Eduardo de Campos Valadares will give a talk titled: FOSTERING INNOVATION IN ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN BRAZIL on Wednesday April, 2nd in Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences G032.

Departamento de Física - ICEx, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Abstract— There is an increasing awareness in South America, especially within MERCOSUL (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay) and in Chile, of the relevance of fostering innovative and entrepreneurial attitudes in engineering undergraduate courses. In this paper we outline a methodology 1-4 which has been conceived and tested along the last 15 years aimed at providing first and second year undergraduate students with a unique opportunity to map out “real problems” and to develop functional prototypes.  It is highlighted the vital importance of exposing students to practical challenges at an earlier stage of their academic life in terms of motivation, thus contributing to decrease drop-outs, besides enhancing self-reliance and fostering creativity. We discuss different strategies adopted by teams of students to find out a problem and to translate it in terms of a feasible solution. Soft skills like the ability to set goals, work as a team, pro-activity, communication skills, networking and bridging technical gaps are an essential part of this approach. In addition, we discuss new strategies to implement an innovation multidisciplinary environment on campus which emulates other programs undertaken elsewhere 5, 6 by adapting and enlarging their scopes taking into account our financial and cultural realities.  Several specific examples of projects developed within our program, including devices for helping handicapped people, traffic control systems, and alternative energy sources, among others, are discussed in order to provide a framework for present and future undertakings aimed at revitalizing engineering education, especially in emerging countries.  Future developments and unfolding challenges are also addressed to provide a big picture of the complexities involved in fostering innovative thinking in academia.

Keywords—innovation environment; undergraduate courses; real problems; practical challenges

[1]     E.C. Valadares,  2012 PRECITYE Prize on entrepreneurship and innovation in engineering undergraduate courses, Fundación Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina.

[2]     F. S. F. Rocha, et. al., “Fostering innovation in lab courses targeted at engineering freshmen”, 2006 ASEE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education Conference Proceedings (electronic version), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 2006.

[3]     E.C. Valadares, and A.F. Moreira, “Brazilian experience in fostering open innovation as a strategy to improve pro-active engineering learning and to promote links with industry”, 2008 ASEE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education Conference Proceedings (electronic version), Cape Town, South Africa, October 2008.

[4]     E. C. Valadares et. al. , “Fostering an innovation environment to improve engineering education in Brazil”, Proceedings of the World Engineering Education Forum (electronic version), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2012.

[5]     J.S. Lamancusa, J.L. Zayas, A.L. Soyster, L. Morell, and J. Jorgensen, “The Learning Factory: Industry-Partnered Active Learning”. Journal of Engineerig Education, January 2008, pp. 5-11.

[6]     M.R. Lightner, L. Carlson, J.F. Sullivan, M.J. Brandemuehl, R.F Reitsma, “A living laboratory”, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 88, Issue: 1, January 2000, pp. 31-40.