9th European Convention of Engineering Deans – A huge success!

The 2017 ECED was organised by SEFI and CESAER in cooperation with Technical University Munich, Munich, 3-4 April 2017

80 deans, directors, head of departments met together at the annual ECED – European Convention of Engineering Deans meeting – in TU Munich on April 3 and 4, 2017.

It was the 9th convention for European deans that was organised by SEFI since 2005, and in cooperation with CESAER since 2011. Previous conventions were organised in Florence in 2005, Berlin in 2008, Paris in 2011, Birmingham in 2012, Aalborg in 2013, Lund in 2014,Valencia in 2015 and London in 2016.

This year, the participants discussed and exchanged about the three major topics of research, education and governance. The first topic asked the question whether departmental borders are prohibitive for crossing boundaries and whether we appraise professors the best way with the current metric system. The second topic was related to accreditation and recognition, and to diversity of curricula as an asset or a way to hinder recognition and meaningful comparison of engineering degrees. We discussed what to actually compare and to what extent does accreditation and any possible common frameworks contribute to improving the quality of EE and to what extent they limit innovation in curricula and pedagogy. The third topic dealt with the type of leadership that is needed in universities to support new streams of research and innovations in education, and what competences does modern university management require to be resilient and to cope with the complexity of the today academic environment.

YouTube videos had been prepared by representatives from academia, student organisations and employers from different parts of Europe and further to the invited plenary presentations given by Jan Gulliksen, KTH, Marianne Thellersen, DTU, Bernard Remaud, ENAEE, Sophie Weisswange, European Commission, Karel Luyben, TU Delft and Mike Hounslow, University of Sheffield; panelists David Fitzpatrick, University College Dublin, João Falcão e Cunha, University of Porto, Dave Wilson, National Instruments, Alex Tarchini, MathWorks, Rudolf F. Schwarz, IABG mbH, Zbynek Skvor, Czech Technical University in Prague, Francesc Gine de Sola, University of Lleida, Alexia Spyridonidou, BEST (Board of European Students in Technology), Peter Kilpatrick, GEDC and University Notre-Dame, Hans-Joachim Bargstädt, President 4ING, Natacha DePaola, GEDC and Illinois Institute of Technology, János Levendovszky, BME, had also been invited to debate on these challenging topics.

The YouTube videos and the presentations, when available, can be seen on https://www.events.tum.de/frontend/index.php?page_id=2241#Y1
The ECED 2017 final session concentrated on summing up approx.15 Munich Statements about Education, Research and Governance that will soon be described into the “Munich Minutes” to be published in the coming months as a joint SEFI, CESAER and TU Munich document.

The 2018 ECED should be organised by NTNU in Trondheim (N) in May 2018 where the Munich Minute statements will be elaborated and developed into strategic actions for the university boards.

Take a note in your calendars!

Françoise Côme
SEFI Secretary General

COMPREHENSIVE REPORT BY ALDERT KAMP (TU Delft)

The rest of this contribution is the report posted on TU Delft Blog posted on 22/04/2017 by Aldert Kamp (photo), TU Delft Director of Education Aerospace Engineering, Leader 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education, Leader CDIO European Region. It describes the sessions contents and the discussions during the three sessions of ECED 2017. We hereby would like to thank Aldert Kamp for having accepted that we refer to his excellent document.