guidance for ieng or ceng applicants who work in academia

8/12/2019 Guidance for IEng or CEng Applicants Who Work in Academia

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Guidance for IEng or CEng applicants who work in academia

1. Introduction

This briefing note is provided to help you if you are thinking about applying for registration and you workin Higher or Further Education. It also provides guidance to IET staff, assessors and interviewers, whoevaluate your application for registration.

2. What do you have to do?

Under the current Engineering CouncilUK-SPEC Regulations, the key to registration is successfuldemonstration of competence to your peers in the same engineering discipline. Whatever yourbackground, you should note that it is ultimately your competence as an engineer that leads the IET toaward Engineering Councilregistration.

There are five key areas in which you will be assessed, by a review of the documentary evidence that yousubmit and also by interview. The five areas are as follows:

Technical/engineering knowledge and understanding to Bachelors level (IEng) and to Masters level(CEng)

Application of knowledge

Commercial andtechnical management (IEng) and leadership (CEng)

Interpersonal and communication skills

Professional conduct

3. Who is eligib le?

Teaching and learning support activities taking place in higher and further education are wide rangingand often provide suitable evidence of competence for professional registration.

In further education, registration as a professional engineer is a realistic prospect for tutorial staffdelivering higher education programmes up to NVQ4 (QCF 4/5). Some support and management rolesmay also provide good evidence of competence. Incorporated Engineer is likely to be the most

appropriate target for tutorial, management, or senior support staff. It is unusual for opportunities todemonstrate the innovation and technical leadership expected of a Chartered Engineer to be available.However recent industrial experience, special projects or research may provide the valuable additionalevidence. Engineering Technician or ICT Technician registration should be readily achievable by tutorialand also by many technical support staff working on programmes up to NVQ level 3 (QCF 2/3 ).

In universities, the opportunities for research and consultancy make it feasible for teaching and researchstaff to attain registration as a Chartered Engineer. Without a significant research or consultancy portfolio,registration as an Incorporated Engineer may be the realistic option.

4. Are you registrable?

The assessment is based on your competence, not the level that you teach. The evidence you providecan also include engineering experiences outside your immediate teaching role. Within academia,obvious examples include course development, involvement in one or more research contracts, possibly


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as a principal investigator; and working independently on consultancy or voluntary engineering work. In asituation where you are not formally identified with a project team, however, producing relevant evidenceof competence might be more challenging.

If you have had several years experience in an engineering-based job before moving into academia, youmay well have developed the appropriate engineering experience and competence beforehand and haveevidence you can use to strengthen your application, especially if you can show how your engineering

experience influences your current teaching or research.

If you have not worked in industry in an engineering role, have recently graduated and work full-time inacademia, you are unlikely to have gained all the appropriate engineering competences for registration atthis stage in your career. Typically, several years are required to develop and provide sufficient evidenceof competence although time spent is not the most significant factor in career development.

It is not only competence in applying technical knowledge and understanding that has to be assessed.Registered engineers are expected to be competent in a range of commercial and managerial skills.Increasingly, the work of universities and colleges is carried out within strict financial and commercialbounds and requires management skills to balance teaching, research and commercial constraints. Thisprovides opportunities for academic engineers to both develop and provide evidence of management andleadership skills. The balance between technical and commercial issues may differ between academia

and industry and decisions about resources may be less explicit than in a commercial environment.

5. Examples of what to include in your application

Below are some questions that may lead you to think of aspects of your work which could form the basisof your application. The questions should help you to complete your application. As you can see, there issome overlap in the competences that the questions address, so you do not need to be able to answerthem all. These questions may also prompt you to think of other questions and responses that betterreflect your own experience.

UK-SPECCompetence

Question How you might add to your application

A, C Have you made ordesigned all or part of anengineered artefact forteaching, research or foran external organisation?

Describe what was made or designed, your contribution andthe outcome, including any recorded response from thebeneficiaries of your work.

A, D Have you disseminatedresearch results toenhance your institutionsreputation for high quality

research?

Briefly describe the work that resulted in authorship oftechnical papers for publication in established journals orpatents. Mention talks you have given on your researchoutside your institution. Refer to profitable contacts made by

companies who think they might benefit from your research ortechnical expertise.

A, D Have you devised ateaching module?

Give an indication of the maths or engineering principles thatyou included in the module and any original aspects of yourcontribution to teaching them.

