As a key sponsor of GEDC 2013 Chicago what are the top five goals that you would like accomplish in this upcoming global conference of Engineering Deans?
I would say my top 5 objectives are:
1. Announcing the winner of the first GEDC Airbus Diversity Award, celebrating and promoting this important initiative for this year and in
preparation for the next
2. Connecting with my counterpart at Boeing and trying to identify common objectives and areas of possible collaboration
3. Gaining a better understanding of how Airbus can work with Higher Education in a mutually beneficial way
4. Meeting other company representatives attending the conference and doing some benchmarking
5. Getting to know key university contacts from around the world
To what extent is Airbus involved with Universities in the World?
Airbus works with universities throughout the world, as you can probably imagine. We have R&T partnerships; strong university relations programs to support student development, and to identify and attract talent for internships and employment; and we work with universities in the communities in which our offices and industrial sites are located. Airbus has developed an internal organization – the Airbus University Board – which brings senior executives from across all areas of our business together to take a strategic approach to our engagement with the education sector. One example is our work to identify universities around the world that are important for us in the support of our overall strategy and so that we can ensure our resources are being used in the most intelligent way possible. In addition to these specific partnerships, we work with a number of networks of universities and we are part of the Pegasus Industrial Alliance (PIA) which is a group of European Engineering universities with a focus on high quality aviation-related engineering education. Within PIA we have contributed – at the request of the universities – to the identification of skills that we believe are necessary for future Engineering talent. Together, we have participated in university audits to validate the quality of education and the skills being passed on to students and to prepare them for life after studies.
What are some of the salient issues that ought to be addressed by the global engineering community and particularly by Engineering Deans, in order to further strengthen inter-regional communication and to continue to globalize this field of study?
Through our membership in the GEDC, Airbus values the exchange with Engineering Deans and the possibility to work together to better understand how we can collaborate. There are several priorities we think can – and must – be addressed by the global engineering community: One of the most important pillars of our Employment Marketing vision is to make Engineering more attractive. We want to inspire enough talented young people around the world to take up the engineering challenges to build a sustainable future, of which the aviation industry is a key part. To do this we have identified some key strategies which I have summarized below. This is one thing I hope to discuss with other GEDC members at the coming conference:
1. Motivate children and youth
2. Influence the influencers
3. Inspire young women and girls
4. Engage higher education
Increasing diversity in the engineering classroom is part of this pillar, and this is one of the reasons we proposed to launch the GEDC Airbus Diversity Award – http://www.airbus.com/work/why-join-airbus/diversity/award/– to work together to ensure that we are attracting students to engineering who reflect the world we live in and the diverse populations engineers serve.