Engineers Australia has embarked on an exciting program that will support the passion, commitment, and expertise within our membership base to achieve positive impacts for the profession.
The Future Now Program (formerly known as the Learned Society Review) is one of Engineers Australia’s ‘mission critical’ projects that aims to create an effective volunteers’ network in alignment with Engineers Australia’s purpose.
The Future Now program is about ensuring Engineers Australia is set-up to optimise the delivery of our purpose, which is ‘advancing society through great engineering’. Here are some of our successes in the areas of curated CPD and member-led networking events within the Future Now Program.
Read below to hear about our wins and how you can get involved in the future.
Curated CPD
Engineers Australia developed a curated CPD program with a focus on climate change (given its importance to society), which gave us the opportunity to work with volunteers across different disciplines and sectors.
We put the call out to members and non-members asking for expressions of interest to partner with Engineers Australia to develop a high-quality and practical CPD program. We received interest from 60 people including responses from people that hadn’t previously volunteered for Engineers Australia.
By applying our learnings, we are now seeing higher attendance figures for events created with practical learning experiences. This is a demonstration of positive change realised through networked thinking and the willingness of our people to explore new ways of volunteering.
Networking events
Recent networking events you may have attended are set up as a series, running either monthly or bi-monthly, and promoted through the individual committees. There are currently 13 groups, with members and volunteers in various states, leading event planning, promotion and delivery. With the first event held in April, nine member-led networking events have followed.
Committee Member of Women in Engineering Victoria Alice Clark organised the first women in engineering networking event in May. She says “our intention is to build up a community after long lockdowns and two years of no networking. A lot of attendees did mention that it was one of their first events back after COVID. So, it is good to provide something to our members who are itching to get back out there and get talking again.”
As only the second event with a member-led approach, the women in engineering networking event was a success. It had 30 attendees from university students, middle and late career, to industry and other Engineers Australia volunteers from different divisions.
As an organisation, we continuously look for ways to improve as we strive to provide engaging networking events for our members. We encourage all members to get in touch with your committees for any suggestions you may have about future networking events.
Getting involved
There is still more to do within the Future Now Program and our members can play an exciting role in shaping the positive impact this work will have on Engineers Australia, our profession and society. We look forward to sharing more Future Now Program updates, successes and key learnings with you.
Current volunteer opportunities across Engineers Australia:
- Division Committees and College Boards elections
- Officer Bearer positions
- Engineers Australia’s Board of Directors nominations
Email Future Now with any questions, comments or suggestions.