Canadian Federation of Engineering Students

The Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) is a national organization that represents engineering students all across Canada. CFES provides a platform to facilitate sharing of know-how and the furthering of the engineering profession from a student perspective. Due to its national appeal, it is a bilingual organization. The CFES represents students on the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) which decides on the legitimacy of various engineering programs across the nation. Historically, CFES was instrumental in effecting change in the engineering student body. Following the Ecole Polytechnique incident, CFES was instrumental in advocating for more rigorous gun control laws as well as assist students in coping with the tragedy.

The CFES also conducts several events and services for YOUR benefit These include the yearly CFES President’s Meeting which serves as a platform for VP Externals from across the country to discuss best practices and understand what challenges could potentially arise from the various activities conducted by individual engineering societies. These meetings are attended by representative of almost all of the 49 member schools and thus representing 55000 students across the nation. In addition to this, CFES has been running the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) for several years now. The CEC is a competition between 150 of the brightest engineering students from across Canada vying for titles in each of the six categories including design, consulting, presentation and debate. The competitors for CEC are distilled from each leg of local competitions starting with the Waterloo Engineering Competition and then the Ontario Engineering Competition.

Additionally, CFES has been working hard to promote the needs of women in engineering and identify lacunae that need to be addressed. For this purpose, CFES runs the National Conference for Women in Engineering which runs annually. This conference encourages the interaction of professional engineers with the students and thus hope to address issues arising from gender issues in the engineering profession.

Additionally, in order to keep the engineering students across Canada up to date and relevant in the future, CFES organizes Complementary Education courses in a wide variety of subjects ranging from “The Engineering of Beer” to “Sustainable Engineering”. These courses are heavily subsidized and provide an opportunity for one to gear up to be the engineer of tomorrow. Recently, CFES held a “Lean Six-Sigma Course” in partnership with Canada Post to provide the opportunity for Canadian engineering students to get certified in these career advancing qualifications.

Waterloo’s involvement with the CFES in quite extensive. This year, Waterloo is the host for the biggest event organized by the CFES; Congress. This Congress provides a platform for almost 200 students from over 40 different schools to interact. Furthermore, there are several sessions held by industry professionals to empower the national transfer of knowledge. The Congress also serves as the annual general body meeting of the CFES and policy changes are often made here.

Additionally, Waterloo is also the host and producer of “Project Magazine”. Project Magazine serves as the official medium of communication employed by the CFES and is the voice of engineering students across Canada. If you wish to help out with the running and making of this publications, email promag@cfes.ca.
Despite all the acronyms and cryptic sounding titles, CFES strives for a better tomorrow for the Canadian engineering profession.