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SET Women - Leicestershire Women in Science Engineering & Technology

e-Book - Professor Sarah Spurgeon - Engineer

"When I was young, I was very keen on science, but was in classes where I was the only girl doing physics. I will be honest with you, at that stage I chickened out!"

Sarah's experiences of isolation as a girl in science classes are not uncommon even today. She says this is what led her to choose to study Maths instead. "I felt Maths were safe, because there were no labs to be the only girl in, and yet I could still do what I love: solving problems associated with real world situations and systems." She was accepted into the Maths degree at the University of York.

Just after she finished her Maths degree, Sarah got married. She says that family will always come first for her, and so she stayed in the North with her husband. "I would never live away from my husband and home for a job," she says emphatically. That commitment did not let her down. On the networking strengths she had with a lecturer at York, she landed a position with an engineer who needed the expertise of a good mathematician to develop new links with British Aerospace. The work was in the field of control engineering, which Sarah says, "I knew absolutely nothing about at the time, but it involved differential equations and linear algebra -- things I enjoy -- so I couldn't believe my luck!"

Control engineering is how dynamic and complicated systems can be mathematically modelled so that a controlling mechanism can be designed to make the system work according to the needs of the user. More and more we see the results of control engineering in our everyday lives, such as in appliances that have automatic cycles or in electronics that react to changes in the environment.

During Sarah's D.Phil. work at York, she spent time working as a control engineer with British Aerospace. This work was located in North Humberside, where being a female engineer was "completely unusual, but not an obstacle." Sarah smiles, "The enjoyment I had for my work always swayed away being the minority."

Her career moved them to the Midlands in 1988 when Sarah took up her first position in academia, as a lecturer in the Maths department at Loughborough University. Again, it was a fortuitous move, because she learned something important about herself which is still true today: she wants to pass on her enthusiasm for the power of applied mathematics to new generations of undergraduate and postgraduate students.

She left Loughborough to join the University of Leicester as a lecturer in Engineering in 1991 where she has stayed for the past fifteen years. "I am having a terrific time, because I love being able to do research, to teach undergraduates, and to facilitate PhD students into becoming independent researchers in their own right." The move also allowed her to settle down geographically and raise a family, and Sarah and her husband now have three children. She has expertly balanced her family responsibilities with her career advancement, becoming the first woman to earn a professorship in Leicester's Engineering Department. In 2004, Sarah also filed her first patent for her own work, an achievement she ranks among her most proud.

Most recently, Sarah was made the Head of the University of Leicester's Engineering Department, the first woman to hold this position. A congratulatory letter she received from a former staff member recalled how far the department had come from his early days when the department's building was just being constructed. He had campaigned for solid treads on stairs, because mesh treads might trap women's heels; and as he hoped the gender balance among engineers would improve, he wanted the building appropriately built. His letter expressed that he was pleased that both his campaign and hopes had been rewarded.

Sarah runs her department with the same dedication and enthusiasm she has for her family, and sees many of the skill sets overlapping. "Being successful in SET is as much about enjoying technical challenges as it is about multi-tasking, networking and using social skills - those that women use naturally in family management and our daily lives." She knows there is still some way to go before the gender balance is achieved in engineering, and she can even laugh about recently being assumed to be a barmaid at a meeting she was in fact attending as the Chair of a committee. Despite this, she wholeheartedly advises women who are interested in becoming a scientist that "Being a woman in SET may be seen as different, or unusual, but it really is great. Just go for it!"

Learn more about Professor Sarah Spurgeon's work:
Professor Spurgeon's Homepage