Iftekhar Khan has been nominated for Teacher/Trainer of the Year award based on their role as a vocational education teacher in Engineering and Electro-Technology.

Originally from Bangladesh, Iftekhar received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and worked in the international ship building industry for four years. Iftekhar came to Australia as an experienced mechanical engineer.

He commenced a Master of Engineering at RMIT. It is while Iftekhar was completing his master’s degree that he started casual teaching in higher education but soon moved to teaching mechanical engineering in Vocational Education. Once Iftekhar completed his Master of Engineering, he commenced his PhD at RMIT, as well as teaching.

His expertise is in mechanical engineering in renewable and sustainable energy. He also received a scholarship to work as a postgraduate intern for the Australian Government Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) for six months.

Apart from managing working full-time and studying a PhD the other challenge that Iftekhar had teaching was that many of his students came from different backgrounds. Some of the students came to his class never having learnt physics in high school, which is integral to engineering.

To eliminate students dropping out and dissatisfaction, in the first four weeks of the course he would assume that no one had any background in physics, assuming all students were at the same level. He would take more time with those who did not have any background knowledge of physics. He would explain basic physics so that students had a good understanding and quickly get to the same level of comprehension of those students who had previously studied physics.

Iftekhar is empathetic to students learning needs and is passionate about engaging students with diverse learning needs. He sets out to identify students with diverse learning needs, such as those who already have an equitable learning plan, those with mental health issues or other learning difficulties. Iftekhar makes it his responsibility to discuss with them what their learning difficulty is and then plan how to help them. He has found students with ADHD that have struggled to stay focused in his class. After identifying these students early on in his class, he gets them to sit at the front of the class so that they can focus and are less distracted. Students are happy with Iftekhar’s support because they do not get this level of support in every class they have. Students have told him that without this level of support they are unlikely to go to classes if they are struggling.