The role of university-industry liaisons to enhance engineering curricular development

One of the main challenges in developing new engineering curricula is to satisfy industrial needs by the newly graduated students, increasing competiveness as well as adapting to social and economic demands, a fundamental aspect considered in European Higher Education Area, as well as by professional accreditation and engineering associations. Among the factors that reduce this necessary feedback is low exposure of academic staff to industrial environments and company strategies which are not directly focused in the role of academia within their organizations. However, it is an established fact that increasing University-Industry relations has mutual positive effects. In this work, the benefit of University-Industry interaction will be analyzed in terms of several initiatives which are currently being adopted in the framework of Engineering Degree curricula at the Public University of Navarra. Interaction by means of the development of final degree projects, master thesis and doctoral thesis will be described, which have the goal to increase synergies among students, academia and members of the industry. The results reveal high degree of satisfaction among all participants. This on-going experience serves as a reference point in order to analyze future interaction methods in order to adapt future course planning in Engineering degrees at UPNA.