Dr Graham's background
Dr Ruth Graham has worked as an independent higher education consultant since 2008. Her work is focused on fostering change in higher education and helping to improve university teaching and learning worldwide.
With clients from across the world, Dr Graham's current and recent projects have included: (i) a global benchmarking study on the future of engineering education, on behalf of MIT; and (ii) a global initiative to improve the reward and recognition of teaching in higher education that is now supporting reform to academic career pathways at over 50 universities worldwide.
In June 2018, Dr Graham was awarded an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, for distinguished efforts in developing engineering programmes. In September 2020, she was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal by the European Society for Engineering Education for outstanding contributions to engineering education (see Laudatio).
Dr Graham trained as a Mechanical Engineer, specialising in aeronautical fatigue and working with BAE SYSTEMS for a number of years. In 2002 she moved to Imperial College London and later became Director of the EnVision project, which sought to transform the undergraduate education across all nine departments in the Faculty of Engineering and improve its culture of support and reward for teaching excellence.
Recent presentations
Dr Graham is a regular invited speaker at global conferences and events. Provided below are a selection of recent talks she has delivered, with the slides included as a pdf.
Rewarding teaching
Presentation at the d.school Stanford University on the global movement for change to the reward of university teaching (March 2023)
Engineering education
Keynote at the 2024 SEFI Engineering Deans Convention on future best practice in engineering education (June 2024)
Impact of Covid-19
Keynote at TE2022 Future of Engineering at MIT on the impact of Covid-19 on future best practice in engineering education (July 2022)
Teaching Cultures Survey
Amalgamated findings from the 2022 Teaching Cultures Survey, presented at the 2022 Advancing Teaching meeting in Amsterdam (June 2022)