– Article by Anil Pandit.
Global Industry Advisory Forum (GIAF), an initiative of IUCEE which began with a small group of Industry Teaching Fellows (ITF), gained momentum during the Second IUCEE Leadership Summit at Goa in July 2018.
The conference attended by 106 leaders of 40 IUCEE Consortium Institutions along with 18 global experts and 13 industry leaders focused on adopting Industry Practices of evolving effective Transformations through Institutional Collaborations through formation of Clusters.
The Mission: “Collaborate with IUCEE to raise employability of engineering students through enhanced engagement between Industry and Engineering Academia”, it was desired to supplement this effort by formation of Global Academic Advisory Forum (GAAF).
On every alternate Saturdays thereafter, through a webinar the GIAF team deliberated on modes of taking forward this initiative, formation of the clusters, setting a process in place, finalizing Tools and Templates, and conducting awareness training for the need and use of tailor-made PDCA. This was well received by over 30 institutions who nominated Faculty members as Point-Of-Contact and Collaborators from their institutions for the proposed 10 Clusters as under:
• Teaching and Learning Centers (TLC)
• IUCEE International Engineering Educators Certification Program (IIEECP)
• Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS)
• Outcomes Based Education (OBE)
• Engineering Explorations in First Year Engineering (Eng Exp)
• Virtual and Remote Labs (VRL)
• Engineering Education Research (EER)
• Entrepreneurship (Ent)
• Grand Challenges Scholar Program (GCSP)
• Industry 4.0 (Ind 4.0)
This paved way for taking the activity further during ICTIEE – 2019, by scheduling “Academic Workshops”, “Dynamic Sharing”, and “Dynamic Planning” sessions. This further helped to bond the GIAF and GAAF to network with Faculty Collaborators to and facilitate the process for Quality Improvement and realise effective Transformations. “It has been a satisfying experience to be a part of GIAF, and a rewarding one to realise its vision talking shape.”
The Vision
• Identify Gaps responsible for low employability of students from IUCEE consortium institutions/Gurukul members.
• Deliberate and Participate in providing solutions to fill these gaps through bi-weekly webinars, ICTIEE seminars and Leadership summits.
• Volunteer time and effort to be on Board Of Studies, be an Adjunct Faculty, and deliver Industry oriented Credit Courses / Guest Lectures / Webinars.
• Bring productive industry practices of relevance into academia.