In a year that has seen it break all student recruitment records, Birmingham City University has officially launched a new, enlarged technology-based faculty. Encompassing three, already successful university activities - the Technology Innovation Centre and the University's schools of Computing, and Property, Construction and Planning - the new Faculty is called Technology, Engineering and the Environment, or TEE. It is particularly active in its interaction with Industry which underpins its academic excellence, relevance and achievements.
 The new faculty's launch was heralded by University Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Tidmarsh as 'creating a centre for technology-based educational activities with a world-class reputation.' The new Faculty comprises four Schools - a structure rooted in the benefits gained by integrating the strengths of the multiple, yet increasingly convergent, technologies it teaches.
The new schools are called Engineering, Design and Manufacturing Systems (EDMS), Computing, Telecommunications and Networks (CTN), Digital Media Technology (DMT) and Property Construction and Planning (PCP). Executive Dean, Professor Melvyn Lees says: "Together they offer an educational experience of the highest quality, whilst remaining strongly focused on employability through their flexible approach to learning, which focuses on the practical application of our technologies. As a result, TEE is attracting significant interest from overseas and postgraduate students."
Crucial to the Faculty's educational profile is its development of technological research under the guidance of Associate Dean, Professor Hastings McKenzie. This builds on TEE's long-standing, proven engineering and wide-ranging technological strengths. Through the global impact of computerisation and associated IT-disciplines, all technologies are tending to converge. TEE is particularly seeing this in the context of the environment and challenges posed by global climate change, with which its research activities are closely involved. TEE's most recent research, through its co-ordination of UK's leading regional Environmental Technologies Cluster, has seen it developing significant Bio-energy production advances.
The Faculty's reputation has been boosted by its growing number of collaborative relationships under the guidance of Peter Rayson, Associate Dean, with global and local businesses, as well as with professional firms, institutions and government organisations. TEE has enjoyed successful, long-term partnerships with global giants Microsoft and Cisco, enabling the Faculty to have leading national and international roles in information technology and computer networking. The academies, which TEE has been asked to run on behalf of such major corporations, have put it at the leading edge of IT-network and software development, teaching and training. Its success with such partnerships, over the last decade, has led to further transatlantic collaborations through the close links TEE has developed with international product design-software leader, PTC Inc., and US-based knowledge-based engineering (KBE) world-authority, Technosoft Inc. PTC particularly chose TEE to run its first UK academy, because PTC saw it as 'the UK's leading, new-style technology faculty', straddling both business and education sectors.
Such collaborative relationships have, in turn, attracted links between TEE and Apple, aerospace giant Rolls Royce, global electronics leader NEC, enterprise resource planning specialists SAP and the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation's UK Technical Centre.
However, collaboration with over 4000 small and medium engineering and technology-based businesses has seen TEE supporting new product development and transferring new technologies and skills into such companies.
These activities frequently involve student projects at undergraduate, postgraduate level and, increasingly, through applied research activities.
Wide scope
TEE's four schools have an academic course spectrum that covers more than 50 categories of technology and encompasses over 40 degree courses. Its degree portfolio extends from mechanical and electronic engineering, through motorsports and aerospace technology, environmental, construction and property studies, wide-ranging IT-based and computer networking courses, to multimedia, film, sound and digital broadcasting technologies. Its business-focused teams support industry through multiple student placements with organisations from one-man new media consultancies, through major engineering corporations to local government planning bodies.
TEE's close relationship with a wide variety of industries, from aerospace to agriculture, has brought with it a reputation for highly employable graduates. Its student-placement programmes provide affordable undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate student projects - from 16 weeks to 3 years. At one end of the scale many local companies have benefited from 16-week postgraduate placements. At the other end, businesses have entered into major technology transfer programmes with TEE graduates in 'knowledge transfer partnerships' (KTP) offering companies academic and practical research and support from the Faculty lasting up to three years.
As a UK-leader in multi-technology transfer programmes, TEE-based KTPs have seen many such smaller companies make significant progress. Among them Mechatherm International Ltd's two-year KTP helped it achieve international furnace-design leadership and earn national recognition, together with a regional 'Exporter of the Year Award'. A number of recent TEE-run KTP programmes have seen it achieve a record four finalists in 2009's Lord Stafford's innovation-based awards.
Various TEE engineering (BEng) courses are accredited by world-leading professional bodies for engineers and technologists: the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). Such endorsements offer Birmingham City University students a springboard to attaining either professional Chartered Engineer (CEng) or Incorporated Engineer (IEng) status, dependent on the course pursued.
Douglas Morley Smith, TEE's Associate Dean who oversees student recruitment, says: "At launch, TEE's four schools achieved record domestic intakes for 2009/10. A UK Government scheme also enabled the Faculty to accept an extra intake of suitably-qualified students. This reflects the popularity TEE's component schools have achieved through successful academic and student-employability records, backed by an excellent staff reputation."
Professor Lees concludes: "We're building an international 'profile of excellence' for TEE through expanding the range of subjects offered and further enhancing the student experience. We also offer state-of-the-art buildings and equipment, backed by a range of external partnerships second-to-none."
To find out more about Birmingham City University's Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment visit www.bcu.ac/tee-landing
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