A, B Have you taught studentsto use software packagesthat were designed byothers?

Describe your level of expertise in using the software, whatstudents do and any changes you had to make to thesoftware. For IEng competences it would be sufficient to showyou had used existing software packages, whereas CEngcompetences might be demonstrated if you had designed ormodified a software package.


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A, B Do you teach a coursethat is part of aprogramme accredited forthe registration categoryfor which you areplanning to apply?

Identify the programme and give brief descriptions of yourcourse and its contribution. Mention any novel activities orsources of materials used in teaching and learning.

A, Have you worked as anexternal examiner forpostgraduate degreestudents orundergraduate degreeprogrammes?

Give the titles of the theses, reports or programmes and thelevel of the award.

B, C Have you hadresponsibilities forrunning engineering ortechnology projects withan external partner, eithernow or in the recent past?

Give a description of formal and informal responsibilities, bothtechnical and commercial, in your relationship with externalpartners. Often the responsibilities of an academic workingwith external bodies (such as companies or charities) areloosely defined. An academic can have a strong influence in aproject on staff, investment or direction of development but

without any formalised responsibilities. If this is a majorfeature of your application, it may be beneficial to have asenior figure from the external body as a supporter for yourapplication.

B, C Do you manage one ormore externally fundedprojects?

This could give useful examples for direct budget monitoringand control and also for legal related responsibilities arisingfrom issues such as safety, the commercialisation ofintellectual property, or contract preparation.

B, C Have you planned aresearch programme andobtained the necessaryresources?

Give examples of how you obtained, maintained anddeployed resources for research, teaching or consultancy.This may or may not have included issues such as borrowingequipment, obtaining a research grant, appointing theresearchers, supervising research students or research staff,

managing the research programme (producing reports andexercising financial control) and making decisions onpublishing the outcome.

A,B,C,D Have you led a majordepartmental function oncurriculum design,admissions, finance,programme management,laboratory managementor research strategy?

Describe the nature of the decisions you have been involvedin that require technical or managerial expertise this will ofcourse depend on your specific role: it could involve technicaldecisions, financial decisions, decisions about thedeployment of staff, equipment or building space,environmental decisions or combinations of these.

C,D Have you made acontribution to thecommittee work of the

Institution, Faculty orDepartment?

Summarise the terms of reference of the committee and yourrole (chair or member and who you represent). Depending onthe committees brief, committee work may provide evidence

of competence in, for example, financial matters, deploymentof staff or equipment, research ethics, safety or marketing.

C, D What steps do you taketo monitor theeffectiveness of yourcourses and improve theprovision (technical orotherwise) for yourstudents? Do you monitorquality in any externalorganisation?

Give examples of any quality assurance measures to whichyou contribute. This could be the quality assurance of yourown teaching, quality assurance of teaching in anotherinstitution or quality assurance of a companys processes.


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C,D Are you actively involvedin academic auditing toexternally set standardsin your research or indemonstrating quality inteaching?

Give an outline of any specific widely recognised qualitystandards that you use and how they are used.

B, D How have you updated ateaching programme toreflect changes incurriculum or externalmoderation feedback?

You need to briefly state the stimulus for change and thendescribe briefly the major changes, for instance, in thelearning outcomes, the assessment strategy, the use ofteaching media, the laboratory facilities, the timetabling orstudent recruitment. You might also mention the majorconstraints that have been overcome.

A, B Had you already gainedcompetence intechnology/engineeringbefore moving intoacademia? Is there othercontributory evidencefrom different sources

outside your teachingrole?

Give examples of your involvement in engineering projectsyou have worked on in recent consultancy work, or in jobsyou held earlier in your career.

D, E Have you promoted theprofession and theprofessional values thatapply in the field oftechnology andengineering?

Describe, for example, improvements you have made toimprove access to engineering or technology educationalprogrammes and facilities. Give examples of ways in whichyou have promoted the profession, for instance, throughliaison with schools. List your involvement with professionalengineering bodies and any contributions you have made tothe professional development of students aside from teachingtechnical topics.

D, E Have you influenced thedevelopment of publicpolicy?

Mention any formal advice you have given, based on yourtechnical expertise, to public bodies or internationalorganisations, any relevant involvement in setting

international standards or contributions to local, regional andnational government consultations.

CJW

07/10/09

guidance for ieng or ceng applicants who work in academia

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