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Real Lives
Vicky Cuthbert
Engineering Leadership Awards
University & Course:
Cambridge University
Vicky Cuthbert graduates from
Cambridge University in manufacturing engineering in
July and two days later will be jetting off to China
leading a two-week study visit. A team of 41
students and three staff will between them visit 25
companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in just
two weeks. The trip will cost £60,000, which the
students have raised, including a grant from the
Department for Trade & Industry. “It’s an
interesting time to go to China because it has just
joined the World Trade Organisation,” says Vicky,
“we’ll also look at how British companies can
benefit from working there.”
Vicky is a veteran of the Best
programme and is now using her Engineering
Leadership Award to fund projects like her trip to
China. The bursary is also enabling her to spend six
weeks in New York studying a paper and packaging
company for her final-term project. She has a job
lined up with Procter & Gamble in Newcastle for the
autumn as a process engineer, managing a fragrance
production line.
“I was thinking about doing
medicine until I did the Engineering Education
Scheme at Aylesbury High School,” says Vicky. “We
worked with a printing company designing an
automatic paper counter and I was hooked – like the
other three girls on my team, we all went on to
study engineering!” After Headstart at Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge, she did a Year in Industry with
Molins Tobacco Machinery Ltd, who were so pleased
with her work that they sponsored her through
university and gave her vacation work. “I’m
surprised more people don’t take the chance to go
right through the Best programme,” she says. “I’ve
learnt so much from it and it’s fantastic for
networking with other people and getting ideas and
support from them – I would never have thought it
was possible to do things like overseas study tours
without that sort of backup.”
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