It
is a great honour to be elected President of
Australasian Association of Engineering Education. I look
forward to working with the other members of the Executive Committee to
serve the members of the association and the wider community for the next 15
months. Working together I am sure we can do a lot to enhance the
educational services we provide to our students and to the engineering
profession.
AaeE was co-sponsor of the Global Colloquium on Engineering Education held in Sydney in September 2005. This event was by far the largest engineering education conference held in Australia and, because its impact will be felt for years to come, it will be recognised as an important milestone for engineering education 'down under'. The Colloquium provided great opportunities for educators to network with their international colleagues as the delegates included senior engineering educators from more than thirty countries. Another important outcome was the formation of the International Federation for Engineering Education, an organisation that has the potential to make an enormous contribution in the coming years.
At a time when governments, universities and industry organisations are placing an increasing emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning outcomes, it is critical that engineering schools lead the way in the provision of quality educational services. This is particularly so in the current climate, where an increasing share of funding is tied to learning outcomes at the government to university level and also at the university to school level.
The Australasian Association for Engineering Education plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of engineering education by providing engineering academics with the opportunities and resources to build their knowledge and skills in the scholarship of learning and teaching. The executive committee is planning a number of new initiatives to assist in this process. For example, the Australian Journal of Engineering Education will be revitalised and repositioned so that it becomes an important vehicle for the dissemination of the outcomes from research and scholarship in the field of engineering education.
I am sure that I speak on behalf of the members of the Executive Committee in acknowledging the exceptional work that Professor David Radcliffe did for the Association during 2005. During this time David served as President of the Association and as Australian Co-Chair of the Colloquium. Thanks David we really appreciate you contribution to engineering education.
David Dowling