FEATURE TRAINING & EDUCATION
BUILDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ENGINEERS
Professor David Allan of the New Model in Technology & Engineering, the specialist engineering university being created in Hereford, discusses their solution to the skills gap problem
relevant. So, we are looking to provide a basis in fundamental engineering principles and then fill in the gaps in technical knowledge according to the problems we are facing. NMiTE recognises that modern
challenges are largely multidisciplinary and so is deliberately devoid of specific departments. Instead, we’ll be tackling engineering through an innovative project-based educational experience that draws particularly on the experiences of one of our partners, the Olin College of Engineering in Boston, whose graduate engineers have become the most sought-after in America. NMiTE, which has been in the planning
for seven years, will ultimately become the first wholly new university in the UK for 40 years. We intend to admit its first cohort of learners in September 2019. Not only is the learning different, so are
B
ritain needs not just more engineers, but also a new kind of engineer to
tackle the interconnected problems and opportunities of a world whose population will soon reach 8 billion. They will also have to deal with dramatic changes from what some call the “fourth industrial revolution” of digitalisation, interconnectedness and the continued rise of machine learning. According to Engineering UK, we have too few engineer graduates, with an additional 22,000 engineering graduates needed annually to meet demand. Closing this gap is essential if
engineering employers are to have people with the high-value skills needed for a successful modern economy. Indeed, the engineering skills gap is
getting even worse as many experienced engineers are baby-boomers and are rapidly approaching retirement. This is just at the time when both the UK and the world needs as many as possible engineers. New Model in Technology &
Engineering (NMiTE) is an Institution based in Hereford that specialises in engineering and has plans to open to learners in September 2019. NMiTE aims to be a new kind of
university and has been specifically created to work with employers to provide additional engineers through a radically innovative educational approach that combines the best innovations from leading universities around the world. For employers and the economy there is the
commercial imperative of ensuring a successful and high-value workforce. For younger people motivated by high
ideals, engineering is at the vanguard of finding the solutions needed by our world which faces demanding water and food security challenges. This is a world where cars, ships and drones will soon be “intelligent” and autonomous, and where pollution and energy waste must be minimised. NMiTE was set up to address this, but also has as its impetus in a number of other factors. Traditional engineering programmes
are good at producing graduates with a high level of academic knowledge, but who may not be as adept at applying this knowledge to new problems, working in teams, communicating, and other requirements desperately in demand in the modern workplace. It is NMiTE’s view that when students are trained within a set of narrow fields, they tend to view engineering challenges through the lens of that speciality. What we are trying to do instead is to begin with the problems and allow the challenges to guide the learning. This contrasts with the traditional approach of teaching the solutions and then trying to apply those to each problem. This focus on applying engineering
through problem-solving know-how is particularly important as currently, the rate of change in technologies is much too fast to ever hope to teach anyone all the technical material that could be
18 DECEMBER/ JANUARY 2019 | ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
An artist’s impression of the new engineering university
other areas at NMiTE too. For instance, learners will be based in studios and will attend 8-hours per day, year-round, and will finish an integrated Master’s degree in three years. Our learner engineers will work
collaboratively in small groups, on real world engineering problems set by real world organisations, mentored by real world engineers right from the very outset and at every stage. Our ethos is that you won’t come here to study engineering; you’ll come here to be an engineer. NMiTE was recently formally inaugurated at Hereford Cathedral and is strongly backed by the national government, local government and the Local Enterprise Partnership. Recently Universities Minister Sam Gyimah recognised the significance of NMiTE entering the higher education system, commenting, “Innovation must remain the driving force behind our higher education system – at the heart of the sector should be the desire to cultivate and explore ground-breaking opportunities for graduates, developing the skills our country needs. “NMiTE embodies this by engaging
employers, experts and academics to develop courses and opportunities that are right for students, and for the engineering sector.” We are already working with a range of
large and small organisations so our curriculum tackles their real world problems and learners will have the skills they need for our future world.
NMiTE
NMiTE.org.uk
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