James Salamy
Faculty of Engineering
Inspiring engineers to think bigger, build braver and shape the future
James is encouraging students to challenge themselves and problem-solve through open-ended, real-world scenarios.
What are you doing differently in your field that you believe is driving real change?
In the units I have designed, we have moved away from the traditional closed ended tasks. Instead, students are encouraged to challenge themselves against open-ended real-world specifications and scenarios. They tackle these by applying creativity and initiative, alongside their technical learning, to solve problems together.
How do you help students build confidence, not just knowledge?
Confidence is an investment. The role of the units that I teach is making these investments. This is done by building strong foundations via exploration, failure, and iteration. Students can then rely on the strength of these foundations to build their own structures and successes. A student’s confidence is a deeply personal thing, it depends on their unique experience and path. Having the confidence to succeed, paired with the competence to back it up is critical to being successful once outside the structure of a classroom.
What do you hope your students take away from their time with you? Is there a student moment you’ll never forget, and why?
The knowledge that they can and will solve difficult problems, because they’ve done it before is what I hope they will take away. Uni can be hard. But it is from hardship and challenge that some of our best memories are made. Each year, I am so proud to watch students rise to the challenges we set, and overcome them, despite self doubt and uncertainty, and reflect on how far they’ve come along.
I will never forget the look in one student’s eyes, of their own pride, when they finally ‘got the hang of’ the programming, and started to find that the tasks just clicked – they had unfortunately needed to repeat the unit, but they came back stronger, and were able to engage and challenge their preconceptions around their own limits.
Confidence is an investment. The role of the units that I teach is making these investments. ”
What do you hope your students remember about you 10 years from now?
I hope that students remember me as someone who helped or inspired them to climb the first mountain.
I want our students to understand the complexity of the world, and that nobody has the all the answers. Despite this, I want them to carry their hard-won knowledge, and their ability to learn and build from experiences into their careers, knowing that they can analyse the complexity, and help.
I hope that in 10 years, the foundations we have helped our graduates build are buried under so many layers of experience and knowledge that they aren’t consciously aware that they exist.
What legacy or ripple effect do you hope to leave behind?
I hope that I have shown my students that each new thing they learn not only builds their knowledge, but changes the way they use all the skills they have developed over the years. Engineering students are tasked with learning many skills. Sometimes it is hard to see the wood for all the trees – and my role is to help students see the connections between skills and the human world they’re working to change.
I hope that my legacy is in these new graduate engineers who are able to cross domains confidently, in order to solve problems I can’t even envisage today.
What’s something about Monash that would surprise people?
The number of unique experiences that are possible, and the passion with which students and staff pursue them I think would come as a surprise to many. Monash is full of multi-dimensional people, from so many different walks of life, who all do incredible things.
What’s the biggest myth about university education you wish more people would rethink?
I think many prospective students have assumptions about the nature of what it means to study engineering at university. Some assume that it is all maths. Some assume it is all practice and building things. Some assume it is all about exams and grades. Many students are surprised at the range of experiences that are part of learning to be an engineer.
The most important thing for a student engineer to learn in their studies is how to think about a problem – how to define it, how to approach it, and how to ultimately propose a solution to it.
What motivates you to continue pushing boundaries in your work?
When I am approached by former students on campus, or at graduations, and they tell me how important their time in my units have been in their lives. Knowing that the work I do does stick in their minds motivates me to keep going the extra mile with my current students.
How do you tailor your teaching approach to engage and inspire today's students?
Flexibility. Students coming to Monash come from an enormous range of backgrounds and are looking for different things from their time here. I try to maximise the options students have to engage with their studies, while providing deep, authentic, and inspiring experiences. This requires a balancing act, but gives students the best opportunity to learn.