New Engineering Dean brings insights into remote and virtual laboratory classes
Published on 29 March, 2012
CQUniversity has appointed Professor Euan Lindsay as its new Dean of School, Engineering and Built Environment.
Later this year he will replace Dr Alan McPhail who took on the role as a limited-term appointment when the School was created.
As CQUniversity has campuses spread across a wide area, Professor Lindsay's research focus on remote and virtual laboratory classes for undergraduate engineering teaching will be a bonus.
The incoming Dean is a mechatronic engineer by training, although his expertise has broadened as his career has progressed.
His research interests include engineering education, telecontrol (particularly internet-based telecontrol), artificial neural networks, and rehabilitative technologies for people with sensing impairments.
Professor Lindsay's pioneering PhD investigated whether remote and simulated access alternatives to the traditional in-person laboratory experience could provide the same learning outcomes for students.
His work has shown that there are significant differences, not only in students' learning outcomes, but also in their perceptions of these outcomes, when they are exposed to the different access modes.
These differences have powerful implications for the design of remote and virtual laboratory classes in the future, and also provide an opportunity to match alternative access modes to the intended learning outcomes that they enhance.
Professor Lindsay was the 2010 President of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, and was the general chair for their 2011 conference. He is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Prof Lindsay was the recipient of a 2007 Carrick Award for Australian University Teaching. In 2005, he was named as one of the 30 Most Inspirational Young Engineers in Australia.
Euan grew up in a small country town outside Ballarat in Victoria. He earned his degrees at the University of Melbourne before moving to Curtin University to take up a lecturing position. He is happily married, and has one young child with a second on the way. He is a third Dan in the Seitei Iaido style of Japanese swordsmanship, and a second Dan in the Seitei Jodo style of Japanese staff fighting.