Bringing Industry to Academia

Preparing students for industry involves more than just teaching them general engineering principles. It would be best to teach them how to use the industry’s tools and the teamwork culture. This will make them more confident and ease the challenge of transitioning from student to employee. At the same time, the industry needs to adjust its approach to dealing with employees to attract new graduates. That’s because young engineers have a different set of needs, such as a preference for hybrid working environments. In this episode, Shannon O’Donnel interviews Kathy Stevenson, senior academic teaching specialist in the mechanical engineering department at Michigan State University. She’ll share with us what she does to prepare her students for the industry after graduation. She’ll also share her thoughts on what the industry should do to prepare for younger graduates. In This Episode, You Will Learn: Challenges that graduates deal with when entering the workforce (04:26) Why it is important to introduce real-world experiences in the classroom (05:52) Why collaboration is integral in the engineering world (09:11) How Kathy teaches her students to use Siemens NX (10:36) Kathy’s experience working with the Siemens NX team (15:43) How Kathy’s personalized teaching methods differ from others (24:15) Connect with Kathy: Linkedin Michigan State University Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.