Quanser Café: Conversations with Academic Leaders: Recent Episodes
Quanser
In this podcast series, Paul Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer of Quanser, sits down with academic leaders - chairs, deans, senior administrators - from the engineering education and research community around the globe. Paul explores the challenges they face, and the strategies and solutions his guests bring to their respected institutions. About Quanser: For the past thirty years, Quanser has transformed the way educators teach the theory, application, and implementation of controls, robotics, and mechatronics.
In the final episode, Prof. Croft discusses advancing women’s representation and participation in engineering, open-ended learning, why you should be friends with mathematicians!
In this episode, Paul chats with Dr. Ramiro Jordan, an innovator, entrepreneur, but above all an educator. Ramiro touches on many topics, including his ground-breaking Peace Engineering initiative that brings the arts, STEM ,health sciences, and humanities together.
An international ambassador and a founding member of the African Deans Council, Dr. Yacob Astatke discusses his tireless efforts in brining hands-on experiences to students in Ethiopia and improving the delivery of engineering education across Africa.
In this episode, Prof. Michael Faborode, former Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, discusses the challenges faced by West African universities and his vision for transferring innovation from university laboratories to the outside world through his Knowledge Park initiative.
Don brings a wealth of industrial experience to his deanship. In this episode Paul and Don talk about the desirable impacts of the COVID pandemic, including aggregation of expertise among smaller universities, sharing resources, and a renewed emphasis on democratization of education and access to technology.
In this episode, Prof. Şirin Tekinay, a global champion for diversity in engineering, discusses the need for gender neutralization of the professional identity of engineering, as well as implementing engineering education reform to attract and retain today’s digital natives.
In this episode Dean Janusz Kozinski talks about the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, and how it has accelerated educational change by expanding the learning continuum. He also discusses the need for integrated engineering programs and why he does not believe in traditional exams.
In this episode, Prof. John Mitchell discusses the importance of learning practical applications and how he helped introduce the Integrated Engineering Program, a methodology that combines innovative teaching methods and an industry-oriented curriculum.
In this episode, Paul chats with legendary control theory expert and textbook author, Professor Robert Bishop, about engineering education, and a few NASA-related stories, including how he got to meet and work with Buzz Aldrin.
As a role model for women in STEM, in this episode Prof. DePaola talks about her early inspirations and challenges of getting into STEM and biomedical engineering, as well as her educational initiatives that apply ongoing learning and technical knowledge to solve problems of local and global impact.
In this episode Mr. Cukierman discusses modernization of engineering education, the need to train professors on engineering pedagogy, proper use of technology in the class room, and much more.
In our debut episode, Dean Puri discusses a range of topics including what engineering means to him, as well as the challenges and success strategies of rolling out McMaster's new first year program: The Pivot.