Fakhteh Soltani-Tafreshi

Supervisors: Dr David Twigg and Professor John Dickens, Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University

The extent of industrial input into taught programmes and sponsored programmes at undergraduate level are the key distinctive features of the engineering degree programmes at Loughborough, developed over many years.

The aim of the research project is to investigate the impact of sponsorship on students, academic departments and industry in order to develop sustainable models of effective practice for further dissemination. This will be done through the capture of existing practice across sponsored and non-sponsored programmes within the Faculty, an evaluation of the benefits to the three stakeholders, an assessment of barriers that limit further sponsorship, and proposed strategies for future developments.  More detail on the research strategy can be found here.

During the first stage of this project, we are going to contact

•  Final year students to find out their experiences, achievements and views on the sponsorship scheme.
• First year students to find out their reasons for applying (or not applying) for sponsorship, their expectations and views on the sponsorship scheme. Follow up will be done in order to monitor the changes in their views during different years of their study.
• Professional bodies in order to find out about their role in developing Academic-Industry collaboration.
• Sponsoring companies in order to identify benefits of the scheme and barriers which limit future collaboration from their point of view.
• Recent graduates in order to find out the impact of the scheme on their career 

Different data collection methods such as: questionnaire and interview will be used in order to collect data from all involved parties.

Software packages such as SPSS and other statistical analysis packages will be used for data analysis.

Publications:

Soltani-Tafreshi, F., Twigg, D.R., & Dickens, J.G. (2007) The impact of industrial sponsorship on the final year students. The Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE 07), Melbourne, Australia.

Soltani-Tafreshi, F., Twigg, D.R., & Dickens, J.G. (2008) Industrial Sponsorship: Students’ expectations and achievements. Engineering Education 2008, Loughborough, UK.

Soltani-Tafreshi, F., Twigg, D.R., & Dickens, J.G. (2008) Industrial sponsorship: a successful practice in educating undergraduate engineering students. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE 08), Cape Town, South Africa.

Soltani-Tafreshi, F., Twigg, D.R., & Dickens, J.G. (2009) The Role of industrial involvement in education of engineering students. STEM PRM 2009, Loughborough, UK.

Soltani-Tafreshi, F., Twigg, D.R., & Dickens, J.G. (2009) Exploring the educational value of industrial sponsorships for undergraduate engineering students. ASEE 2009, Budapest, Hungary.