to engage with authentic and work-relevant employability issues, when an employer relevant to their degree-discipline collaborated with the Careers & Employability and academic colleagues on a range of group projects.

Through this initiative, students were able to engage with industrial representatives as part of a research skills & project management module. During their degree, students are supported in developing their awareness of issues surrounding the contemporary employment issues of equality, diversity, & inclusion (EDI), and this module asks students to propose solutions to real-world EDI concerns and challenges as part of an assessed activity.

The assessment brief was designed as a collaboration between the Careers & Employability team and academic colleagues, and the Employer Connections Team utilised employer partnerships to source industry representation to present two EDI-related challenges for student groups to work on.

Lorenzo Conti, Founder & Managing Director of Crover, was keen for his organisation to engage with the University and its students in this way to access student perspective on genuine business problems the business currently face. Students were tasked with presenting solutions to the following:

• Gender inequality: how do we make our engineering roles attractive and improve our recruitment processes to encourage women to apply to Crover? 
• Language & Communication: whilst diversity may be one of Crover’s key assets, how do we fix the gap in communication and working styles to ensure inclusion within our workforce and streamline processes?

Following their research into the topics, the student groups developed video presentations showcasing their research and demonstrating their solutions.

Acting as a key link between Careers & Employability and the academic department, Jennifer Foden (Science & Engineering Employability Officer), acknowledged the value of sourcing real-world problems from industrial representatives: “These projects support students in gaining an understanding of work-relevant issues that employers face and gives them the opportunity to showcase their digital literacy. The research required also allows an insight into what the company look for in graduate recruits, as well as providing valuable networking experience”.

Lorenzo Conti from Crover said: “Universities are constantly shaping the minds of tomorrow and projects by the University of Liverpool's students are a good demonstration of that!

Crover chose to engage because we like to keep a close connection with Universities and to support students through impact-focused and industrial-needs-driven projects.”

Through initiatives such as the work-relevant group projects for Electronic Engineering & Electronics students, the Employer Connections Team are always looking to facilitate engagements between industrial representatives and our students and graduates. Whilst we’ve touched upon extra-curricular examples (such as our Science & Engineering Placements Bootcamp and examples of School-based or Departmental Employability Weeks), we’re keen for such engagements to occur ever-closer to the students’ degree disciplines.

To find out more about ways to engage with talented & ambitious students at the University of Liverpool, in support of your attraction & recruitment aims, please do get in touch with the Employer Connections Team – we’ll be pleased to follow-up to find out how we can help.