(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Texas A & M at Qatar (Tamuq) recently hosted Teaching Week 2017, which highlighted the branch campus' commitment to educating exemplary engineers through various talks, panels and showcases.
The week's activities were organised by the Center for Teaching and Learning, which aims to highlight and support teaching and learning excellence in engineering education in Qatar.
The keynote address, 'From Creative Inquiry to Sustainable Impact, was delivered by Dr Khanjan Mehta, vice provost at Lehigh University (US), who spoke about the transformation he's leading in engineering education at Lehigh. Mehta asked students in the audience, 'How many of you are designing circuits and writing programmes? Engineering is much more than that. What's going to prepare you for a life of impact? Why work on something [like designing circuits] that creates no value?
Mehta's presentation outlined the necessity for progressive students and universities, together, to migrate away from familiar classroom experiences to real, meaningful, authentic projects such as building greenhouses in developing nations that aim for a quantifiable impact. 'The ultimate goal is to produce students who are change agents, Mehta said.
In the Humanitarian Engineering Panel discussion, students recapped their experiences spending a week at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, workshopping scenarios and solutions outside the traditional boundaries of their engineering disciplines. The students opened up about the impact of the experience, which Tamuq has been participating for the past three years, had on their mindset and career aspirations. Rahaf AlSa'di said, 'It was very eye opening to look at the different aspects that contribute to problems around the world.
Ali Arshad also spoke about the personal impact of the experience. 'It broadened my focus. It taught me a lot about what engineers think people need versus what people actually need. This workshop made me see things differently. There are many ways to help people, Arshad said.
The workshop enabled students to formulate proposals for complex humanitarian problems and understand the ethical, cultural and social issues in humanitarian work. Dr Patrick Linke, one of the faculty advisers of the programme, said, 'We're creating an environment in which our engineers are mixing with other disciplines and opening up their minds and thinking differently. Our students will actually be leaders, they will bring change to the world.
Teaching Week 2017 also included an event in which this past year's winners of transformative educational experience grants displayed their projects and the progress they've made on them.
Teaching Week 2017 concluded with Dr LeeAnn 'Mysti Rudd's talk, 'Why I Teach. Rudd is an instructional assistant professor of English and the most recent recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award College-level in Teaching from Texas A & M University's Association of Former Students. She spoke about her background and experiences that shaped her into the teacher she is today and her life's work convincing engineering students that writing matters.
'My goal is for you to not be intimidated by any reading or writing situation you find yourself in, Rudd said.
Tamuq's Teaching Week 2017 featured a panel of faculty and
students who participated in a humanitarian engineering workshop at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
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