It's great to end the week on a high - to go home uplifted by something rather than tired and in need of a gin-and-tonic and a restful weekend.

My last engagement of the week was to officiate at the closing session of the 'Global Engineering Challenge' event.  This has involved all first year engineering students working together, across all departments and with students from all over the world, on team projects to create solutions for the difficulties of daily living in the 'global south'.  It has brought together not just undergraduates but also postgraduate students to act as facilitators to the groups, plus acacdemic and support staff, plus recent engineering alumni, plus employers. This afternoon Mike Hounslow, PVC for Engineering, Rebecca Hughes, PVC International, and me have hosted the final sessions of the event in three different lecture theatres simultaneously (given the 900 or so students involved).  Tata Steel sponsored prizes for winning teams and senior figures from the company were there to make the awards, and to get the message across to the students that what employers so often are looking for are not just the disciplinary understanding but also the softer skills of experience of team work, communications skills, project management and the like.  And so many of these can be gained through extra-curricular activities just as much as through study.

We undertook a feedback evaluation of the week in the final session, which provided strong evidence that students had found the whole thing very stimulating.  A team of Journalism Studies students had made a documentary film about it and even the excellent rough cut they showed on screen demonstrated the enthusiasm of the engineering students as they went about their projects in groups of six.

Creating a real inclusive acacdemic community in a university of our size is not easy.  In big departments undergraduates, postgraduate taught students, postgraduate researchers, acacdemic staff, and support staff often don't mix.  I've often been surprised at how little my own final year undergraduate students understand of the wider portfolio of activities within their own department, with staff research activities often being a closed book to them.  And students quickly establish friendship groups and stick to them, rather than welcoming in the newcomers or those from very different backgrounds.  It seems to me that the Global Engineering Challenge activity should go a long way to establish a wide academic community across Engineering.  What I want to se now is whether the idea of mass group projects brining lots of stakeholders together can be reproduced successfully in other faculties.

So, a good end to the week.  Except that I came home in the recognition that I have 34 final year exam papers to mark over the weekend.  I need that Friday evening gin-and-tonic after all before getting down to them tomorow.