THE National University of Science and Technology (Nust) and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) in the United Kingdom, on Friday launched a project to benefit academic staff and students.
BY SHARON SIBINDI
In an interview, engineer Annatoria Chinyama, who is acting dean of the Faculty of Industrial Technology at Nust, said the project is called Enriching Engineering Education Programme (EEEP) and is sponsored by RAE and running for two years.
Chinyama said Nust is involved in phase two as phase one of the project was done at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ).
“We participated as an institution which was feeding into UZ. So now we have been awarded the project as a hub by the one hosting the project. This project is aimed at improving how we teach our engineering students and the general observation that was done when this project was muted was that there was no linkage between industry and the academia,” she said.
Chinyama added that the programme will allow Nust to produce students ready to be assimilated into industry.
“We are also able to host people from industry to come in and be involved in our teachings and tell us if they are issues they think we are not addressing. The project also helps us to host seminars, workshops where we sit down with industries and other universities and we talk about our problems we are having and how we can solve them,” she said.
“We want to work with industry; we are here to work with industry because at the end they benefit from the product that we produce which is the graduate. We hope that even after the funding is gone the links that we are to have now, will be able to be sustained and will still be able to find other means to be able to have our lecturers going to industry and industry coming in the teaching so that we maintain and enrich this .”
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RAE has availed £140 000 for two years.
Nust acting vice chancellor, Dumisani Hlatshwayo said they feel good that the university has been awarded the status of the hub in the project under the second phase.
“NUST vision is to spearhead human capital development for industrial and socio-economic transformation through science and technology based solutions. Therefore, we shall always cherish fostering links with industry,” said Hlatshwayo.
The other participating institutions in Zimbabwe are Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT), UZ and Harare Institute of Technology (HIT). The University of Botswana, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique and Namibia University of Science and Technology are also participating in the same project.
