engineering careers

Co-op Education: Try before you buy

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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.

Who > Where

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The Bank of Montreal (BMO) recently released an interesting survey (summarized here) that ranks the qualities that business leaders look for when hiring new grads from college and university.  Basically, the ranking is:  Personality traits > Skill set > Work experience > References > Degree/school.

Not particularly surprising.  Nobody is going to hire someone whose personality is a “bad fit” for their organization, no matter what their degree says or how great their reference letters are.  Likewise, a great fit with good experience and skills will get snapped up even if their degree is from the University of Neverheardofit.

I didn’t see any details, but I would assume that this ranking is based on an interview process.  How else would one determine the “personality traits”?  So what about the earlier stages of a job search, when employers are deciding who to interview?  I suspect the ranking remains similar but without the personality traits, i.e. Skill set > Work experience > References > Degree/school.  At least, that’s what I usually look for in the hiring I’ve been involved with.

The take-home message?  If you’re working on building your career, focus on the top three things (personality, skills, experience).  For the degree and school, do whatever works best for you and your situation, because it probably doesn’t matter all that much in the long term.  Just my opinion anyways.

Electrical and Computer Design Projects 2013

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Continuing the topic of the previous post on Mechatronics fourth year design projects, here is a list of projects completed by the graduating students in our Electrical and Computer Engineering programs.  Again, these are the result of the group design experience that is required in all of our engineering programs.  These projects are organized by “themes”, such as power systems, music/entertainment, software, sensors, and transportation (to name a few).  The list is a nice example of the scope and breadth of things that students in the ECE programs get involved with.  I assume that some of these projects are in collaboration with companies, although they aren’t explicitly identified.

If you would like more details on some of those projects, there is a book of “Abstracts” that gives a brief description about each project.  Glancing through, I like the naval collision avoidance system (and the helicopter missle avoidance too), the “Watchdog” animal monitor for veterinarians, and the electrostatic speaker design project.  But there are lots of others that seem quite interesting too.

Mechatronics Design Projects 2013

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Next week our graduating Mechatronics Engineering students present the results of their fourth year design projects during their Mechatronics Engineering Design Symposium.  There is a project list with links  so that you can see examples of what senior-level students do as their “capstone” design experience.  It is quite an interesting list, covering a variety of application areas such as biomedical (laparoscopic surgery and assistive devices), environmental (water treatment), agricultural (egg washing and sorting), and a rather intriguing 3D chocolate printer.  There are quite a variety of other things too, well worth looking at if you’re wondering what mechatronics engineering students do at Waterloo.

All Waterloo Engineering programs have similar upper year group design projects, usually selected or initiated by the students, and sometimes in collaboration with company sponsors.  The purpose is to provide an opportunity for “real world” design experience, with project management and communications included.  In many cases these are projects that are inspired or initiated during co-op work terms, and sometimes they are ideas that the students hope to commercialize after graduation.  For high school students trying to decide on a future path, looking at some of these projects can be very helpful in understanding what engineers do, so I’ll try to find more examples in the coming weeks.

Learning to Code

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My colleague Dana pointed out this nice little video promoting the teaching and learning of coding (i.e. programming) What Most Schools Don’t Teach . While it seems to be aimed at elementary or secondary school, I can appreciate the sentiment.

It’s not that everyone should be an expert in C++ or whatever. The idea I like is that learning coding or programming develops problem solving and logic skills. the ability to think in terms of algorithms, with inputs, outputs, loops, counters, etc. Even if you never need to code again, that is a useful learning process. Continue reading →

Waterloo Engineering in the New York Times

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Recently there was a nice article about Waterloo (the university and city) in the New York Times, that you can read here.  Overall, it’s quite complimentary and here is a sample of some notable quotes:

“The University of Waterloo…is one of the world’s best technology schools”.   “It’s got this amazing university which has long been one of our top three recruiting universities for Google as a whole, worldwide,…”.  “Different approaches, rather than money, have instead enabled it to attract prominent faculty members from around the world as well as Canada’s top engineering and computer science students.”

So some nice comments about the quality of Waterloo’s engineering students and faculty.  My main concern with the article is that it goes on a bit too much about RIM/Blackberry, perhaps giving the impression that a single company has been behind Waterloo’s growth and success.  RIM has certainly been an important supporter for the university, but there are literally thousands of other companies that have hired our co-op students and graduates for many years, and have also been important partners in teaching and research programs.  The article says that RIM hired 400 students in 2007, which seems like a lot, but to put it in perspective that is a small fraction of the thousands of students who took co-op jobs in one year.

The article also focuses on IT/communications technology, and ignores the many other areas where students and graduates have had significant impacts, like energy, pharmaceuticals, biomedical, aerospace, automotive, financial, and many more.  That’s typical though.  The media seems to find it easier to write stories about IT for their audience, maybe because it doesn’t require them to explain concepts in chemistry and physics.  But I think that after they have a look, most people realize there is more to Waterloo Engineering than just IT.

Engineering, Business, and Finance

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Some university engineering programs have minors or specializations in Business or Finance, or similar areas.  Our Management Science Option (like a minor) is available for any engineering student and covers some business and finance topics, but is not quite the same thing.    Does this mean that Waterloo engineering students lack business skills and opportunities?  No, not at all because the co-operative education model provides lots of hands-on learning opportunities for students interested in the business-side of things.  Why take a bunch of courses, when you can learn on the job with business mentors?  As I noted in a previous post, there are lots of examples of students starting successful businesses, even before graduation, so it clearly seems to be working.

Then there is a recent story about a Systems Design Engineering student working with Manulife Financial, and her experience as a project manager in a large complex finanical company.  It reminds me that I’ve been told quite a few Systems Design Engineering students get co-op jobs in the financial industry.  I guess their problem solving and analytical skills dealing with complex systems serve them well in those jobs.  Just another example of how an engineering education can be a solid basis for careers in all sorts of unexpected places.

Looking for Aerospace Engineering

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A common question we get from prospective applicants is “do you have an aerospace engineering program?”.  The short answer is no, we don’t have a degree with that name.  But it is also an incomplete answer.  Often, students don’t realize the broader implications behind that question, so we try to provide some context for their question along the following lines. Continue reading →

Employment After Graduation?

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The universities in Ontario contribute data to the “Common University Data Ontario” (CUDO) database, and this can be interesting to look at when considering applications and offers.  You can select several universities and a specific piece of data, and do some side-by-side comparisons.  One of the questions we often get from applicants and parents is about employment prospects after graduation from Engineering.  Everyone worries about graduating and not being able to find a job, so let’s look at that specific piece of information for several universities. Continue reading →