2023-01-27 Ruth Graham

Crisis and catalyst: the impact of COVID-19 on global practices in engineering education

The systemic transformation of engineering education has its roots in the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic.  Engineering faculty and their institutional leaders across the world were driving forward changes in the engineering curriculum to ensure that tomorrow’s engineers have the competencies needed to tackle the economic, social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.  But the pandemic has been an additional catalyst for change, necessitating major reforms to program design and delivery and the wider student experience.  Together, these changes are set to have a major impact on the future trajectory of the engineering education sector. 

The talk will discuss findings from the Crisis and Catalyst report, which examines the impact of Covid-19 on engineering education worldwide.  Drawing on interviews with members of the engineering education community from across 36 countries, the talk will explore the likely impact of this systemic shock on the direction of travel of the sector and the state-of-the-art in the field. 

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Dr Ruth Graham 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 teaching and learning worldwide and supporting the emergence of technology-driven entrepreneurship within universities. In 2018, Dr Graham was awarded an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University of Technology, for distinguished efforts in developing engineering programmes. In 2020, she was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal by the European Society for Engineering Education for outstanding contributions to engineering education.