Annick Dewald

About Annick Dewald

I studied engineering at Smith College, drawn by its engineering program in a small…

Experience

1. Founding Faculty

   Greenway Institute

   Sep 2024 — Present · Montpelier, VT, US

   As a founding faculty member at Greenway, I am part of a team committed to redesigning engineering education to equip students with the skills to tackle diverse design challenges. A Greenway degree will interweave two years of in-person, project-based learning with two years of faculty-mentored work-integrated learning, during which students earn credit and a paycheck. The project-based learning curriculum ensures that students engage with meaningful and hands-on work from the jump, enhancing their engineering identify and motivation. The work-integrated learning model ensures that our program will remain deeply connected to industry, resulting in an undergraduate experience that’s both fun and relevant, as well as graduates who are truly ready to work. Leveraging this innovative pedagogy, we are reshaping the four-year engineering program so that every student graduates with a degree, two years of work experience, a full-time job offer, and no debt.Many engineering students I’ve met are motivated by the chance to address pressing global challenges and apply the engineering design process to make a positive impact. These bright, solution-oriented future engineers are ready to confront complex problems. Yet, many programs treat engineering as isolated technical content rather than as an integrated approach to solving open-ended, complex problems with no single “right” answer. Most students spend four years in lectures and exams instead of engaging in real engineering design work, which is deeply collaborative and iterative. This creates a weed-out culture, with nearly 30% leaving engineering within the first year and only 33% graduating in four years. At Greenway, we are building a curriculum that emphasizes engineering as a collaborative, iterative process and are creating an environment where students who might otherwise leave—or never consider engineering—can thrive.