Dear IFEES community, dear friends,

I begin my two-year term as president of IFEES with a mixed feeling of gratitude, responsibility, and pride for working with all of you to facilitate collaboration between our societies, corporate, and institutional members, promote the relevance of engineering education, and seek its continuous adaptation to current and future times.

Through collaboration and sharing our community’s expertise and leadership, IFEES can make a difference in the global challenges we all face. In particular, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has passed its halfway point since its adoption by UN Member States in 2015. Through our collaboration, we must keep in our hearts and minds their Sustainable Development Goals to transform our world with a peace-engineering mindset to provide sustainable access to economic, social, and technological progress in a culture of quality, and in an environment based on dignity, trust and respect, and in harmony with nature. To this end, it is essential to cultivate responsible and sensible engineers, taking into account the new ways of learning of the new generations of students, and aware that today long-term learning, and emerging micro-credentials, are a vital need to mitigate the apparent obsolescence of traditional careers as a result of the rapid evolution of technology and environmental conditions that are modifying the expectations of all stakeholders.

I cannot fail to express my gratitude to all my predecessors for their commitment to driving our federation forward, and to all those who have supported the many actions of IFEES by expanding its activities and recognizing the pioneers and leaders in the different facets of engineering education. My appreciation is not only for the serious commitment of engineering education societies and their equivalents, but also the highly valued relationships we have with corporate colleagues, and the deep commitment to engage student leaders in our global efforts since they represent our relay at all levels, professional and academic, additionally bringing generational diversity in the federation’s perspectives.

I call on IFEES members and partners to get even more involved. As a federation of societies, institutions, and partners that receive the contributions of our respective members, we must follow a “glocal” vision of engineering education, extended globally, worldwide, where the different technical, economic, and social conditions demand a local implementation that, in turn, by serendipity, can be adequate or fit into other environments.

Luis Manuel Sánchez Ruiz
IFEES President, 2024-2026