November 22, 2025: Project Drona Webinar: Leveraging Stories to Demonstrate Soft Skills to Gen Z Project Drona, HYSEA’s award-winning Faculty Development Program, continues to strengthen the bridge between industry expectations and engineering faculty who shape thousands of students every year. As part of this mission, HYSEA hosted an insightful session on “Leveraging Stories to Demonstrate Soft Skills to Gen Z – for College Faculty.” In this session, we addressed a crucial shift: Gen Z responds not to traditional instruction alone, but to real-world relevance, clarity, and authentic communication. We were privileged to curate a powerful conversation with panelists Geetha Murthy, Sri Charan Lakkaraju, Dr Sailaja Ph.D. Sailaja, who also moderated the discussion. Together, they unpacked how educators can transform classroom experiences through:
• Storytelling as a teaching tool to make soft skills visible, relatable, and memorable.
• Helping students understand the value of soft skills as human, relational, and future-workforce essentials.
• The increasing importance of empathy, emotional intelligence, and active listening in faculty-student interactions.
• Strategies to integrate communication, confidence, creativity, and effective presentation skills into daily teaching.
• Creating classroom environments where Gen Z feels engaged, supported, and inspired to participate through Project Drona, HYSEA remains committed to enabling such impactful conversations, equipping faculty with tools, perspectives, and confidence to nurture the next generation of thinkers and professionals.
