First joint professor for WITT

“Engineering isn’t about maths and science, it’s about people, everything we do is with people at the centre of it – from trying to make people’s lives better to solving problems they face,” says Tim Anderson who joined WITT Te Pūkenga at the beginning of the year in a joint Associate Professorship position with the Victoria University of Wellington.

People are also at the heart of his new role. The role positions him to help bridge the gap between vocational and university education and take advantage of business development opportunities to further grow and develop student pathways and course offerings to better meet the needs of students, industry and regional New Zealand.

With a career focused on transitional energy, relocating to New Zealand’s future energy centre has been a happy coincidence for Tim.

 “Some of the questions I am interested in are - what are the future requirements for the energy industry as oil and gas taper off? What are the opportunities for people, what skills do they need to develop to equip themselves for the future energy landscape?”

Some of that work includes developing and delivering courses and micro-credentials in renewable and transitional energy alongside his day-to-day teaching on the engineering degree programme.

He is enjoying the smaller class sizes and says it is a completely different way of interacting with students: “I’ve gone from a traditional lecturing model to more of an interactive collaborative discussion-based teaching approach.”

Students are benefiting from Tim’s extensive experience, research, industry knowledge and interest in 'cleantech' products such as heat pump water heaters, integrated photovoltaic and solar thermal collectors, and smart household energy management systems.

“We’re fortunate to have someone of Tim’s calibre sharing his expertise across the organisation and inspiring the engineers of tomorrow,” says WITT Te Pūkenga Acting Director Engineering, Energy and NZIHT Jill Warner.

That expertise is built on more than two decades of research, published work and experience working on renewable energy technologies in roles at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Deakin University and Waikato University. He is also supervising three PHD students, serves on two New Zealand standards committees (Solar Water Heating and High-Temperature Heat Pumps), is the associate editor of the Australian Journal of Multi-disciplinary Engineering and is a member of many engineering committees and societies.