Did you vote yet? No? Alright go to your uwaterloo email account, find the election email, click on the link and vote. I’ll wait…
You’re done? Coo!l I can start now.
Hey everyone. We’re already a month into the term. Somehow I never cease to be amazed by how quickly time flies by. You’d think I’d get used to it after four years here, but here I am wondering where September went.
Enough small talk then, let’s start with the Presidential stuff. These past two weeks have been all about the elections (you might have a seen a poster here and there). However, my VPs and I did have a meeting with our Dean, Dr. Pearl Sullivan, last Friday. The Dean is a very intelligent person, with a lot of great ideas and opinions that resonate with me as an engineering student. Our meeting really showed that we’re on the same page on a lot of subjects, which is always good news. The Dean will be at our next council meeting on Wednesday October 16th. So come out if you want to hear what she has to say, and ask her any questions you might have for her. But until then, here are some things that we talked about at the meeting.
Orientation Week
The Dean was super impressed with O-Week this year. The week went great without any major hiccups. She even said EDCOM looked great this year! For the experienced leaders out there, you know that’s a big deal. So on behalf of the Dean, I want to thank all the leaders for being so great and wonderful. A special shout out to Chris, Christina, Elizabeth, and Lisa for being an amazing FOC team, showing the Dean, and everyone, how to run O-Week like pros.
E7
Can’t have a meeting with the Dean without talking about new buildings. The next planned building for Engineering will be Engineering 7(E7). The Dean will most definitely bring up E7 updates at the meeting so she’ll have tons more details. Anyways, it seems like it’ll be a while before we have E7 as the faculty still needs to raise a significant amount of money to fund the construction. Apparently the floor plan for E7 is done, but we haven’t had the chance to take a look at them yet. Hopefully we’ll get to see them really soon, perhaps at the council meeting.
Student Space
This was an issue that I personally wanted to raise with the Dean. When I did first year class visits a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the rooms were so overfilled that students were sitting on the stairs and floor. That’s not right. The Dean agrees with me, and explained that the reason behind the large number of first years is because the administration office underestimated the number of people accepting offers to Waterloo Engineering. Mind you, they have been underestimating for three years now, so it might be time to reevaluate the numbers. But anyways, the Dean understands where we’re coming from, and wants to have classrooms in E7 to accommodate the students. She also said that some programs, like Mechatronics, would have to be split into to cohorts real soon. These sounds like good steps moving forward, and I hope that she’ll continue working on this problem.
Education
One interesting topic the Dean brought up in the meeting is the education we are currently receiving. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Dean wants to shift our education to be more practical. The education system right now seems to encourage memorization of the course material, and regurgitating the material during some exams. She really wants move away from that, and try to reshape the courses so that we are learning the material and the skills that is needed out there in the industry. I don’t know how or how long will it take for her to bring about this change, but I hope that we can support her and get it done.
As I mentioned previously, if you want to hear more from the Dean, come out to the next council meeting on October 16th at CPH-3607.
That’s all I have for now.
Cheers.
Yasser
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