Haven’t had much time for writing posts lately, being busy with admissions, teaching an Air  Pollution Control course, and dealing with several research projects.  But here are a couple of interesting stories on what our students do outside of class, just to illustrate the diversity of opportunities.

Emily

Emily is a Civil Engineering student with a big interest in entrepreneurship.  She has started a company and won several prestigious awards.  Her company is not based on what you would call “classical” civil engineering, but nevertheless it involves project management, problem analysis, and creative solutions.  You can read more about her and the business here and here and here.  Emily has taken full advantage of the entrepreneurship and business training and experience opportunities at Waterloo, such as Enterprise Co-op, CBET, and VeloCity.  Her story is also interesting, because she came to Waterloo as one of those very few successful transfer admissions from engineering at “another university”, where she found the student culture was not a good fit (story here).  We are glad that she found a good fit and thrived at Waterloo.

Dominic

Dominic is a Mechanical Engineering student, and he has worked in the petrochemical industry during his 2012 workterms.  Specifically, he worked with Shell Canada, where his problem analysis efforts (Root Cause Analysis) resulted in $1 million savings per year for the company, and a Co-op Student of the Year award for him (see the story here).  It’s not clear from the story, but it is worthwhile to point out that he was only a second year student at the time.  Something to point out to those who claim that our junior students don’t know enough to be useful to companies.  We’ve always known that isn’t true, and Dominic is just one example. It also illustrates that if you want to work in the energy/petroleum industry, chemical engineering is not the only route.  There are lots of roles for other engineers too.

So, a couple of stories that I hope you find interesting and informative.  I always like learning about our students’ work experiences, and am frequently amazed by what they accomplish.