The inauguration of a new university dedicated to engineering took place on Friday. The New Model in Technology and Engineering (NMiTE) is part of a new wave academic institutions promoted by the Government to offer innovative ways of teaching subjects to students.
The ceremony took place at Hereford Cathedral . The project involves the creation of a new faculty with a radical approach, ready to recruit Britain’s most ambitious student engineers into its initial intake in September 2019.
Subject to validation, NMiTE will open its doors to a new cohort in September 2019. By 2020, it’s expected that a minimum of 250 students will be based at a purpose-built city centre campus in Hereford from where NMiTE will deliver a distinctive and innovative engineering curriculum. With a focus on learning by doing, it intends to educate more than 5,000 engineering students by 2032.
The future university is being strongly backed by engineering businesses, the Herefordshire community, Herefordshire Council, the University of Warwick, Olin College of Engineering (USA), professional engineering bodies and the UK Government, which recently announced up to £23 million in initial funding and featured it in its recent White Paper 'Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain fit for the future'.
Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, NMiTE’s acting CEO and provost, said: “NMiTE is developing the world’s most radical learning environment for engineering students so we can deliver creative, confident, work-ready problem-solvers, with the qualities to become the country’s top engineers and industrial innovators.
“We are revolutionising engineering education by combining the most successful ways to learn from around the world into a new, bold and inspiring approach. Our fast-track programme will deliver high value and an engineering education like no other. Learning is centred around students solving practical engineering challenges, including their commercial aspects too, by working entirely on real-world problems provided by UK employers.”
Universities Minister Sam Gyimah added: “Innovation must remain the driving force behind our higher education system – at the heart of the sector should be the desire to cultivate and explore ground-breaking opportunities for graduates, developing the skills our country needs. NMiTE embodies this by engaging employers, experts and academics to develop courses and opportunities that are right for students, and for the engineering sector."
Dame Fiona Kendrick, the chair of the Board of Trustees overseeing NMiTE’s creation (and also chairman of Nestlé UK & Ireland and deputy chairman of The Institute for Apprentices, said: “Britain desperately needs to boost productivity, technical skills and graduate employability. This pathfinding project, driven by employers, is contributing a potential solution to these challenges.
“NMiTE aims to be a centre for innovative engineering education that broadens participation – especially for women. Valuing engineering and social science equally, NMiTE will deliver life-long learning from apprentice through to postgraduate. What NMiTE offers to employers is competitive advantage in a market where success is constrained by limited availability of talent.”
Britain has an estimated annual shortfall of at least 22,000 engineering graduates.
NMiTE
