Before I go into the executive’s meeting with the Dean and what she had to say, I want to congratulate Kristina Lee for her ratification for VP External. Kristina is super passionate and has a lot of ideas for the VP External role and the Engineering Society. I’m very excited to have her join our team.
The executive team had a meeting with Prof. Pearl Sullivan, the Dean of Engineering. Prof. Sullivan also attended our council meeting, along with Prof. Wayne Parker, the Associate Dean of Cooperative Education and Professional Affairs, and they both had a lot to say. I’ll try to cover the most important and relevant points that they brought up.
Outcome Based Learning
One of the biggest issues that the faculty will be working on for the next several years is changing the education to an “Outcome Based Learning” model. To explain what this exactly means, I need to first explain the CEAB and the current accreditation method for engineering programs.
The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), is the board that, you guessed it, accredits undergraduate engineering programs across Canada. The current criteria for assessing an engineering program are “income based”, which basically means that the CEAB sets x number of hours that each topic/component needs to be taught in class. Calculus, engineering design, and ethics, are a few example of what those components may be. An engineering program needs to meet those criteria in order to be accredited, and that’s about it.
The new system will be looking at the outcomes of the education (i.e. what have the students learned), rather than what has been taught to the students. Criteria for Outcome Based Learning include a knowledge base for engineering, problem analysis, use of engineering tools, and communication skills. The first progress review will be in 2014, and the expected timeline for the new system to be implemented is 2020. So it’s a really long process, but the faculty is currently working to accommodate for the new system.
What does this mean to you? Well for those of you in 3rd and 4th year, not much. But for the younger years, there might be some changes happening to your curriculum. Some courses may be shifted around, and some courses may slightly change their syllabus and components. Nothing too major.
8 Month Co-op and Shifting Away from the Cohort System
So as you all know, our engineering programs are strictly laid out for us. We have an academic term, which is then followed by a work term, and so on. Well it seems that the faculty is looking into offering more flexibility to students, and switching to a system where the student can choose to have an 8 month co-op, without deferring their graduation by a year. Chemical Engineering has already started this transition by allowing 8-stream to take 8 month co-ops and then coming back to school with the 4-stream class. When will this change happen? We don’t know for sure, but it will be a slow and gradual change, that’s for sure. Some programs, especially programs with only one stream, will have difficulties switching to such a system since they will need to re-manage their resources (professors, labs, etc…). As I said, this will be a long process, and you’ll probably hear a lot more about it in the future.
There’s more that the Dean discussed, so if you want to know more, email me at president.b@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca, or just come talk to me.
That’s all from me for now. See you in 3 weeks!
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