Some decades ago many of us were awaiting the digital age, the times when most activities would be realized by computers and robots while engineers would only have the task of upgrading these machines once in a while and care about their maintenance (and society would be reaching the Asimovian foundations sometime in the future).
And now here we are, within an ever-accelerating world that constantly comes up with new and complex challenges for humanity while old challenges are far from being solved. Moreover, these challenges seem to be overwhelming sometimes.
That is why engineers cannot relax today but need to adapt to the constant flow of tasks and design practical, rapid and long-lasting solutions taking into account multidisciplinary aspects and humanity’s needs. And we: teachers, educators and researchers have the duty to equip the new generations of engineers with the necessary skills for endurance and resilience.
SEFI has a key role in this. Globalization and fragmentation arise in waves in this world of ours. That is why SEFI, the society embracing all who feel engineering education as their mission, must stand together and maintain stable but diverse grounds for knowledge sharing, co-creation and mutual understanding.
I believe in such a team approach. With a large number of SEFI volunteers we will focus on developing and nurturing our membership over Europe targeting all regions. We will realize the goals of our strategy that have been planned well in recent years. Now it is time to reach tangible results. Furthermore, the increasing diversity of SEFI activities needs to have a structural approach and adequate support from the SEFI team.
Together with SEFI’s Board, the Special Interest Groups, and current and future SEFI members, we are working together to assist all colleagues in achieving their goals to flourish as educators and innovate engineering education.
I feel honored to be part of this SEFI community and l shall do my best to develop it further together with you.
Balázs Vince Nagy
president
Board of Directors
Prof. Hannu-Matti Järvinen
SEFI Immediate past President
Tampere University Foundation sr.
Tampere, Finland
Dr. Mihai Ghinea
National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
Special Interest Group Chair
Dr. Neil Cooke
Engineering Skills
School of Engineering - University of Birmingham
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Joelyn de Lima
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne EPFL
Lausanne, Switzerland
Prof. Deolinda Dias Rasteiro
Mathematics in Engineering Education
ISEC Coimbra
Antanhol, Coimbra, Portugal
Dr. habil. Aniko Kalman
Continuing Engineering Education/ Life-long Learning
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Budapest, Hungary
Dr Christopher Smith
Continuing Engineering Education/ Life-long Learning
Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Mircea Toboșaru
Ethics in Engineering Education
National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
Dr. Raja Toqeer
Quality Assurance and Accreditation
The University of Sheffield
Sheffield, United Kingdom
