Mangaluru: Dr. Krishna Vedula, Executive Director of Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and Professor & Dean Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, USA, visited St. Joseph Engineering College (SJEC) for a short visit to interact with the management and faculty of the college July 22. On this occasion, the SJEC management held a press meet in the Board Room of the college which was attended by Dr. Krishna Vedula, Rev. 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 the departments of the college.
IIUCEE, 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 programme 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 programme for the third time on its campus from August 5 to 7. This programme will be open to the faculty of the neighbouring engineering colleges too.
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 members 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 the very architect of the IIEECP programme.
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 August 5 to 7 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 her. 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.
