The world can live without media studies - but it cannot live without engineering

Sir Joseph Whitworth was one Britain's greatest mechanical engineers, famous for the standard screw thread named after him, some revolutionary machine tools and his hexagonally rifled guns. A legacy to encourage and support engineering apprentices includes an awards scheme dating back to 1868, with the aim of bringing science/engineering and industry closer together. Awards of three and a half thousand pounds are given to apprentices who are studying engineering degrees, but earlier this year only a handful applied, forcing the IMechE and the Whitworth Society to extend the deadline in a bid to encourage more applicants. The good news is that the awards were announced this week, with 12 new Whitworth Scholars and 9 Whitworth Award Holders, and of course we congratulate them all.

IMechE President Andrew Ives told BBC radio that the institution would be working more closely with schools in a bid to encourage more children to go into engineering. He said: "The world can live without media studies - but it cannot live without engineering".

The Whitworth Society President, Steve Beck, became a Scholar in 1988. He said the award must continue to be as inspirational as it was to him when he applied. "I felt becoming a scholar would be an excellent benchmark and a real test of my abilities. Given the small number of awards for the whole UK, I saw it as a real challenge and a great honour to achieve the award. What we now have to realise is that while we do need to get more young people into engineering, fewer companies are offering apprenticeships. Part of our task is to make sure people know about the award and we will be exploring routes to do that".

I'm sure we can all contribute more to getting young people into engineering.

The Whitworth Society: http://www.engineeringtalk.com/information/whitworth-editorial.html