President’s Message

Dear Friends and IFEES Members,

I begin my two-year term as IFEES President with a sense of gratitude to the international engineering education community and a hope for a safer, healthier, and more prosperous year 2021. IFEES made it possible for us to connect with each other across geographic and cultural boundaries and forge long lasting partnerships – and while it is important for IFEES to continue to serve as a forum for its member societies to communicate and network, we are now well-positioned to have stronger input on regional and global policies affecting engineering education such as accreditation, global mobility, and professional licensure.  It is equally important for the organization to serve as a catalyst for bridging the gap between academia and industry, and to project “engineering education” as a continuum that eliminates the boundaries between education and practice.

As we embark on setting the strategic plan and priorities for IFEES over the next few years, I wish to acknowledge the exceptional work done by our Past President, Ramiro Jordan, on advancing Peace Engineering as an overarching theme for our global community.  Peace Engineering enables our members societies and their individual members to engage in humanitarian work, building upon engineering problem-solving skills and leveraging our global network to address environmental and sustainable development challenges at the local level. In simpler terms, it allows us to develop engineering solutions within the context of problems facing our communities and our global society at large.  At our most recent meeting, the IFEES Executive Committee pledged to keep the momentum going and discussed various peace engineering initiatives that will serve our communities and have a global impact. We will keep you posted, and welcome your input in this regard.

The past nine months have also been quite transformative, as a once in a lifetime event disrupted our daily routines, the way we conduct business, and our personal interactions. Triggered by a pandemic that touched the lives of each and every one of us, social distancing guidelines, extended lockdowns, and closures of schools and colleges pushed us – engineering educators – out of our comfort zones.  It stretched the boundaries of our digital literacy, and forced us to adopt content delivery and learning techniques that were once deemed impossible. Many argue that new norms have been forever redefined in relation to conventional teaching and learning, traditional classrooms, and campus-based college education. Others lament the loss of human interactions, student-teacher rapport, and intellectually enriching campus-based experiences. These disruptions, driven and accelerated by the pandemic, come at a time of extraordinary technological transformation, when a rapid pace of change in business and industry demands new alternatives to traditional four-year college degrees. In order to keep our member societies relevant in this new ecosystem, it is imperative that we take a leadership role in introducing, assessing, evaluating, and promoting new forms of engineering education – both academic and non-academic.  New program offerings, both in traditional college and continuing education settings, are sprouting in the form of micro-degrees and stackable credentials, at a pace that makes it hard for the industry to evaluate their depth and breadth. Several industry partners have expressed concern about the vacuum that exists in terms of certifying or evaluating the relevance of such offerings. This is why I proposed to the executive committee the formation of a task force to develop standards and criteria for evaluating and certifying such offerings. The global nature of our member societies, as well as the strategic partnership with key industry groups, make it ideal for IFEES to lead such effort.

We will soon be asking for your feedback regarding the development of a new five-year strategic plan for our organization. We will seek your input on the core elements of the plan, and will organize a couple of virtual town hall meetings where we can all discuss and refine those elements. Your participation is essential in ensuring the diversity and inclusion of all ideas, as well as the ownership of your respective member societies of the plan. I look forward to a productive engagement by all of us.

Alaa Ashmawy
IFEES President, 2020 – 2022