Lois Gray is a Chartered Engineer and was awarded Senior Membership of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2020. She holds a European-funded position with the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) as an Academic Lead Developer, leading a team, alongside UHI’s educational technologists, to design and develop innovative and engaging engineering curricula. Lois is also a popular part-time lecturer whose students appreciate her ability to make difficult subjects “interesting and enjoyable.” Lois came to her funded role from North Highland College, one of UHI’s thirteen, regionally dispersed, Academic Partner Colleges. There, she progressed from pioneering the use of technology-enabled networked lectures, to leading the world’s first, and only, accredited, distance-learning, undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
Working within the UK’s only tertiary university, she focuses on inclusion, to alleviate the UK’s engineering skills shortage and to encourage optimum student progression from Further to Higher Education. This has enabled her vocational learners to achieve significant awards and prizes, and prestigious engineering employment. Her successful course has attracted multifarious cohorts, from Australia to China (where she has taught) and even the remote Scottish Islands. Her enthusiasm for disseminating her knowledge and experience has “hugely benefited” her engineering and academic colleagues. She is currently, by invitation, mentoring female lecturers from the Royal University of Bhutan, for the Global Challenges Research Funded project, CHORTENS, for professional development.
Lois’ educational practice incorporates 20 years of design experience, in defence electronics, where she worked on multimillion-pound contracts and supported clients in Australia and Italy. She maintains close contact with her industrial partners and takes regular sabbaticals to ensure her teaching is current, relevant and industry informed. As often the sole female engineer in her project teams and a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Ambassador, she champions global initiatives to attract women into engineering. She is an active member of IEEE’s Women in Engineering (WIE) association and the Women’s Engineering Society (WES). Her current research into work-based education has resulted in UHI’s recent approval of her proposal for a Professional Degree, which formally credits work experience and develops students’ meta-skills for the fourth industrial revolution.
