I've always imagined Honorary Fellowship to be something you would award to a celebrity like Steven Fry if they had done something outstanding for STEM. I wonder if there is a list of honorary engineering fellows?

It doesn't say much about them, for example if they are engineers or not, although there are a good few Doctors, Professors & suchlike. A couple every year, so a tiny proportion of our Fellows. If you aren't known to the Trustees, I guess you won't get on the list?

David Parr:

Hello Alex,


The requirements for Fellowship are quite well defined on the IET website, and there are many different "types" of Fellow. Anyone who applies for professional registration is looked at with regard to Fellowship, and may be invited to apply. 

Fellowship Criteria: www.theiet.org/.../fellow-criteria.cfm

• I'm IEng (Engineering Council) and FBCT CITP (BCS)... is that "enough" Repute?

• I'm chairman of MISRA-C, recently appointed as chair of BSI IST/5/-/26 and a member of several BSI/ISO committees... is that "enough" Service?

• I speak at various conferences (etc)... does that count as "Repute" or is it "Influence and Contribution"... and how much do I need?

I'd be quite interested in becoming FIET - but I don't want to waste £129 finding out I'm not worthy.

So Andrew, what does Fellowship mean for you?

For me, being awarded a Fellowship is a recognition by my Institution of my achievement and contribution... this is different from (eg) IEng/CEng which is awarded by a different body (the Engineering Council).  In some respects, this is more applicable since the abolition of the AMIEE interim-membership level.


It also recognises my committment to my Institution - that I will continue to develop myself, that I will continue to help develop others, and that I will continue to help develop my Institution.


I am proud of my (long-standing) Fellowship of the British Computer Society (or the Chartered Institute for IT as they prefer to style themselves now)... perhaps it is time to try and add an IET one?

Andrew, you would seem to relish seeking out new awards & recognitions. Would you consider this an essential attribute of a Fellow?

Alex

 

I’m Chair (as a volunteer, not IET Staff) of the Fellowship Policy Committee, which awards Fellowships, so here is some information to address your question of “what is Fellowship in the context of the IET?”.


First of all, lets establish that Fellow is a Membership grade.  It is also distinct from Honorary Fellowship, which is not dealt with by my Committee but by the Board of Trustees, and as you have noticed only adds a very few people each year.

 

I assume you have read the IET page on applying for Fellowship which details the key expectation for Fellows and outlines the nine criteria, of which any applicant has to meet two or at most three.  Additional details on the nine criteria are in the downloads.   I do not need to repeat all that detail here but I will highlight a few points.

 

Fellowship is peer assessed against the expectation and criteria but the key aspect is “sustained high levels of achievement for five years or more”.  Fellowship is therefore a recognition by industry peers that you are at the top level in your profession.  That is why it is aspired to and sought by many people. In addition, Fellows are encouraged to give back to the profession in various ways and many of our Fellows are enthusiastic volunteers, for example in Registration and Local Networks matters.

 

Something not always realised is that as a membership grade the criteria are established wholly by the IET (some great recent work here by my predecessors) and are unrelated to the Engineering Council.  They also differ to the criteria set by other Engineering Institutions.  As a consequence, Fellows of the IET do not have to be Registered engineers and as we also recognise contributions to engineering by cognate (related) disciplines they do not even have to be engineers, although of course most are.

 

I could add that the profile of a senior engineering or production manager in a large company applying (say) using the leadership and responsibility criteria will be altogether different from an entrepreneur applying (say) using the creativity and enterprise criteria and different again to a senior researcher applying (say) under the insight and experience and innovation criteria.  What brings them all together is that they will be assessed by their peers and we have well over a hundred trained Fellow assessors drawn from all aspects of engineering to ensure a reasonable match.

 

Addressing a few other points, we expect Fellows to apply rather than be nominated because they need to show us some personal commitment and be likely to contribute back to the profession.  Also, for those considering that they may meet our reasonably high standards we have specific Fellow advisors (as we do for Registration, i.e. PRAs) who can provide advice and after that we have a pre-assessment process where further views can be obtained on the likelihood of success of an application without incurring the fee. Contact Fellowship (at) theiet.org for more information.

 

Finally, a few stats as at October this year.  There are about 8.7k Fellows out of about 164k members (c.5.3%).  About 6.9k of the 8.7k are Registered engineers.  We currently add something around 250 a year – there is no limit on numbers other than meeting the criteria and the peer assessment.  We have Fellows in 85 countries.  We only have 172 female Fellows and would like more - but first we need more females in engineering.


I hope this helps.

 

Ian Dufour

Ian, yes, it does help, and confirms that to become a Fellow you have to push for this recognition, regardless of what else you may have done that is worthy. Many of our more gifted and valuable engineers are not the sort of people who are inclined to do this. To my mind it does look rather too much like a variant of the registration process.

Ian, this question applies to both registration & fellowship, we are often told we are assessed by our peers, but when this is queried, things go very quiet. Who determines an appropriate match to a particular applicant, and upon what basis? From my own experience I do have concerns in this area.

they will be assessed by their peers and we have well over a hundred trained Fellow assessors drawn from all aspects of engineering to ensure a reasonable match