We can encourage engineering careers through heritage activities

Roseanne O’Leary

STEPS Team Leader, Engineers Ireland

Many children do not know enough about engineers. Engineers are creative people who design solutions that we use every day. Humans are natural engineers and we’ve been engineering since the Stone Age.

The engineering sector plays an important role within Irish society. We need to promote engineering to children to ensure Ireland has a ready supply of engineers. Girls are facing barriers and are hugely underrepresented in the sector, we need to continue to work together to open girls, boys, minority groups, disadvantaged backgrounds and everyone to greater awareness of engineering.

We must give children as many hands-on engineering opportunities as we can, to ensure Ireland is a better place for future generations. We can look to our heritage to help achieve this.

Promote understanding

The STEPS programme is a long-standing outreach programme that aims to introduce and promote understanding of engineering to children. STEPS has worked with As Creatives to create unique engineering outreach challenges for children to discover the engineering of three of Ireland’s heritage sites to celebrate International Women in Engineering Day on June 23.

It’s never too early to begin encouraging, channelling and supporting children’s interests in engineering.

Creating opportunities to learn

As the programme strives to inspire the next generation of engineers, we have created these challenges to not only develop engineering skills, but also to learn about our heritage through engineering. Children can discover the engineering of three of Ireland’s heritage sites – Parke’s Castle, Hill of Tara, Rock of Cashel.

Each location has an engineering challenge pack full of several engineering themed activities. To inspire more children to see themselves as engineers, we want to show them engineering innovations and activities that relate to their locality.

Curiosity and problem-solving skills

Children are naturally curious and our heritage challenges nurture this curiosity to give them learning opportunities to become problem solvers. It’s never too early to begin encouraging, channelling and supporting children’s interests in engineering.