In this issue of the Iron Warrior, I would like to give everyone a brief update about the PDENG Renewal Task Force. First, a brief reminder about what the PDENG Renewal Task Force is. The PDENG Renewal Task Force was put in place in late December of 2009, by the Dean of Engineering (Dr. Adel Sedra), and its main purpose is to come up with recommendations on how to improve the PDENG program. The Dean has decided to set-up a fairly small task force in order to effectively make progress. The task force is chaired by the Associate Dean of Co-op and Professional Affairs (Dr. Wayne Parker) and consists of representation from faculty, co-op, PDENG and the student body – which are David Liu, current VP-Education of EngSoc A and myself.
So far this term the task force has been meeting at least twice a week and has been taking two general directions as for improving PDENG – (1) To conduct a full scale rebuild of the program and (2) To implement some short-term fixes to the current program. As far as the first direction is concerned, at this point we have been able to go back and review some of the underlying assumptions about the program and also come up with the “skeleton” outline of what the new courses will be covering, and what will be their basic structure and purpose.
On Friday, February 12, 2010 the task force has released all of the recommendations thus far and the structure of those courses on its website – http://www.engineering.uwaterloo.ca/pdengrenewal. I would highly encourage you to log into the website, read through the recommendations and provide us feedback. This will only take about 10 minutes and it is very easy and convenient to provide recommendations. Furthermore, your recommendations will be of great value to us as otherwise we will never know if you have any issues with the proposed changes and the new structure – so please provide your feedback. Feedback will be accepted until March 1, 2010.
At the same time we will also be gathering feedback from faculty, alumni and CECS in order to ensure everyone is connected and engaged in the new PDENG review process. Finally, keep in mind that those recommendations are based on only 5 weeks of the task force efforts and there are 10 more weeks to go – therefore if a particular issue hasn’t been addressed (i.e. mentors), it is probably due to the fact that we have yet to discuss it.
As far as the second direction is concerned, a smaller sub-group of the task force is having additional meetings in order to discuss which changes can be done to the current courses right away in order to benefit the current students. Based on your input (that I gained from the EngSoc Mailing List) and based on the faculty and PDENG input we have gathered a short list of all possible changes that could be implemented immediately – either if at all possible in the current term or in time for the summer 2010 term. The suggestions that have been considered thus far are also posted on the web site – http://www.engineering.uwaterloo.ca/pdengrenewal, and there are a lot more to consider. In the meantime please provide your feedback on those suggestions as well!
This is all for now, stay tuned for more updates. If you have any questions, concerns and/or suggestions please reach feel free to reach me or David by e-mail: aavrelin@engmail.uwaterloo.ca or asoc_vpedu@engmail.uwaterloo.ca
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