Innovation in the classroom

When preparing students for industry, you must have the end goal in mind. You must prepare them for what the industry expects from them and what it takes to succeed and thrive beyond their classes. This can be done by ensuring that students get industry experience while still in school. Industry experience will help them see the value in teamwork, communication skills, and new technologies. Without industry experience, students can easily close their minds to these essential life skills and...

Preparing students for industry involves more than just teaching them general engineering principles. It would be best to teach them how to use the industry’s tools and the teamwork culture. This will make them more confident and ease the challenge of transitioning from student to employee. At the same time, the industry needs to adjust its approach to dealing with employees to attract new graduates. That’s because young engineers have a different set of needs, such as a preference for...

Electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) are here to stay! While the benefits of transforming the transportation industry are undeniable, the true cost of making that transition is still unknown. For instance, what will happen to economies that rely on fossil fuels, and how will data-hungry AVs impact personal data privacy? Getting a full picture of what is required to make and sustain the transition will require a multi-disciplinary approach. Such an approach will help optimize...

The education system was hit hard during the initial stages of the COVID lockdowns but managed to bounce back fast through digital engagements. It was especially difficult for engineering students who require a lot of practical classes and collaboration with peers. However, even as people get back to their classrooms, some of the innovative digital solutions that came from remote learning are continuing to play a big role. Another phenomenon that is being experienced is the rise of students’...

For industries to attract and prepare the next generation of engineers, they have to create practical links with academia. This will make it possible for them to nurture the future workforce long before they graduate and seek permanent employment. This can be achieved by offering part-time opportunities to students as well as forming working partnerships with universities. Students who get opportunities to work with engineering companies should try to learn as much as possible from...

Engineering is about using science to find creative practical solutions. The question then becomes - how do we train engineers to understand the problems and work with teams to get to those solutions? The best way is to give potential engineering students an opportunity to practice the class-gained skills in the real world as part of their course. This will prepare them to analyze problems, communicate solutions, engage stakeholders, and create project plans, among others. It’ll also stir...

Engineers have played a critical role in creating the world that we live in today. They are still the people that we are looking up to and hoping they deliver many more life-changing innovations that will make our life easier, safer, and more fun. That is why the people responsible for creating those engineers are working hard to instill the right mindset in them as early as possible. They also want them to understand that they have a responsibility to make this world a better place by...

The ability to plan ahead and adapt is one of the biggest strengths in today’s fast-changing world. In the aviation industry, this involves working on eco-friendly planes and continued investment into space tourism and exploration. Beyond that, the industry is working to ignite the passion of future aviators at an early age through initiatives such as the Experimental Aircraft Association(EAA) AirVenture Oshkosh. In this episode, we’ll talk to a couple of guests. From EAA, we have David...

The partnership between Leoni and the University of Sonora is an exciting initiative with massive potential; it represents a considerable opportunity for young graduates. And the best part of it, it is replicable and scalable. The University of Sonora is the alma mater of most engineers in Hermosillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora, and Leoni is a German company that manufactures harnesses for different vehicles located in the same city. Today, we talked with Adrián Aello,...

One of the biggest challenges of the imminent arrival of the 4.0 industry is knowing how to prepare for it. In ABET, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization, they prepare students to tackle this new industry's challenges providing them with technology tools and exposing them to programs constructed to guarantee that they're prepared to ensure quality, precision, and safety in the global workforce. In this episode, we talk with Michael Milligan, Executive Director and CEO of ABET. Michael...

Mobility in the modern world is a primary need and a concern about its impact on the environment. Researchers, scientists, engineers, and other professionals work daily to generate vehicles moved by green, renewable energy. Their final goal is to develop the technology and make it accessible and available to the masses. In this episode, I talk with Frederik Vanmaele and Gilles De Baets, both members of the Belgian Agoria Solar Team, a dream that started over 16 years ago. A group of Belgian...

The future of tech-related disciplines lies in an interdisciplinary approach to teaching. Professor Stephan Simons believes that industrial, electric, and mechatronics engineers shall find their way into working together. Stephan is an electrical engineer; he has a major in Control Theory and a Ph.D. in Robotics. He worked in medical technology for more than 11 years, where he developed some of the respiratory care systems used today to fight COVID. He had a passage in a company initially...

Interns are the future full-time workforce so it is important to provide them with responsibility for projects that are impactful for the current and future innovation they will be working on. In this episode of Innovation In The Classroom, Susanne Barnsteiner, an industrial engineering intern and graduate student at the University of Applied Sciences in Kempten, Germany, details the projects that she has worked on and her unique current role. Susanne describes her current internship at AGCO...

The global pandemic has caused most industries, including engineering, to adapt, adjust, and innovate their digitization techniques. On today’s episode of Innovation in the Classroom, I am joined by two engineering industry professionals, Michelle Boucher and Sirin Tekinay. Michelle Boucher is the VP of Research for Engineering Practices at Tech-Clarity and Sirin Tekinay is the Dean of the College of Engineering at the American University of Sharjah. Both women have amazing insights into how...

Staying relevant in technology is important now more than ever, especially for an Information Systems professor at the university level, like Sabine Matook. Sabine grew up in Germany where she studied Information Technologies and has since gained prestige as an Information Systems professor of 16 years at the University of Queensland in Australia. She teaches thousands of students the fundamentals of Information Systems with a particular focus on the development of technology and how it is...

Do you remember the first time you looked up at the night sky after learning that those tiny twinkling lights were actually giant glowing spheres of hot gas? What was going through your young mind when you learned that other planets existed, so far away from Earth that we could only wonder through the eye of a telescope what they were like? It’s the youthful bewilderment of moments like these, the ceaseless curiosity instilled in us as students, that eventually inspires a new generation to...

How do you know what you’re supposed to do outside of college? When students prepare to graduate from college, entering the workforce can be daunting. Sometimes it feels like you know it all, and other times you might not even know where to start. That’s why CAPSTONE classes, SAE groups, and Formula SAE competition groups are so important. These competitive design series involves designing building a formula-style, open-wheel concept vehicle to perform in a competition. In this episode, John...

Everyone starts their engineering career at different places in life. Levi Zima, for example, got started at a very young age. His childhood was surrounded by technology. He even used Siemens’ CAD software Solid Edge at the age of seven. As he continued to grow up, he was given more and more opportunities to work in the engineering and wireless industries. Today, he’s a student at the University of Central Florida, currently studying RF and Microwave engineering. Throughout our conversation,...

Oftentimes, engineering classes focus solely on the hard skills of manufacturing. But what about the soft skills? More and more often, employers and professors are finding that students need to sharpen their soft skills to be successful in the workplace, such as having tough conversations, learning to be collaborative, and how to redirect behaviors that are not productive on collaborative teams. In this episode, Dr. Mary Pilotte of Purdue University explains this need for soft skills and...

800 years ago, the purpose of getting a university-level education was vastly different from what it’s become today. Back then, everybody was seen as a generalist. Now, everyone is hyper-specialized in one or two areas, yet many are not able to recover from the inevitabilities of disruption. The only way to offset disruption in employability is by helping students understand humans. To make real change, it’s crucial to leverage the real disciplinary competencies that we have in the...