Babi Mitra, a speaker at the marcus evans University Leadership Summit 2022, discusses the efficacy of engineering education, and what changes it is undergoing.

1. students pick the right project, they
really push themselves and us to get
the project done. We need to let
students take more charge, within
guidelines and approval processes of
course.
What questions did the pandemic
raise about the efficacy of engineer-
ing programs?
Education at a distance, through remote
platforms and technologies, is much
more complicated than project classes.
Large institutions in the US and Europe
found ways to overcome this while
ensuring learning outcomes were still
met; we discovered students wanted to
engage more so we introduced more
group activities, for example. The
pandemic forced efficacy to improve,
although access continues to be a
problem for socially disadvantaged
groups.
What learnings can you share from
the NEET initiative?
NEET is starting to get traction with
students and other stakeholders. There
are over 230 NEET students, making it
the fourth largest undergraduate cohort
at the Institute. Sixty-four percent are
women and 32 percent come from
underrepresented groups. They come
from a diverse spectrum of 26 majors in
15 departments. Over 37 percent first-
years who applied for NEET this fall
heard about it from current NEET
students. We are now moving from the
pilot stage to a sustainable model that is
embedded in the departments and
programs.
There are five lessons I can share from
the “start-up” stage. One, the need to
have a bold vision. We must go beyond
the curriculum and focus on project-
centric learning on a cross-department
level. Two, the team must be comple-
mentary to each other in terms of skills,
experience, interests, and allocations.
Third, stakeholder engagement. Early
on, you must identify who the stake-
holders are, because down the line, if it
does not work for the stakeholders, if
students do not show up, it will not
work. Fourth, the importance to involve
the community in designing and
implementing a pilot. That allows you to
learn a lot more and to respond to
changes. Finally, think and act like a
start-up. That really helps move it
forward in the right direction, in a
nimble and flexible way.
During the pandemic, we discovered
that having these attributes and
experiences made us flexible, and they
will continue to make us even more
nimble going forward.
How Engineering Education Needs to Transform
Interview with: Amitava “Babi”
Mitra, Executive Director, New
Engineering Education Transfor-
mation (NEET), Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT)
“Engineering education needs to
become more relevant. The pandemic
accelerated many changes that were
already happening, but now it has
become more important that students
are prepared to take on engineering
challenges and find solutions to critical
societal problems of the 21st century,”
says Amitava “Babi” Mitra, Executive
Director, New Engineering Education
Transformation (NEET), Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT).
Mitra is a speaker at the marcus evans
University Leadership Summit 2022.
How is undergraduate engineering
education changing across the
world?
More and more students now want to
work on projects geared towards solving
societal problems, whether it is related
to pollution, climate change, or the
pandemic. That automatically means
the curriculum must become more
relevant and connected to societal
problems.
With the pandemic, students feel a
stronger need to connect. Faculty and
staff must become more empathetic to
what students are going through, as it
affects more than just their education.
The third trend in education is the focus
on community. When we surveyed
students on the NEET program pilot at
MIT, we discovered that what students
liked the most was the community,
working with students from different
majors. That made their education
stronger. The more we let students
decide what project they work on, the
more engaged they will be. There is a
valid concern that students may decide
on a very difficult or easy project, but if
there is dialogue between students and
instructors, that can be mitigated. When
How would you respond to those
who say engineering education is
“broken”?
The system is working, it is not broken.
There are thousands of engineering
graduates every year, which is a
massive undertaking. I also get asked if
engineering education is obsolete. It is
not. There is new content and research
coming in every day. However, it has
become less relevant. That is where we
should focus, to make engineering
education more relevant.
What engineering problems should
students be able to take on? Can
universities prepare them? What
skills or knowledge do they need?
It is more than just skills. They need to
acquire creative, critical, and ethical
thinking. Those cognitive approaches
will carry them through after they
graduate. And they need to practice
these cognitive approaches.
In the early stages of NEET, I inter-
viewed over 40 senior managers in
industry, to understand what they would
look for in an MIT graduate. I learned
that in addition to the usual need for
“soft skills”, they are looking for people
who can sell an idea within the
company, division, or project team.
That requires the ability to analyze,
think systems, identify resources, e.g.
faculty experts and technical confer-
ences, work in a team, and be able to
articulate ideas.
Any final thoughts?
We have to listen to our students and
be more empathetic to their situations.
There is no lack of problems for them to
work on. The issue is how to scope the
project, so that it has a local or unique
solution, is challenging and has a high
probability of being completed. There
needs to be a process to achieve these
objectives.
We need to make
engineering
education more
relevant

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