Co-op education

Biomedical Engineering Starts Here

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Exciting news for those who have been asking about Biomedical Engineering at Waterloo!  All the necessary internal and external approvals have been received and we are launching an undergraduate (B.A.Sc.) program in September 2014.  So the OUAC application centre should now be able to take applications to this program.

A prosthetic eye, an example of a biomedical e...
A prosthetic eye, an example of a biomedical engineering application of mechanical engineering and biocompatible materials to ophthalmology. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll provide some brief details about the program below, and then some more detailed thoughts and comparisons in future posts.

  • Like all of our engineering programs, this one will have program-specific courses right from the first day, and will be a mandatory co-op program (alternating 4 month periods of academic and industry work experience).
  • This will be a modified Stream 8 program (i.e. the first co-op job starts at the end of 1st year, after 8 months of academic study).  One unique feature is an 8 month workterm between 3rd and 4th year, followed by eight months of academic work.  This gives more time to focus on one work term job, and more time to focus on a major design project in 4th year.
  • The Biomedical Engineering program is a joint undertaking with input and teaching by several departments including Systems Design Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Biology, and the School of Anatomy.  It pulls together a lot of biomedical engineering expertise that already exists across those departments.
  • The curriculum was designed with significant input from industry and graduate schools, so it should be very relevant for either path.
  • Admission requirements:  same course requirements as all of our other engineering programs. (in Ontario, ENG4U, SPH4U, SCH4U, MHF4U, MCV4U, + one other U/M course).  High school biology is not required.
  • Grade requirements?  Hard to say, because that depends on the level of competition (i.e. number of applicants and their grades).  There are only 45 spaces available in 2014, so we are guessing that mid to high 80’s might be necessary but it could go higher or lower.  If you are interested, just apply and see what happens.
  • Another unique feature:  the program provides the opportunity to focus in a couple of interesting areas, namely Neuroscience and Sports Engineering.
  • It is expected that there will be significant interactions with Waterloo’s Department of Kinesiology, as well as the Schools of Computer Science, Pharmacy, Optometry & Vision Science, and the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience.  A lot of biomedical research already takes place at Waterloo, as brought together in our Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology, so there should be opportunities for students to work on research projects (as there are with all of our programs).

There are other details I will cover later, but let me know in the comments if there are specific topics or questions I should try to address.

A Sample Co-op Experience in Chemical Engineering

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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.A Shell and Tube heat exchanger

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”

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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.

An Engineer’s Life (with 2 weeks experience!)

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Some good advice and observations from a new Electrical Engineering student. Nice writing too!

JawadAtWaterloo

Hello people! How y’all doing?

First of all, I got a new computer for school (Yayyy!). This is my first blog post in this new computer, so I thought I should talk a little about the necessity of getting a new computer for Engineering. I would not say that you really need a new computer for Engineering, but sometimes you do need to run software like AutoCad, programming compilers and so on. If you feel that your computer is very slow with multitasking, or that it has poor battery life and portability, I would probably start saving up for a new computer. Not something fancy for sure, but something that is able to manage everyday work and still handle some rigorous software needs. (My new computer, by the way, is a i5 core with 8 GB RAM and 1 TB HDD).

How’s Engineering, you ask? If I were to answer…

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Engineering Economics

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All engineering programs in Canada are required to include content on “Engineering Economics”.  At Waterloo, students in most programs take MSCI 261 Engineering Economics:  Financial Management for Engineers.  I also include some capital and operating cost estimation in the CHE 480 course I teach (Process Analysis and Design).

These are not your typical economics courses, like ECON 101, looking at consumers, outputs, markets, money supply and all that stuff.  Engineering economics is much more project-oriented, so it teaches techniques for comparing different options.  For example, given certain capital and operating costs and lifespans, is it better to purchase Machine A or Machine B?  To illustrate, let’s compare the costs of 4 university engineering programs, namely:  Waterloo stream 8, Waterloo stream 4, Toronto-PEY, and Toronto-regular. Continue reading →

Things People Say About Co-op

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Engineering Five building at the University of...

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.

Continue reading →

If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard | LinkedIn

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Below is the introduction from an interesting article on LinkedIn (follow the link at the end for the complete thing).  Essentially, his thesis is that the most “elite” or “prestigious” colleges/universities cost so much that your entrepreneurial options after graduation are limited (in the title, “Harvard” is used figuratively to represent expensive schools).  He recommends going to a cheaper school that you can more easily afford, so you don’t build up a crushing debt.  (I’ll add that universities with paid internships or co-ops are a good way of minimizing debt too!).  The article is well worth reading.

August 16, 2013

Vivek Wadhwa

Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University

My greatest disappointment after joining academia was to see my most promising students accept jobs at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. Engineering students with ambitions to save the world would instead become financial analysts—who used their skills to “engineer” our financial system. Or they would take grunt jobs in management consulting—another waste of valuable talent.

Why would they sell their souls? Because they had no choice, the burden of debt they amassed while getting their degrees was just too great. They had six-figure student loans to repay and couldn’t take the risk of joining a startup or founding their own business.

…(click link below for the rest)

via If You Want to Be an Entrepreneur, Don’t Go to Harvard | LinkedIn.

Ideas start here

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Here’s a nice short video about innovation at Waterloo. Our Creative Services department always does a nice job on various materials, including this video. I like the part about “Bring us your curiosity…imagination…drive”. I think that nicely captures the spirit of the types of students we hope to attract to Engineering.

bethbohnert

Script and concept: Beth Bohnert
Production: Creative Services, University of Waterloo

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Pre-University Homework

/ profbillanderson / 17 Comments

For those who just finished high school and are starting university in September, here is some homework to complete over the summer.  It’s specifically for those starting Waterloo Engineering, but might be useful for other programs and universities too.  It’s not compulsory, and you won’t get any marks for it.  But if you do it, you’ll find yourself ahead of the class and much less stressed in September/October and beyond. Continue reading →

Co-op Education: Try before you buy

/ profbillanderson / 1 Comment

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.