Engineering Deans trained on effective research tools

Last Updated 9 years ago by Kenya Engineer

On December 3, 2015, world’s leading provider of scientific and technical products and services, Elsevier, trained Kenyatta University on essential research tools. The meeting was attended by Faculty of Engineering, Sciences and Technology teaching staff, Dean of the Faculty from the university and other universities. It aimed at educating the attendees on the importance of embracing research in carrying out their activities.

The Elsevier team was represented by Jan Quint, Regional Director, Engineering Solutions, Hesham Nassar and Mohammed Khairy, Solutions Manager; Ebooks encouraged the lecturers and deans to use their online application to help them in research activities whether one is doing a project, lecturing or in preparation of thesis papers.

Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), Prof. Joseph Okumu opened the short conference. “Deans of Engineering from various universities coming together is important as through such meetings, discussions are made on how to move better together as universities. This later eliminates the issue of competition. Through this also, Deans can also talk about sharing information and facilities among universities,” Prof. Okumu said.

He added “One area that we lag behind is research as people are not keen on it. As we teach engineering, we need to add research in teaching so as to increase knowledge and expertise on the area. Thus, we should be encouraging more people to enlighten us in the area of research. I am glad that Elsevier has dedicated it’s time to come and teach us on how to use new tools of teaching and ways to make our research better.”

At the conference engineers were taken through topics such as Elsevier engineering solutions, engineering village, Knovel, Geofacets, ebooks partnership strategy among universities and the value of content to facilitate engineering research among others.

The first presentation that was done by Hesham Nassar was on engineering village, an online platform (www.engineeringvillage.com/app) where engineers can access 12 literature and patent databases providing engineering solutions. This session had more interaction as deans threw out questions on the presenter. In addition, presentation on Science Direct was unique and educative. Science Direct (www.scinecedirect.com) is the single largest integrated book and journal research platform with most impactful scientific content in the world.