McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine Affiliated Faculty Member Attended the Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium

McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member and University of Pittsburgh Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department assistant professor Ipsita Banerjee, PhD, attended the Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium held October 14-17, 2012, at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, California. FOEE faculty members attending are actively teaching in U.S. engineering programs and have recently implemented significant innovations in their classes. Attendees participate in discussions and workshops focused on applying pedagogies to student learning of engineering fundamentals, as well as personal, interpersonal, and professional skills.

The Symposium brings together some of the nation’s most engaged and innovative engineering educators in order to recognize, reward, and promote effective, substantive, and inspirational engineering education through a sustained dialogue within the emerging generation of innovative faculty.

Attendees have multiple opportunities to share their innovations with others, learn from best practice, and network with colleagues. Attendees present new approaches they are taking to classroom, laboratory, project, experiential, computer-based, or other modes of preparing engineering students to work and lead in the 21st century. They discuss the current and evolving contexts that should shape engineering and engineering education. The program will assist them in forming an on-going, self-supporting cohort committed to innovation and sustained excellence in engineering education.

FOEE seeks to make 21st century engineering education exciting, creative, rigorous, adventurous, demanding, and empowering by:

Presenting and propagating innovative and effective learning strategies that prepare future engineers to face 21st century challenges and opportunities.
Raising the professional prominence of faculty who are selected fort the FOEE.
Enhancing opportunities for professional collaboration and mutual support among FOEE faculty.
Stimulating awareness of and interest in FOEE findings and events across all U.S. engineering schools.
Documenting, over the long-term, enhanced student knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes as a result of local and widespread implementation of FOEE innovations.
Enhancing, over the long-term, the recruitment, retention, and professional success of engineering students by virtue of local and widespread implementations of FOEE innovations.