Mentoring - Go Beyond
As a university, we strive to give women equal opportunities and are determined to help improve the representation of women across the STEM sectors.
There are a variety of ways you can get involved to support us in our mission, whether it be your time and expertise or a financial gift; no matter what you decide to donate, it will have a profound impact on our female students.
Take a look at what we're already doing to support women in STEM below.
Go Beyond
Our Go Beyond mentoring programme was launched by our Director of the Maker Space, Dr Maria Stukoff. Maria worked in technology roles, including Head of Digital for the BBC Academy and at SONY PlayStation, and after discovering how male-dominated her field was, she became determined to get more women into the industry. Maria is committed to teaching digital skills to women of all ages, becoming a STEM ambassador and an advocate for STEM skills.
Go Beyond provides female students with vital mentoring, an industry role model, and a safe place for conversations. Our students gain a greater insight into industry and work-ready skills, develop an understanding for communication, and discover good practices, helping them to confidently step into a STEM career.
“The expectation is that the knowledge and influence of the mentor will assist the student in planning career objectives and help with gaining insight about how to step confidently into the industry. The focus is on developing the mentee professionally with the aim to achieve self-awareness, more confidence and to feel equipped to Go Beyond the University to get a job in industry.
We welcome a phenomenal number of industry mentors who are dedicating their time and expertise to help promote our graduate talent to encourage and upskill more women into engineering roles.”
Dr Maria Stukoff
One student who participated in the programme was Chloe. Chloe was completing a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering at Salford and decided to take advantage of everything on offer at the university to help start her career.
When asked how she found the mentoring programme, Chloe said:
“The Go Beyond programme was an amazing opportunity to speak to someone who has experience of the industry from a female point of view.
I was keen to develop my interview skills and Maria helped me a lot! We were only supposed to meet once a month but ended up meeting once a week to work on these skills.
I feel Maria knew how passionate I was about engineering and saw the amount of experience I had in many engineering disciplines (electronics, robotics and aerospace), therefore showing my adaptability and determination”
We are delighted to share that since graduating, Chloe has gone on to secure a full-time role as a Design Engineer at Morson Projects!
With your help, we can give women equal opportunities to thrive in STEM careers, helping to narrow the gender pay gap, enhance women’s economic security, and ensure a diverse and talented STEM workforce.
If you’re interested in getting involved in our mentoring programme or would like to know more about how the Go Beyond project supports University of Salford students, please email: gobeyondmentoring@salford.ac.uk