Engineer wins teaching innovation award
The winning entry to the Excellence in Structural Engineering Education Award shows how the University has put creative design at the heart of its civil engineering degree programmes
Dr Tim Stratford recently won The Institution of Structural Engineers’ Excellence in Structural Engineering Education Award.
Dr Stratford, of the School of Engineering, received the award in recognition of his innovations in teaching design that form part of the School’s Civil and Environmental Engineering degree programmes.
Tim is a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering and Head of the Engineering Graduate School.
Teaching design
Civil and Environmental Engineering degrees now feature a design 'thread' from first year to final year, involving group design projects, individual design tasks, self-study and open-ended problems.
The aim is to enable students to develop their design skills through consideration of a range of real-world problems. This provides students with the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and practice creativity, choice, compromise and coping with confusion.
Dr Sarah Christian, Dr Martin Crapper, Dr Alison Furber, Dr Martin Gillie and Dr David Rush, all based in the School of Engineering, also helped develop the design thread.