First Month of Waterloo Engineering / Bo Peng’s World.
I like these student blogs that give an example of what university life can be like in one of our programs.
Students
Sunscreen warning markers earn top grades at Women Entrepreneurs Bootcamp
Sunscreen warning markers earn top grades at Women Entrepreneurs Bootcamp.
Here is an interesting story about some of our Nanotechnology Engineering students, who used their creativity and expertise in materials science to develop a business idea for a compound that warns you when you need to re-apply sunscreen. They won a $15,000 prize to help carry on building their start-up company.
There was another story a while ago about nanotechnology engineering graduates who were developing an improved de-icer compound for use in frost removal or control. Just a couple of examples of what nanotechnology engineering students do in the area of entrepreneurship.
Design Projects 2014
Been kind of busy lately, with several active research projects, teaching courses, and admissions stuff of course. But here is a quick note about our fourth year (capstone) design projects for this year.
All engineering programs have a final year group design project, and this is the time of year when students showcase their results. For potential applicants to an engineering program, this is very useful to look at, since it can give you a sense of the type of things you might do in a program. Many of these fourth year projects are also the start of a commercialization effort by the students, so perhaps you’ll see some of these in the news in coming years.
This year, the Faculty of Engineering has made it easy to find out more about these projects, since they have created a one-stop webpage for all the programs. Have a look through some of the links for programs at that page. Not all of the programs have detailed project descriptions, but I think we’re working on it for future years. I think that the Management Engineering program has some of the best descriptions (and very interesting projects too).
Let’s start an informal contest here. Look through some of the project descriptions, and identify in the comments below which one you think is the “coolest” (if that’s a word people still use).
Asking For Help
During first year engineering, a number of students will come to realize that they are struggling in one or more courses. This will be shocking and confusing to them, because they have probably never experienced it before. They have probably never had to ask for help before either. It is never our intention to “weed out” a bunch of students (that would be a waste of our time and resources), so we try to provide a lot of avenues for student support, especially in that crucial first year. Students just need to take the initiative and seek out the help that is available (since we often can’t tell who is struggling until it’s too late). Here is a brief overview of various ways to access help. Continue reading
A Sample Co-op Experience in Chemical Engineering
Here is a story about one of our Chemical Engineering students, and some of his work term experiences in the petrochemical industry. It’s typical of the variety of things that our students do during their 6 workterms over the course of our program.
by Shannon Tigert. A version of this piece originally appeared in the Spring 2013, ed. 2 issue of the Inside sCo-op newsletter.
Brodie Germain (4A Chemical Engineering) spent two rewarding co-op work terms at Suncor Energy. With his first two co-op jobs completed elsewhere, he was hired for his third work term as an Environmental Health and Safety Intern at Suncor’s wastewater treatment plant at the Mississauga Lubricant Facility. In this position, Brodie sampled the water the plant was using to ensure it was within government regulations.
Brodie’s position in his subsequent term at Suncor was Technical Services Intern, a support role for different engineers in the department. Each engineer is responsible for a different section of the plant, and by assisting all of them Brodie gained a variety of experiences.
A major project of Brodie’s during this term was a management of change analysis involving a heat exchanger problem; fluids passed through tubes to be heated and cooled. One of the fluids was picking up too much heat, reaching dangerously high temperatures. Various concerns and issues needed to be addressed, but Brodie appreciated the challenge. That’s because he connected what he was learning with things he had already done in school, like hydraulic calculations, collecting drawings and data sheets, and using logical thinking. Doing this kind of work was “as relevant as it gets” to his engineering degree, says Brodie: “I was able to find my strengths and weaknesses while developing my communication skills and technical foundations. A solid technical skills foundation is the most important practical thing to have as an engineer.” Continue reading
“Silicon Valley’s Canadian Feeder School”
That’s the title of a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about the University of Waterloo’s engineering program that appeared this week in their Technology Section. You can read the article on this website.
It goes on a bit too much about Blackberry, in my opinion, but does have some interesting statistics. For example, there are over 1,000 local tech companies now, and 700 start-up companies. Coincidentally, Macleans magazine listed Waterloo as Canada’s most innovative university for the 22nd year in a row this week.
Things People Say About Co-op
Engineering Five building at the University of Waterloo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of Waterloo Engineering’s major features for the past 50+ years has been the co-operative education system (“co-op”), where students alternate every 4 months (more or less) between academic classes on-campus and relevant work experience somewhere out there in the “real world”. In our system, Engineering students get 6 work opportunities, therefore 6 x 4 months = 24 months of work experience before graduation. There are various websites available giving more information and other details, including this one or this one. Over the years I’ve heard a number of comments and questions about co-op, and thought it might be useful to summarize some of the common and interesting ones here.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to speak at University of Waterloo
Here is an interesting development, for those on-campus in September.
WATERLOO, Ont. (Wednesday, August 14, 2013) – Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and one of the youngest tech executives in Silicon Valley, will address students and local entrepreneurs at the University of Waterloo this fall.
Dorsey, who launched his second successful startup, Square, in Canada last year will tell a 675-strong audience about entrepreneurship and how Square created a culture that inspires anyone to be an entrepreneur and leader.
The 36-year old will also meet some students and entrepreneurs at a private lunch to discuss entrepreneurship and see firsthand the quality of Waterloo students.
“Jack Dorsey started a new communications movement when he launched Twitter and changed the world for millions of people. He’s continued to blaze the technology trail with Square, which is starting to transform how we make payments. ” said Pearl Sullivan, dean of engineering at Waterloo. “Waterloo is recognized as a leader in technology and innovation. We are very honoured that Jack Dorsey is making our University the first stop on his Canadian visit. We live and breathe entrepreneurialism here at Wat
via Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to speak at University of Waterloo | Waterloo News.
Co-op Education: Try before you buy
In the Globe & Mail newspaper, there is a short opinion article about the value of co-operative education (i.e. a structured mixing of academics and work experience). It’s written by one of our Systems Design Engineering graduates, Andrew D’Souza, who is now COO of the educational software company Top Hat (yet another Waterloo engineering student start-up).
Andrew’s points are similar to what Waterloo’s literature tries to get across, but he is much more blunt about it. For example, in the article he says:
If university degrees came with a 90-day refund policy, I think we’d see a lot of unemployed students waiting in the returns line. Co-op programs are as close to a “try before you buy” deal as we’ll see in higher education anytime soon.
He also explains how he started in university with some pre-conceived notions about a career path, and how these quickly changed once he saw what it was actually like during a co-op work term. Hence the “try before you buy” idea, and the remaining work terms are an opportunity to switch gears to alternative paths, as he explains. When I talk to our students, this is a fairly common point that comes up in one way or another.
It’s an interesting article from someone with first-hand experience and a few years after graduation to reflect back on how it helped shape his path.
Interesting Engineering Student Stories
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.
A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 