Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF7-O002 Invited Talk
PREPARING PHD STUDENTS TO TACKLE GRAND CHALLENGES
Angus Kingon 1
1 Brown University, School of Engineering, United States.
For the past 20+ years the presenter and a small group of academics have
experimented with, and developed pedagogical approaches for, broadening the
impact of STEM graduates. In particular we have developed an entrepreneurship
pedagogy with a experiential curriculum that allows STEM graduate students to
create value emerging science and technology, this value usually being in the form
of a new venture. One of the important elements is the provision of mental
constructs that allow the learners to make rationale cognitive connections between
the domain of science (e.g. materials science) and the domain of industry and
society. When the learning journey has been sufficiently in-depth, there is a
surprising impact upon the cognitive processes and attitudes of the learners.
Despite this success we are cognizant that the graduate students who undertaken
the most in-depth research, ie the PhDs, still view their skills as limited to the science
and technology focus area of their thesis research. They certainly do not view
themselves as qualified to tackle large Grand Challenges facing society, which are
typically large system-level problems. As a result, we are initiating a new curriculum
experiment designed to encourage them to tackle bigger and broader
problems. The experimental curriculum design has two key components:
• Content designed to encourage critical thinking, drawing both the natural
sciences and the social sciences and humanities.
• Problem-based sessions in which the PhD students assess large multifaceted
systems-level problems facing society, tackling the issues in teams, in
conjunction with experts who understand the systemic issues.
We view these educational experiments as particularly relevant for materials
science graduate students – helping them to make the connections their materials
knowledge, which is a basic building block, all the way to the systems that are critical
for society.
Keywords: Pedagogy, Graduate Education, Graduate curriculum
Presenting authors email: angus@brown.edu