Enhancing Study and Employability - engCETL - Engineering Centre for Excellence


	Enhancing Study and Employability The engCETL recognises that students require support and guidance from a variety of sources to aid their learning experience and to further their employability. We have assembled a number of resources to aid you with finding professional organisations, enhancing your employability, and further developing your key skills whilst you study.

Professional Organisations

Professional Bodies

The Engineering Council brings together the leading professional engineering institutions in the UK:

The vision of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) is "to be at the forefront of chemical engineering as a leading international body qualifying, serving and representing chemical engineers and promoting the advancement of the discipline".
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is the senior professional Civil engineering organisation in the UK now with over over 80,000 members.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ("eye-triple-E") helps advance global prosperity by promoting the engineering process of creating, developing, integrating, sharing, and applying knowledge about electrical and information technologies and sciences for the benefit of humanity and the profession.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), formally known as the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), founded in 1871, is the largest professional engineering society in Europe and has a worldwide membership of just under 140,000. The web site contains a comprehensive Education and Careers section. Students can join the IEE on-line for free.
The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has been the home of Mechanical Engineers for 150 years, with around 83,000 engineers world-wide members.
The Royal Aeronautical Society is the oldest aeronautical society in the world, founded in 1866 for 'the general advancement of aeronautical art, science and engineering and to increase by experiments our knowledge of aeronautics'.
The British Computer Society (BCS) is the only Chartered Engineering Institution for Information Systems Engineering. With over 38,000 members world-wide, the BCS is the leading professional and learned Society in the field of computers and information systems.
The Women's Engineering Society web site includes a message board as well as news and events information.

Engineering Standards

The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the world leader in standards and quality management services, and owns the most famous of all product quality marks - the Kitemark. The web site provides a useful guide to standards and their development.
The IEEE standards catalogue links to an international membership organization serving today's industries with a complete portfolio of standards programs.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) web site is the source of ISO 9000 and more than 13 000 International Standards for business, government and society.

Patents

The British library's patents web link contains a wealth of information ranging from links to free databases to trademarks, registered designs, patent agents, legislation and PATLIB UK Libraries that can help with patent research.

The Esp@cenet is the British Patent Office gateway to UK, European and worldwide patents and contains a quick search facility of the worldwide database.

The European Patent Office web site includes official communications, patent information services and news of current events and seminars.

The Leeds Business and Patent Information Services provides details of services and a list of the Unit's extensive holdings.

The UK Patent Office includes information on Intellectual Property (Copyright, Designs, Patents and Trade Marks) in the UK.

You can search US patents from 1971 for free at the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).

Enhancing Employability

Enterprise and Innovation

Loughborough University's enterpriselufbra is aimed at student enterprise and innovation. It seeks to unlock your business potentials whilst providing practical advice and running a number of events.

Formula Student is a racing car design and build competition for engineering students.

The Loughborough Innovation Centre provides hot desk rental for entrepreneurial students starting a new business and needing a fully serviced, high quality office space. The Innovation centre further supports students with free seminars, specialist legal advice, business plan and funding support, seamless access to the University's expertise and excellent networking opportunities. In line with the aims of engCETL, the centre subsidised hot desk rental for students from the engCETL departments.

Job Applications and Career Information

Prospects is the UK's official graduate careers website with a wealth of information relating to jobs & work.

Select Simulator allows students to practice online job applications.

TARGETjobs is a website providing guidance on graduate jobs and careers, offering useful advice for first year students through to graduates.

SHL provide assessment advice and guidance about psychometric tests and includes a facility to enable students to undertake practice tests.

Key Skills and Resources to Aid your Study

Key Skills

For any student undertaking an educational qualification it is important to develop skills that will support your learning process. These key skills (sometimes referred to as study skills or transferable skills) are often practice-based and will help you with your laboratory and field-work, general course-work, assignments, essay writing and finding information.

Loughborough University has a variety of mechanisms to help you to develop these skills and some of the more prominent resources can be found through the links provided.

Loughborough University's Electronic Library provides links to various online resources including e-journals, e-books.

Loughborough University's Study Guide provides an online source of detailed advice on a variety of study techniques from exam revision to making oral presentations. The Guide encourages students to develop their own strategies for responding to a wide and diverse workload.

Loughborough University's Study Advice Sheets provide practical suggestions and ideas to help you develop efficient and effective strategies in particular skills areas (access for Loughborough University only).

Web design issues relating to web standards from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), targeting the right audience and accessibility should be considered when designing online material.

Use the Engineering Virtual Tour to navigate your way around Loughborough University's engineering departments.

Are you aware of the skills you are developing on your course and in your spare time that could help you sell yourself to a future employer? Are you making the most of the opportunities available to you at university? If not then consider engaging in personal development planning (PDP). PDP can help you to take stock of your current skills, plan how you can develop your skill set whilst at university, and even become a better learner.

The library has resources and workshops to help you get to grips with PDP.

More information can also be found on the learn server (access for Loughborough University only).

A tool exists to help you with PDP, check out the SPEED section of RAPID.

Journals

A list of useful free e-journals which are useful for student study, research and career ideas is provided below:

Intute indexes around 100 electronic journals, all of which are free and available without registration. You can search the engineering section by subject guide, A to Z, Top 100 or browse by resource type.

Electric Vehicle World incldes test drives, interviews and news.

Electronics Weekly contains job opportunities and news for the electronics industry.

Inspec is a bibliographic information service providing access to the world's scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology (produced by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)).

New Scientist on-line magazine includes selected features from the current edition of the New Scientist.

Which?Online is the electronic version of the popular consumer magazine that allows you to browse articles on consumer items by content and by keyword search.