Sir, – in response to Dr Declan Deasy (Letters, June 29th) I wholeheartedly agree that engineers are well-positioned to be role models for a new Ireland.
In relation to his point on encouraging members to undertake schools visits I would like to highlight that through the schools’ engagement programme named STEPS, which is run by Engineers Ireland and aligned with SFI’s Smart Futures programme, we are tireless in our efforts to encourage primary and post-primary students to explore the world of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), while also promoting engineering as a career choice.
Thanks to the dedication and commitment of over 600 volunteer engineers registered with the programme, STEPS facilitated 58,000 interactions between engineer role models and students in 2014.
Volunteer engineers donated more than 13,000 hours to the STEPS programme last year. We run a year-round calendar of activities and in 2014/2015 this included the school visits programme, Engineers Week 2015, Transition Year programme and career events.
STEPS also provides free online STEM resources for students, teachers and volunteers on steps.ie or engineersweek.ie. – Yours, etc, CAROLINE SPILLANE, Director general Engineers Ireland, Dublin 4.