Maria Andrews
Sports Technology BEng Part C
With a strong family history at Loughborough, Maria never considered anywhere else and matched her love of engineering to her passion for sport to study Sports Technology. Now in her final year of study, Maria shares her thoughts about the centenary of female engineers at Loughborough and getting more students into STEM subjects.
"I first became interested in engineering through my dad as he studied Mechanical Engineering at Loughborough. I've always loved helping my dad fix things around the house and building little projects with him. When I was 14 years old he helped me build a combustion engine (even though it was one of those kits you can get). From my continued love of physics and maths, I knew that engineering was for me.
Sport has always been the biggest part of my life as I have played for GB in 3 different sports. Along with my love for engineering, I really wanted to be able to apply that to sports equipment as that is my passion.
Ever since I was 15 years old I wanted to come to Loughborough. Both my parents studied at Loughborough and so did my older brother, who also studied engineering. So it kind of runs in the family to study here. But the main reason I chose Loughborough was because it had the best combination of sports and engineering along with amazing faciilties and so many opportunities. I know that even just saying I went to Loughborough to future employers will perk up their ears.
I love how hands on and practical my course is, everything that we study is applied to a different sport in some way. And there are so many different industry sectors you can go into, not just sports equipment but, surfaces, shoes, clothes, etc.
Being at Loughborough during the centenary of women being admitted onto engineering programmes is crazy, because walking around campus I would never think that there weren't women studying engineering. It seems strange to think that it actually was not that long ago either. I was not aware of Claudia Parsons or her cohort before coming to Loughborough, I only found out about her history last year after I had applied to live in the new accomodation.
I think that there does still need to be more women in engineering, but that is not to say that we should be more likely to get in because we are women as I would always want to be treated the same. But obviously it would be great to see more women doing engineering! I think encouraging everyone to study STEM subjects will be important for this, as it is now becoming more important to be creative and have different perspectives on projects.
In the future I hope to go into designing and testing either tennis or hockey equipment and some day maybe even have my own company making hockey sticks."