Celebrating Inspirational Women’s Success – Coleen Greig

Coleen graduated from Glasgow University with a BSc in Mathematics and was studying for her BSc (honours) in Mathematics with The Open University.

She was employed at Price Waterhouse Coopers, training to become an accountant. Within 3 months she realised she disliked that job and could not see herself doing accounting for the rest of her life - so decided to apply for some engineering graduate schemes.

Coleen was unsuccessful in getting on to engineering graduate schemes, due to her lack of engineering experience and was seen as being overqualified to start as an apprentice.

Coleen says that she was so grateful to the College for the opportunity to study aircraft engineering, but was also nervous - she felt that she would be ok with the maths side of the course, but could see the engineering side being a struggle.

College Lecturers assured her that they would help and provided her with the confidence that she could do it - provided she put in the extra effort.

Lecturers helped Coleen with books and extra time to give her background knowledge and information on things she had missed from the previous years.

Coleen says Lecturers also took the time to help her learn 2D and 3D design software, as well as introducing her to Computational Fluid Dynamics.

After 2 years Coleen graduated with a BEng (Hons) in Aircraft Engineering, First Class and she came first in her class.

Coleen now works for Expro North Sea Ltd in Aberdeen as a Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element Analysis Engineer, through their graduate placement scheme. She is currently studying for her Masters and hoping to go on to a PhD.

A week of celebrations for the Perth & Kinross Women’s Festival 2015 has been organised throughout the area, several of which will be taking place at Perth College UHI. With over twenty events included in the programme, such as practical workshops, physical activities, talks and a film screening, all of which are designed to inspire and celebrate the achievements of women.

Representatives involved in the planning of the Perth and Kinross Women’s Festival 2015 came to Perth College UHI on Wednesday 11th February to launch the brochure of events.