Media Release

Mangaluru, Jul 22: Dr Krishna Vedula, executive director of Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and professor and dean emeritus at University of Massachusetts, USA, visited St Joseph Engineering College (SJEC) for a short visit to interact with management and faculty of the college, on Monday, July 22. During this occasion, the management of SJEC held a press meet in the board room of the college which was attended by Dr Krishna Vedula, Fr Wilfred Prakash D’Souza, director of SJEC, Dr Rio D’Souza, principal of SJEC, Rakesh Lobo, HR manager of SJEC and the heads of all departments of the college.

IUCEE was conceptualized by over 150 leaders of engineering education and businesses from US and India in 2007. IUCEE is one of the founder members of IFEES (International Federation for Engineering Education Societies), which was the primary facilitator for the growth and development of IUCEE. The vision of IUCEE is to improve the quality and global relevance of engineering education and research in India with related benefits to engineering educators around the world. The major focus is on faculty development, student development, curriculum development, as well as improved teaching technologies and engineering education research. A primary objective is to provide the ecosystem which will foster the employability, entrepreneurship and leadership skills of engineering graduates.

The IUCEE College Consortium was formed in 2010 and has 120 Indian engineering colleges as members as of 2018. Members receive special assistance in establishing collaborations with international experts and institutions. SJEC has been a consortium member since 2013 and was awarded by IUCEE as a Transformational Leader in Engineering Education in the year 2017, for its work in transforming the teaching-learning ecosystem in the college with the assistance of IUCEE programmes. Another key benefit has been the mentoring received from IUCEE for institutionalizing Outcome-Based Education (OBE), through which SJEC was able to achieve NBA Accreditation during the last two cycles.

IUCEE programmes which are accessible to all member institutions, include the following:

IUCEE Virtual Academy: uses technology to enable engineering education experts to conduct live Webinars and Mini Courses on-line to faculty and students all over India.
IUCEE Global Network: facilitates the participation of faculty, students and leaders of Consortium institutions to international events in engineering education.
IUCEE Student Chapters (SCALE: “Student Consortium for Advancement in Learning Engineering”) for promoting leadership and project-based activities among students.
International Conference on Transformations in Engineering Education (ICTIEE): organized annually in India, with typically more than 1000 participants attending.
Journal for Engineering Education Transformations (JEET): is a vehicle for sharing best practices in engineering education by Indian and global engineering educators.
IUCEE-EPICS Partnership (Engineering Projects in Community Service): has been launched in partnership with Purdue University and provides engineering education with emphasis of design thinking and development of professional and leadership skills while assisting communities on real projects.
Global Industrial Advisory Forum (GIAF): formed by a group of industry leaders in 2016, guides engineering colleges in their efforts to improve the employability of engineering graduates.
IUCEE International Engineering Educator Certification Program (IIEECP): is a certification program for teachers in engineering colleges, through which they can become practitioners of active learning and outcome-based education, in the classroom.

In summary, IUCEE, which is headquartered at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA, has become established as a prime mover for improving quality of engineering education in more than 120 engineering colleges in India. An ecosystem has been built with the help of global experts from around the world. This ecosystem includes face-to-face workshops, webinars and courses in a blended format for faculty development, international conferences, a peer-reviewed journal for engineering education, a certification program as well as networking opportunities between engineering educators and students from India and the IFEES global community.

Dr Vedula’s visit comes at a time when SJEC is about to host the Phase I workshop of the IIEECP teacher certification program for the third time on its campus from August 5 to 7. This program will be open to faculty of neighbouring engineering colleges too.

About the IIEECP Programme

With more than 4,000 engineering colleges, many of them having started in the past two decades, the engineering education system in India faces a major challenge in providing quality education to the large numbers of potential engineering graduates. An assessment of these programs has revealed the need for rigorous training in the skill of effective teaching in engineering for the vast majority of faculty in these colleges, since faculty have been found to enter the profession of teaching with hardly any training in teaching-learning pedagogies.

Inspired by the Effective Teaching workshops offered by Dr. Richard Felder and Dr. Rebecca Brent of the USA as well as the Teacher Certification Course of IGIP (International Society for Engineering Pedagogy) Austria, IUCEE has designed a certification program. This IUCEE International Engineering Educators Certification Program (IIEECP) is offered in a blended format, including face-to-face sessions, as well as asynchronous on- line modules coupled with regular synchronous on-line sessions. It has been piloted with partial support from Microsoft in 2015-16 and is now offered for a fee to cover expenses. It addresses the need for teaching skills and the certification of teaching skills. CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) has also endorsed this program as part of the CII Higher Education Mentorship Program.

SJEC has 60 faculty who have undergone the Phase I of the IIEECP, out of which 25 attended the Phase I workshop last year, in March 2018, under the leadership of Dr Archana Mantri, Pro Vice Chancellor of Chitkara University, Punjab, who visited SJEC. Thereafter these 25 faculty have now successfully completed all three phases and are now internationally certified as Engineering Educators by IUCEE. The second batch of 30 faculty have recently undergone the Phase I workshop in April 2019, by the very renowned Dr Veena Kumar, Professor, University of Maryland-University College, USA, and Executive Director of IIEECP. Dr Veena Kumar is, in fact, the very architect of the IIEECP program.

During her visit to SJEC, Dr Veena Kumar inaugurated a new Teaching Learning Centre (TLC) at SJEC campus, known as Sanjosh. Sanjosh mainly aims at strengthening new initiatives in pedagogy and facilitate sharing of best teaching practices among faculty members. This will also include training the faculty members through faculty development programmes, conclaves, online courses and peer learning programmes, and enables preparation of new, as well as existing, add-on courses and other units of curriculum.

Under the aegis of the Teaching Learning Center, Sanjosh, SJEC is offering the third edition of IIEECP to faculty of engineering colleges in the neighborhood. The Phase I Workshop of this third batch is scheduled from 5th to 7th August 2019 on the SJEC campus. Dr Sohum Sohoni, Associate Director of IUCEE and Professor, Milwaukee School of Engineering, USA, will be leading this workshop, which is being offered at consortium rates, as a special case, to all engineering colleges in the neighborhood.

During his visit, Dr Vedula addressed the heads of all departments, faculty and a small batch of students who are being mentored online, for leadership, by Dr Vedula. He also had discussions with the management about strategies to improve the teaching-learning in the classroom, as well as, industry-institute partnerships, and community collaboration through the mentoring of IUCEE.