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Academy seeks review of engineering education, mentorship for practitioners

By Victor Gbonegun
29 November 2021   |   2:49 am
Towards enhancing the nation’s productivity, United States-based Emeritus Professor of engineering, Augustine Esogbue has advocated more focus on the teaching of system

Towards enhancing the nation’s productivity, United States-based Emeritus Professor of engineering, Augustine Esogbue has advocated more focus on the teaching of the system and industrial engineering to resolve societal challenges.

He stated that such education would promote knowledge in developing multi-purpose machines and systems that will not only solve problems but also manage existing resources.

Esogbue, who teaches at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, said this during a virtual public lecture he delivered on: ‘The Engineering of Societal Systems: A Guided Tour of Decades of some Pioneering and Transformative Research Contributions’ organised by the Nigerian Academy of Engineering (NAE) in Lagos, stressed that optimum operation of machines and systems must be of interest.

Esogbue, who is the Director of Intelligent Systems and Controls Laboratory, said: “There should be the teaching of system science in theory and application. At every point in time, you must monitor and maintain systems designed to solve problems. Irrespective of predictions, Nigeria is going to survive, but we don’t just want it to survive, we want it to excel.

“Engineering still has a lot to do to transform the country. Engineers in addition to building hardware must look for ways to compliment them with the software aspect, which is more like policies and use of machines to do things so that life can be better, more comfortable and environment will be more beneficial.”

According to him, there is a need for practitioners to share experiences through public webinars and other means to engender the transfer of knowledge as well as capacity development in the industry.

He said those who had become successful in the profession must embrace mentorship for the younger engineers, adding that emphasis should be on the pursuit of a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

Esogbue, who is a fellow of NAE, further disclosed his plans to fund scholarships for selected doctoral engineering students across the six geo-political zones in the next five years.

“We need to train engineers, who are culturally sensitive to their environment, able to build machines and elevate the quality of life. The field of work now is through mechanisation of labour and engineering,” he said.

He said there was a need for partnership among industry players to make a lasting impact in the profession and in the sands of time.

Earlier, NAE President, Alex Ogedegbe, said the lecture was organised to project decades of excellence in engineering profession and celebrate an engineer as well as dwell on what science and technology can contribute towards societal socio-economic development.

To encourage knowledge sharing, he said NAE has mandated all its new fellows to present a paper on a particular topic to the academy.

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