5. STEPS TOWARD IMPLEMENTATION

5.4. Professorial Experience and Interaction

• It is highly desirable for engineering professors to be recruited from industry after some years of effective experience. Engineering faculties in Canada have had only limited success in such recruiting.

• Several factors mitigate against the industry-to-university career route for engineering professors:
  • the desire by new engineering doctorates to continue with their researches,

  • the fact that starting salaries for engineering professors are generally lower than for counterparts in industry,

  • the standard requirement of universities that professors have doctorates prior to appointment,

  • the risk in leaving an industrial position for a somewhat uncertain continuity of career in the university until tenure is achieved,

  • the attitudes within the university regarding those who are proposed for faculty status with only a limited publication list.

• Industrial postdoctoral fellowships provide a good approach to industry for new doctoral graduates and are of sufficiently limited length that subsequent university recruitment is feasible.

• An effective means of providing engineering professors with useful and varied practical experience is through consulting arrangements with industry. Through this means, engineering professors can practice their profession on a continuing part-time basis. Most universities permit professors to spend 10 to 20% of their time on such consulting activity. Junior professors need effective assurance that allocation of time to consulting will not jeopardize their advancement prospects.

• Research contracts can be highly effective in building interaction between professors and industry.

• There should be encouragement and assistance by engineering faculties for professors to spent their sabbatical research and study leaves in industry.

• Industry can help by providing appropriate opportunities for research and study leaves and by providing some financial support to the professor during such leaves.

• One of the difficulties professors perceive in spending a prolonged period away from the university on leave is the potential disruption of their ongoing research programs and the break in continuity of the supervision of their graduate students. Provision for regular return visits to the university can assist in this.

RECOMMENDATION 53: Engineering faculties should formulate and gradually establish a policy of recruiting a majority of their professors after some years of effective engineering experience.

RECOMMENDATION 54: Granting agencies should expand their industrial postdoctoral fellowship programs.

RECOMMENDATION 55: Engineering faculties should provide encouragement and assistance for their professors to spent their sabbatical research and study leaves in industry.

RECOMMENDATION 56: Industry should provide appropriate opportunities for the employment of engineering professors during their research and study leaves.

RECOMMENDATION 57: Engineering faculties should encourage involvement of their engineering professors in appropriate consulting arrangements with industry and with other users of engineering services.