Some decades ago, when general awareness of the fragility of our planet was becoming mainstream, the RMSA created the RSMA Essay Competition. In 2019 the Illing Family made a significant donation to the RSMA and the RSMA Committee choose to recognise this by renaming the Essay Competition to the RSMA Illing Essay Competition.

The RSMA Illing Essay Competition is for all Engineering students, UG and PG to submit a

short essay of maximum 2000 words linking their programme of study at the Royal School of

Mines/City and Guilds Departments to the environment and sustainability.

Historically, many of our students went on to work in the various areas of mineral extraction and processing, and it was obvious that RSM and C&G graduates would be in a prime position to promote more environmentally friendly and sustainable methods of working: that we could, and should, do as much as humanly possible to minimise the negative effects of our industries while still enabling economic viability.

That environmental damage still occurs is obvious and all nations need the political willpower to insist on stricter limits to pollution or exploitation of the planet. However, understanding the nuance of needing further global development to meet the demands of the global population and the desire to improve standards of living or indeed drive to a more energy efficient and sustainable way of life are key.

There surely must be a middle way, acceptable to most, to continue utilising the earth’s resources, to promote their use in a sustainable system, without causing wholesale damage to the environment, to plant and animal life, so that these ecosystems will be there to be enjoyed by future generations.

The RSMA Trust has opened the RSMA Illing essay competition to all students of the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College so that all engineering disciplines might offer their viewpoint on the subject.

Below are some guidelines for budding authors to consider, based on several years’ experience of judging the essay competition, which the RSMA Trust members hope will aid those students who, while they may produce a technical report or a thesis without a second thought, might not have had much experience of the essay format

Entries should be submitted by e-mail to the Hon Sec or the RSMA Trust on or before 1st July and should include the full name, address and course/year of the author. These entries will be forwarded to the Hon Sec who will circulate them to the members of the Judging Panel.

The winner will be announced at the RSMA AGM in October. The Association and the Trust reserve the right not to make an award should the panel consider that there are no entries of sufficient merit. Finally, all decisions are final and the Judging Panel is unable to give individual feedback to unsuccessful students.

It is intended that the prize will be awarded at the RSMA annual dinner in November, subject, of course, to the availability of the winner. Note: the winning author will receive a free ticket to the dinner!

Historically, the essays submitted to the RSMA Trust Essay competition, the judges have found similar problems of structure and readability in many of the entries which detracted from the overall quality of the work. The general comments are itemised immediately below:-

1.    Non-adherence to the essay form. An essay is not a technical report, nor is it a report of an experiment. It is not a collation of extracts culled from the internet or other published sources, although these may be used as references where they support the point you are trying to make. The essay needs only a title (which may be factual or whimsical, but it should serve to draw the reader/judge into reading the entire script), it does not need ‘introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion’ as internal headings. Diagrams must be kept to an absolute minimum, and be used only where they can usefully replace the proverbial thousand words.

1.    The Trust has set an upper limit on the length of the essay of 2000 words, which means that the authors must be ruthless in culling extraneous verbiage to focus on the ideas or points they are trying to put across.

1.    The work must be original. The judges are interested in seeing how the individual students are relating what they are learning in their course of study to the environment and for sustainability in the future. Obviously, different programmes will have a different direction of approach, but the four main areas will be understanding, change, control and mitigation.

1.    The authors are to declare that the work is their own and generative AI tools were not to be used to write the essay.

1.    Internal logic, structural flow and readability. These are self-explanatory.

1.    Format – to be submitted as a PDF.

Entries should be submitted by e-mail to the Hon Sec of the RSMA Trust on

seedubs456@gmail.com

on or before 1st July and should include the full name, address and course/year of the author.