From Access to Belonging: Rethinking How We Support Future Engineers

To mark World Youth Skills Day, QEPrize Ambassador Omar Shobair reflects on why widening access to engineering is only the first step - and why creating a sense of belonging is key to helping the next generation of engineers thrive.

Access opens the door, but belonging shapes what comes next

World Youth Skills Day is often framed around opportunity – how we equip young people with the skills they need for the future of work. In engineering, this is usually discussed in terms of widening participation: who gets access to study engineering, and how we bring more diverse students into the pipeline.

But my own journey – from studying Civil Engineering (BEng and MSc), to completing an MSc in Engineering and Education at UCL, and now working in engineering education research – has made me realise that access is only part of the story. The more difficult question is what happens after access is achieved. Do students actually feel that they belong once they enter engineering spaces? That distinction between access and belonging has become central to how I understand engineering education. Access opens the door. Belonging determines whether someone feels able to stay, contribute, and eventually shape the field itself.

There has been real progress in widening participation in engineering. Universities, outreach programmes, and professional bodies such as ICE and IStructE have all contributed to bringing in students from more diverse backgrounds. I am one of those students who benefited from that pathway. I studied Civil Engineering at undergraduate level, progressed to a postgraduate MSc in Civil Engineering, and later moved into Engineering and Education at UCL.

But even with access secured, I became increasingly aware that entering engineering is not the same as feeling comfortable within it. In practice, belonging is often much more fragile than access. It shows up in subtle ways: hesitation in group discussions, uncertainty about whether your ideas are “technical enough,” or the sense that others seem more fluent in the culture of engineering than you are. These experiences are rarely formalised, but they accumulate. And over time, they shape how students see themselves – not just as learners, but as potential engineers.

The MSc in Engineering and Education at UCL was pivotal in shaping how I now think about these issues. What stood out to me about the programme was its interdisciplinary nature. It sits between engineering, education, and social science, and constantly encourages you to think about how engineers are formed – not just technically, but socially, culturally, and educationally.

It also brought together perspectives from policy, pedagogy, and practice, including themes such as sustainability, ethics, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. Rather than treating engineering education as something fixed, it asks you to question how it is designed, who it serves, and how it shapes the identities of students moving through it. That perspective fundamentally shifted how I understood my own experience as a student. Because once you start to see engineering education as something that is designed – not neutral – it becomes much harder to ignore how differently it is experienced by different students. Some feel immediately at home. Others spend much longer trying to work out whether they belong at all.

From student to researcher: seeing patterns more clearly

That thinking has continued into my current role as a Student Success Research Project Assistant at UCL’s Centre for Engineering Education, alongside my wider involvement as a Course Representative and engagement with professional institutions such as ICE and IStructE. Across these experiences, a consistent theme has emerged: academic ability is rarely the limiting factor for students in engineering. Instead, students often navigate more subtle questions of identity and belonging. This is something I recognise personally, but also something that appears repeatedly in student experience more broadly. Many students are academically capable of succeeding, but still find themselves asking whether they “fit” within engineering culture or whether they can see themselves remaining in the profession long-term. These questions matter because they influence confidence, participation, and progression. They also influence how students interpret setbacks – whether challenges are seen as part of learning, or as evidence that they do not belong.

It is sometimes tempting to think of belonging as secondary to “harder” engineering concerns like curriculum design, technical training, or assessment structures. But I have come to see it differently. Belonging is what makes learning sustainable. When students feel that they belong in a discipline, they engage more fully. They ask questions more freely, take intellectual risks, and persist through difficulty. When they do not, even strong academic performance can feel uncertain or disconnected from identity. For students from widening participation backgrounds, this can be even more pronounced. Many arrive in engineering without inherited familiarity – no family engineers, limited exposure to the profession, or fewer visible role models who reflect their own background. This means they are not only learning engineering content, but also navigating whether they are allowed to become engineers. That second layer is often invisible – but it is decisive.

How everyday experiences shape belonging

One of the most important lessons from my journey is that belonging is shaped less by large institutional structures and more by everyday interactions. It appears in group work dynamics, in feedback conversations, in who feels comfortable speaking, and in what is treated as “normal” within engineering spaces. These moments may seem small individually, but together they define whether a student feels included or out of place. This is also why belonging is so difficult to design for. It is embedded in culture, not just curriculum or policy, and is often invisible to those who already feel they belong.

If we want to understand where belonging breaks down, we need to take student voice seriously. In my experience – as both a student and Course Representative – students are often very aware of where inclusion works and where it does not. They can describe moments that build confidence, and moments that quietly undermine it. The key, however, is not just listening to student voice, but acting on it. Without visible change, feedback risks becoming something procedural rather than transformative. Meaningful engagement with student voice is what turns experience into improvement.

From access to belonging: shaping the future of engineering

Engineering is changing rapidly. Across sustainability, infrastructure, and digital transformation, the profession increasingly depends on diverse ways of thinking. Alongside my academic work, I am due to publish research in the European Journal of Engineering Education on sustainability readiness in structural engineering graduates, and I am currently progressing towards PhD study in engineering education at UCL. These experiences reinforce a broader point: engineering education is not just about producing graduates – it is about shaping how future engineers think, act, and see themselves. If students leave the profession because they do not feel they belong, the loss is not only individual. It is structural. It affects the future capability, creativity, and adaptability of engineering itself.

World Youth Skills Day is a useful reminder that skills development is not only about technical training. It is also about whether young people can see themselves within the fields they are preparing to enter. Widening participation initiatives have made important progress in opening access. The next step is ensuring that access leads to environments where students feel that they belong – not as visitors, but as contributors shaping the future of the profession.

There is no single solution to belonging in engineering education. It is not something that can be fixed through one initiative. Instead, it requires sustained attention to culture: how we teach, how we assess, how we communicate, and how we include students in shaping their own learning environments. It also requires recognising student voice not as supplementary feedback, but as a central part of how engineering education evolves. And importantly, it requires expanding how we define success – not only in academic terms, but in whether students feel confident in their identity as engineers.

Engineering has always been about solving problems. But some of the most important problems exist within the systems that shape future engineers themselves. As we reflect on World Youth Skills Day, it is worth asking not only how we can bring more students into engineering, but how we can ensure they are able to stay, contribute, and thrive once they arrive. From access to belonging is not a linear pathway. It is an ongoing process of shaping environments where students are recognised, supported, and able to see themselves as part of the profession they are entering. If we can move in that direction, we do more than educate engineers. We help shape a profession that is more inclusive, more representative, and ultimately better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.

Read more blog from the QEPrize Ambassadors here.