The Future of Engineering Education
Futurist Trond Arne Undheim interiews Babi Mitra, founding Executive Director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) initiative at MIT.
They talk about the urgent need to update the way we educate our engineers which is an effort happenin...
Futurist Trond Arne Undheim interiews Babi Mitra, founding Executive Director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) initiative at MIT.
They talk about the urgent need to update the way we educate our engineers which is an effort happening at engineering schools worldwide, including at the top schools. The stakes on re-imagining education just got higher because of COVID-19. Is there really a need to rebuild engineering education from scratch? Which schools are at the forefront of the experimentation? What will education look like in the next decade? At MIT, the theme is still machines, but the emphasis is on building new types, advanced materials machines, living machines, renewable energy machines, and more.
My takeaway is that by re-imagining education, we correct for the highly theoretical way that engineering was taught over the past three decades. The thought was that there needed to be scientific rigor but the result was that the education ceased to be enjoyable.
Now, the realization is that exploration, discovery, and this somewhat nebulous idea of meta-cognition can all be fostered by a set of tweaks that put the students in charge of their own learning and liberate them to build things from the get-go, bring it back to real life challenges. When you add spades of positive reinforcement and blend in thoughtful, project based learning and external speakers that fit the educational context, you can inspire students even more than their professors can do alone.
Additional context about the show, the topics, and our guests, including show notes and a full list of podcast players that syndicate the show can be found at https://trondundheim.com/podcast/.
After listening, check out NEET as well as Babi Mitra's online profile:
- NEET https://neet.mit.edu/
- Babi Mitra MIT site https://babi-mitra.mit.edu
- Babi Mitra LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/babimitra/
For more about the host, including media coverage, books and more, see:
- Trond Arne Undheim's personal website (https://trondundheim.com/)
- The Yegii Insights blog (https://yegii.wpcomstaging.com/)
- Pandemic Aftermath https://trondundheim.com/pandemic-aftermath/
- Disruption Games https://trondundheim.com/disruptiongames/
To advertise or become a guest on the show, contact the podcast host here. If you like the show, please tell all your friends, subscribe and consider rating it five stars. The show is hosted by Podbean and can be found at Futurized.co.
Babi Mitra
Dr. Amitava ‘Babi’ Mitra is the founding Executive Director, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, a program that was launched in 2017 to reimagine and transform MIT’s undergraduate engineering education. What he enjoys doing most is visioning, designing, setting up and operationalizing innovative ‘start-up’ educational initiatives. He has over twenty-five years’ experience in institution building, higher education, corporate e-learning, and distance education. He transformed a small e-learning R&D group into the profitable Knowledge Solutions Business at NIIT, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, USA as its Senior Vice-President. He is a founding member, Board of Governors of an NGO, Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation, Kumaon, India and as the founding Dean, School of Engineering & Technology, BML Munjal University(BMU), India he launched ‘Joy of Engineering’, a first-year hands-on course designed to get students engaged with engineering.
Dr. Mitra earned a B.E. (Honors), Chemical Engineering with Distinction (ranked third), and an M.Sc. (Honors) Chemistry (ranked second); both degrees were from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani. He earned a PhD in chemical engineering from BITS, Pilani, India; he conducted his research at the department of chemical engineering, MIT under the guidance of Professor Adel F. Sarofim. His NIEHS-funded research at MIT focused on modelling and controlling the production of mutagenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from coal combustion and led t… Read More
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