Meda named SES 2022 Educator of the Year
Students rank professor highly for delivering relevant and impactful material.
By USask Engineering CommunicationsProfessor Venkatesh Meda from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is the 2022 Saskatoon Engineering Society (SES) Educator of the Year.
Meda has taught courses from first-year to fourth-year across several disciplines. His students rank him highly for delivering relevant and impactful material.
His philosophy for creating meaningful learning opportunities for students is straightforward.
“Think realistically, integrate key learnings to make a societal sense, and collaborate with allied disciplines including social sciences & humanities.”
Meda’s interdisciplinary approach incorporates engineering, agriculture, food technology, biomedicine, entrepreneurship, and project management. Project ideas and real-world scenarios are often analyzed and discussed in his classes. The result is added value to the curriculum and enhanced employability for upper-years students.
To add impact, Meda often invites his research collaborators – from academia, industry, government and community – to his undergraduate and graduate classes to participate in class discussions and projects. His research areas include post-harvest processing, food and bioprocess engineering, biomaterials, entrepreneurship, techno-economics and life-cycle assessment for the circular economy.
During remote learning, Meda’s students benefited from his live question-and-answer sessions for answering/clarifying questions and expectations and for wider discussion on engineering applications examples.
Meda's passion for engineering education is evidenced by his delivering of keynote lectures, participating in faculty development, serving as a mentor, supervising graduate students and engaging in interdisciplinary panel discussions on engineering education in Canada and beyond.