In September 2007, 98 students made history as the first Management Engineering class at the University of Waterloo, the untested 13th program within the Faculty of Engineering. Five long years later, they are about to graduate, as a new breed of engineers.
The Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo has existed since the 1960s, but did not offer any specific programs until January 1969, when it launched its graduate programs. Still, it had no undergraduate program until 2007. The Bachelor of Applied Science in Management Engineering program was designed after three years of planning and collaboration with the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), which ensures that graduating engineering students have an appropriate knowledge base, analytical, investigative, and design skills, professionalism, and ethics necessary for the academic component of professional engineering license. Graduates of an accredited Canadian engineering program are eligible to apply for the full professional engineering designation in Canada after four years of work experience and passing the Professional Practice Exam.
Over the past five years, the CEAB has been rigorously reviewing academic material as it was being introduced, from lesson plans and texts to homework assignments and exams. As such, it was only last month that the CEAB met and approved full accreditation of the Management Engineering program. This allowed the Management Engineering class of 2012 to convocate on June 16th, 2012 along with other students who completed their last term in Winter 2012.
Management Engineering is also the fourth new undergraduate program to have been added to the Faculty of Engineering, following Nanotechnology (2005), Mechatronics (2003) and Software (2001). Unlike its predecessors, however, Management is a broader program designed to be applicable to a variety of applications. The Management engineering program is designed to train students to efficiently and effectively manage engineering projects by combining a strong technical knowledge base and with the fundamentals of business management. Unlike Industrial Engineering programs at other universities, the Management Engineering program also addresses current issues such as data mining and information technology.
What this all means is that the Management Engineering class of 2012 are the only Management Engineering students in Canada to graduate from an accredited program. I’m not sure how many of the original 98 are left, but I trust that five years in Waterloo have left them hardened to failure, better looking in business formal, faster touch typists, and just more experienced and tougher all around.
Congratulations to our newest accredited program!
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