Today was the official opening for the new Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC) on the Waterloo campus, sponsored in-part by the co-founder of RIM and the Blackberry, Mike Lazaridis. This will be the new “home” for our Nanotechnology Engineering students, with classrooms, teaching and research labs, faculty offices, and meeting spaces where people can collaborate. The opening ceremonies had the usual speeches, which were actually quite inspirational. But the biggest excitement was generated at the start when Prof. Stephen Hawking from Cambridge delivered the opening address! Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 3 – QS
The 2012/2013 QS World University rankings were recently released. As with previous posts, I’m going to focus on the faculty-specific rankings, not the general overall ones. The 2012/2013 Engineering & Technology top 200 rankings are available here. Let’s summarize the methods and results for Canadian engineering schools. Continue reading
Thinking About Mining Engineering
The Macleans article I referenced in a previous post had a story about mining engineering, and the many lucrative career opportunities that are opening up in Canada. Part of this is the increased demand for resources (a similar story for petroleum), but part is the well-known demographic wave of upcoming retirements among engineering professionals. This is a challenge in many industries, and not unique to mining. There are a couple of things to say about this article, however. Continue reading
University Rankings: Macleans Professional Schools
The Canadian magazine “Macleans” does university rankings, and recently they published their “2012 Professional Schools Rankings“. I think you have to pay to see it, or buy a hardcopy. I have a subscription, and can summarize some of the information here. Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 2 – Webometrics
The “Ranking Web of Universities” or Webometrics ranking was recently updated. I have never noticed it in the past, so it’s new to me. The first thing to say is that it is a university-wide ranking, and not specific to Engineering. In the sub-section for Canada, Waterloo ranks #11, and #198 worldwide. Not bad I suppose, but as usual let’s look at what it is actually measuring. Continue reading
Top Ten Ways to Fail Your Engineering Program
Classes will be starting shortly, and this is the time when new students typically get some advice for their future studies. If you search around the web, you’ll find lots of blogs, books, forums, and pages with suggestions for how to succeed in university and engineering programs. Rather than add one more, I think I’ll provide the following list for students who want to fail out and toss away the $10,000 (or more) it cost in tuition and living expenses to attend for a term. These suggestions are based on many years of observation as an academic advisor dealing with failed-out students, so they’re guaranteed to work! They are somewhat specific to Waterloo Engineering, but I bet that many will work for other programs too. Continue reading
University Rankings: Round 1 – ARWU
The first set of university rankings has been released for this academic year. This is the ARWU (academic ranking of world universities) put out by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I’m going to focus on the rankings of “Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences” category, since that’s most relevant to my interests, and they can be found at this link. Since prospective students and parents sometimes spend a lot of time and effort pondering on the meaning of these rankings, let’s go through them together. Continue reading
About Engineer Stereotypes
Here’s a nice post about engineering stereotypes, and the importance of adapting to change. In Engineering Education, we might refer to this as “lifelong learning”, but similar idea. When we talk with prospective students, it’s important to dispel these old stereotypes, so thanks to the author!
My August column in Mechanical Engineering magazine.
The overplayed stereotype always had something to do with a socially inept engineer sporting a short-sleeve white shirt and slim black tie, big horn-rimmed glasses, and a pocket protector overstuffed with BIC pens. He always seemed to be working alone in some lab trying to figure out a way to calculate a new formula.
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but that guy is gone and with him the stereotype of who engineers are. If you think I’m kidding, you haven’t been paying attention. Hopefully, most of you are part of the transformation. If you’re not, look around you and see the young woman sitting a few feet away; she’s the new project manager. To her left, the guy with the tattoo is just home to Seattle from Bolivia and wants to go back to help build a new plant for a burgeoning…
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Repeated Courses and Why We Care
Admission to our Engineering programs requires the completion of certain Grade 12 courses (or equivalents in various other school systems), specifically Functions, Calculus, English, Chemistry and Physics in Ontario. For many years we have discouraged the idea of re-taking any of these required courses to boost marks and get a competitive edge for admission. In recent years, this has taken the form of a penalty of around 5% points off the overall average of the required courses if one or more are repeated (the higher grade is used). The net effect is that unless the repeated course(s) add at least another 30 percentage points to the total, repeating a course is not worthwhile for competitive advantage in admissions. In many cases, repeating course(s) will knock the application out of the competition completely. Other universities seem to have a range of approaches, from accepting repeats without question to ignoring the improved grade completely. So, we’re somewhere in between. But why use this penalty approach? Continue reading
What Do Engineers Do?
Here’s a great post about what it’s like to be an electrical engineer. These are the sorts of stories we like to use to help prospective students decide on their career path, so thanks to the author!
When you think of what an engineer does on a daily basis, what comes to mind? Do you think we sit around and solve math problems all day? Maybe you think we sit in a cube and work on our projects alone.
Well, I have to confess that I don’t perform calculations all day. I’m sure that there are some engineers who spend time “doing the math”, but most of the calculations I do are either relatively simple or I rely on software to do it for me.
So, what is life as an engineer like? What do I do in a typical day? Considering that engineers aren’t typically known for their communication skills, I spend a considerable amount of time communicating via emails, in meetings and on conference calls. Oftentimes, I am communicating with colleagues around the world. (It gets really interesting when you have an engineer in Mexico…
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A Professor in Waterloo Engineering 