RSVP
Engineering Education in Transition: Exploring Global Trends and Challenges

Ruth Graham, PhD
RH Graham Consulting
Consultancy in Engineering and Entrepreneurship

Global higher education is in flux; over the coming decade, we are likely to see major changes both in undergraduate education and in the way faculty achievements are rewarded and recognised. The engineering education sector is playing a pivotal role in guiding and shaping this change.

This session will discuss insights from a global review of institutions at the leading edge of change in engineering education. As well as charting future trends, the review highlights the barriers that current tenure and promotion systems place in the way of rewarding excellence in teaching. Supported by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, a partnership of universities is addressing these barriers. The Career Framework for University Teaching has been developed to embed teaching achievement in faculty appointment and promotion systems and is now being adopted in institutions across the world. The session provides an opportunity to discuss these far-reaching developments and reflect on the challenges ahead.

A Mechanical Engineer by training, Dr Ruth Graham specialised in aeronautical fatigue, working with BAE SYSTEMS for a number of years. In 2002, she moved to Imperial College London and later became Director of the EnVision project, which sought to transform the undergraduate education across all nine departments in the Faculty of Engineering and improve its culture of support and reward for teaching excellence.

Ruth has worked as an independent higher education consultant since 2008. Her work is focused on fostering change in higher education across the world; helping to improve engineering teaching and learning worldwide and supporting the emergence of technology-driven entrepreneurship within universities. Ruth’s recent projects have included: (i) a global benchmarking study on the future of engineering education, on behalf of MIT; and (ii) the development of a new framework for evaluating and rewarding university teaching achievement, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Further details can be found on Ruth’s website – www.rhgraham.org – which provides an outline of recent projects as well as copies of her published reports.