UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE INVESTS MILLIONS IN ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY DEGREE COURSES

In a move welcomed by manufacturing companies across the region struggling to find skilled and qualified employees, the University of Gloucestershire has significantly boosted its study opportunities for those wanting a career in engineering technology.

It has launched degree programmes in a range of engineering specialisms, which kick off this month. Earlier this year the university, along with Swindon College and New College Swindon, also announced a new collaboration to establish a £21 million Institute of Technology in Swindon.

The first Head of Engineering Technologies at the University of Gloucestershire is Dr Salah Al-Majeed, whose engineering expertise has been gained across the world.

Dr Salah said: specialisation on top of that, because engineering these days isn’t just mechanical or electrical. Other skills are needed, such as coding and design.”

“Engineering isn’t just about practical skills. It’s about creative thinking and flexibility alongside developing the fundamental engineering knowledge and skills.

“Engineering isn’t just about practical skills. It’s about creative thinking and flexibility alongside developing the fundamental engineering knowledge and skills”

“I am often asked what sort of engineer I am. I say I’m a human engineer. I take the raw material that is the student and pass them through three years of building skills and knowledge.

“We want our engineering graduates to have a solid knowledge of engineering but think with flexibility and perspective to solve problems. And to have a

Engineering graduates must think about tomorrow’s problems rather than just present issues, he said.

“We have to look years ahead. Think about electric cars, about how they are being designed and built compared to those using the internal combustion engine, Electric cars have sensors which must talk to each other to control the car. Our students need programme skills.

“Engineering in the future will be very different than today.”

Following his Masters degree in mobile and satellite communications at the University of Westminster, Dr Salah completed a PhD in Electronic Systems Engineering at the University of Essex, specialising in Broadcast and Broadband Multimedia over mobile wireless networks.

He worked in Kazakhstan, at the JSC Nazarbayev University, helping develop its research base and the student’s leadership skills. While there he also worked as a consultant with Shell and the North Caspian Operating Company.

He helped the company maintain and assess a difficult-to-reach oil field where the temperature drops to minus 40 degrees in the winter.

“In an environment too cold for humans, we worked on delivering data wirelessly from a robot that had more than 11 high definition cameras and 50 different type of sensors to assess the state of the equipment,

His interests then took him into the area of telemedicine with UNICEF, where he worked on a home care monitoring project.

“I’m passing these research skills to my students. We don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel, but we do need to think differently.”

From Kazakhstan he moved to Oman, spending four years as Head of System Engineering at an Omani college. He developed the courses from scratch and had them accredited by the UK Engineering Council.

Gloucestershire is a very different environment to either Kazakhstan or Oman. So why come here? It turns out his family has always been UK-based, so this commute is a great deal shorter.

Dr Salah’s global perspective of engineering problems and solutions will certainly benefit the university’s students, and he also believes in closer collaboration with other educational organisations (such as Gloucestershire Engineering and Training and Warwickshire College), as well as the manufacturers themselves.

“We need to work with each other, not compete. It’s about communication and exchanging knowledge.”

For more information on the University of Gloucestershire’s engineering and technology courses: www.glos.ac.uk/engineering