Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE), a non-government organization, was formed about our year back to establish collaboration between Indian and US universities. IUCEE is the brain child of Prof. Krishna Vedula, Professor and Dean Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Executive Director, IUCEE.
Under this banner, 23 one week workshops were conducted for 581 indian faculty participants at Infosys Campus, Mysore during summer 2008 by Indo-US Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute in which 23 US expert faculty delivered the content. In order to scale up and sustain the impact, a few Regional Centres were established throughout India. Two of these Regional Centres are established in Andhra Pradesh, one in Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, BHIMAVARAM and another in Sri Bhoj Reddy Engineering College for Women, HYDERABAD. Similar programs will be conducted over the next 5 years in all UG courses in Engineering to impact a large portion of engineering faculty all over India. The improved quality of engineering education will catalyze and mobilize engineering talent.
About 30 administrators and senior faculty members from different parts of India have visited several US universities in two groups. Dr. D.R. Raju, Director, Sri Vishnu Educational Society is one of the participants in the first group that visited US between 1-14, November 2008.
He visited the following Universities in US
1. University of Massachusetts
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Michigan State University
4. Arizona State University
5. University of Southern California
6. Purdue University
After the visit to the above Universities, all the participants from India and several administrators and faculty members from many US universities assembled in Washington DC on 14.11.08, reviewed the various activities conducted so far under IUCEE and planned the steps to be taken in future to achieve the goal.
In continuation with the above, Indo-US Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute will conduct one more program similar to that of Mysore during the next summer. Similarly identified IUCEE Regional Centres will also conduct workshops on different topics with the help of faculty members trained at Summer Institute to extend the benefit to more faculty members of that region.
As a part of this program, all the members who participated in US tour are meeting at Bhubaneswar on 21.12.2008 to plan the future activities of Regional Centres and the role to be played by trained faculty.
More details are being worked out to collect necessary information and enter into MOU with some more universities in specific areas of common interest including exchange of students and faculty and collaboration in research activities.
Director, SVECW
