As Australia’s economy becomes increasingly innovation-oriented, so too does the academic agenda of the University of Newcastle’s Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment.
The university has renewed its focus on nurturing future generations of thought leaders and entrepreneurs, orchestrating a large-scale restructure of all engineering degrees.
Faculty Pro-Vice Chancellor Brett Ninness said that like the graduates who’ll come out of them, the revitalised programs are adaptable, socially-conscious and above all, useful.
“The redesign recognises the fact that engineers, now more than ever, are likely to have multiple and highly-diverse careers and need multiple skill-sets,” Professor Brett Ninness said.
“Their knowledge and training are vital in sorting complex issues of global impact and importance, such as food security and water scarcity, in both big cities and small towns, and developing and developed nations.
“The Faculty is preparing students for this new reality.”
Rather than dictating what the interdisciplinary component of their program should look like, the university is leaving much of the programming up to the students.
From 2017 onwards, students will have the unique opportunity to pick a suite of courses in areas ranging from pharmaceutical chemistry, to Chinese, to construction management, to communications and media.
“For those who want to take their learning to the next level, the new degree structure offers a Master of Professional Engineering, with just one additional year of study, and unlike other models, this further year of study is not required for students to become professionally-recognised, but gives high achievers an optimal way to differentiate themselves,” Professor Ninness said.
The Masters also allows students to diversify their skill base by undertaking further interdisciplinary study in advanced physics, contract law or another field of their choosing.
“We’ve also devised a suite of Professional Practice courses to equip graduates with the non-technical skills they’ll require for their whole working lives,” Professor Ninness said.
“They’ll be delivered in partnership with industry as much as possible.”
It is their problem-solving, design thinking and ability to manage and analyse risks that separates engineers from their science, technology and maths counterparts in the much-publicised STEM education equation. You only have to look to the CEOs of Amazon, Intel and Google – all of who are engineers – to realise that an engineering background can prove invaluable in leadership roles.
“It’s a future-proof career, with 89% of our students employed on graduation,” Professor Ninness said.
“While you can’t predict the future, you can predict the world is going to face the challenge of an ageing population and will have to mitigate the effects of climate change and maintain viable clean water supplies.
“The professionals at the centre of providing adaptions and solutions in all of these areas are engineers.”
So, it seems, there is in fact a word for a multidisciplinary person who takes the basic sciences and intelligently and creatively uses them to solve problems, and that word is ‘engineer’.
Image: The University of Newcastle is training engineers to tackle major world problems. Courtesy University of Newcastle.