Engineering Education in Canadian Universities

LISTING OF RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The Canadian Academy of Engineering, together with other engineering organizations in Canada, should focus efforts on informing the public on the role that the engineering profession plays in the welfare of the country, and on the important distinctions between engineering and science or technology.

2. The Canadian Academy of Engineering should commit itself to an active and continuing role in promoting engineering education of appropriate content and quality, in cooperation with engineering faculties, universities, industry, professional associations, technical societies and governments.

3. Engineering faculties should adopt, as their primary goal, the educational formation of students in preparation for entry to the engineering profession.

4. Engineering faculties should ensure that undergraduate engineering programs are broadly based and holistic in scope, including both those concepts which are fundamental to the discipline and those which are basic to closely related disciplines. Specialization of programs at the undergraduate level should be avoided.

5. The curriculum content should be designed to inculcate those basic attributes - concepts, techniques, skills, habits and insights - that are believed to be of lasting value and applicability. Recognizing that the lifetime of most technical information is short, the rationale for the inclusion of specific information content in the curriculum should primarily be its contribution to development of these basic desired attributes.

6. Engineering faculties should establish and maintain adequate means for obtaining significant and continuing input from engineering practitioners who can reflect the needs of the marketplace.

7. The curriculum should provide for the inclusion of the societal and environmental context of engineering, with both its benefits and negative impacts.

8. The curriculum should include at least one opportunity to undertake a major design task. The selection of this major design should be such as to emphasize a holistic approach.

9. The design and presentation of each engineering curriculum should be applications-based, integrating the basic concepts of mathematics, physical sciences, engineering sciences and analysis with their use in modelling, in problem solving, in optimization and in making engineering judgments.

10. Senior engineering professors with a broad range of practising experience should be assigned to teach an integrated approach to the fundamental basic subjects in the curriculum.

11. Engineering faculties should ensure that adequate resources are allocated to provide relevant and contemporary design example material. This requires an effective means of interaction between engineering professors and engineers in practice and also requires resources to process the experience material into a form suitable for undergraduate use.

12. Design exercises should be structured to include practice in searching out appropriate information using libraries, journals, standards, computer data bases and other information sources.

13. In structuring the curriculum, adequate provision should be made to develop skills of effective communication through written reports and through the presentation and discussion of design results with a group of peers and instructors.

14. Professors should give consideration to the increased use of case study materials in the presentation of engineering subjects.

15. The Canadian Academy of Engineering should take a lead role in establishing a system for the solicitation, preparation and dissemination of suitable case studies on engineering issues, particularly of Canadian origin, for use in engineering education programs.

16. The undergraduate program should be designed to develop teamwork and leadership skills through a cooperative learning approach.

17. Each undergraduate engineering program should provide opportunity and requirement for practical experience.

18. Canadian industry should progressively and collectively accept ongoing responsibility for providing adequate opportunities to engineering students for practical experience.

19. Industry and governments should devise incentives to encourage engineering students to seek experience in various regions of Canada and in foreign countries.

20. The present length of undergraduate program (32 teaching months) leading to a baccalaureate degree in engineering should be retained.

21. The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board should place its primary emphasis on criteria which depend on measures of the quality of the teaching staff, the quality of the learning environment and the quality of the attributes, skills and knowledge acquired by the undergraduate engineering students. The requirements for an appropriate mix of information content should be retained but given secondary emphasis.

22. Canadian engineering faculties should plan to restructure their graduate studies to introduce or expand appropriate postgraduate professional master's programs.

23. Each professional master's program should be designed to meet identified needs in one of the major career paths of engineering graduates: engineering design and manufacturing, engineering management, and engineering research and development. Some programs might be focused on the needs of a specific sector of Canadian industry.

24. Each professional masters program should be about 3 terms or one calendar year in duration.

25. Each of the professional master's programs should be presented at a similar level of intellectual challenge.

26. The arrangements and funding support for these professional masters programs should be such as to make them convenient for students to enter when the experience would be most valuable. Also access to the programs by part-time students should be facilitated.

27. In designing the professional masters programs, emphasis should be placed on developing engineering graduates with the appropriate attributes and potential to play a major role in establishing new enterprises, restructuring existing processes and developing new products and services.

28. Engineering faculties should design and provide one-year professional masters programs in Engineering Design, coordinated with their revised undergraduate programs, interpreting the term design very broadly to include advanced-level courses in technical specialties and projects in the design, manufacture, production, operation and servicing of processes, devices and systems.

29. Highly qualified practising engineers should play a major role in the presentation of design-oriented master's programs.

30. Engineering faculties should cooperate with Management faculties in designing and presenting professional masters programs in Engineering Management.

31. Research and development oriented masters programs should be retained but should be designed for completion in about 3 terms or one year full time.

32. Doctoral programs in engineering, while research oriented, should aspire to achieve a balance between the development of new and significant contributions to engineering knowledge and the development of superior capabilities in the candidate for innovation, and technical judgment.

33. Regulations should be such as to allow admission to an engineering doctoral program following completion of any of the professional masters programs.

34. Research supervisors should encourage doctoral candidates in engineering to develop close links with counterparts in industry during their programs.

35. Professors and their graduate students should choose their research, development and design projects with a view to their relevance to the solution of present and future problems and opportunities of Canadian society.

36. The Engineering Profession in Canada should consider introducing a more formal and longer (eg. four year) internship requirement for Engineers-in-Training prior to registration.

37. Engineering industry should plan to provide development programs for Engineers-in-Training including the appointment of capable mentors. Small and medium size engineering employers should consider establishing consortia to meet mutual needs in providing such programs.

38. Each professional engineer should have a program of continuing education and updating of expertise, including an active role in an appropriate technical society.

39. All employers should provide opportunity, encouragement, allocation of time and financial support for appropriate programs of maintaining the competence and flexibility of their professional engineering employees.

40. Professional engineering associations in cooperation with technical societies, universities and industrial organizations should introduce a program of recognizing participation in appropriate continuing education activities by professional engineers, with a view to making adequate participation one element in a review process required for continued professional registration.

41. Engineering faculty administrators should ensure that the incentives experienced by professors are consistent with the primacy of effective education as an objective of their faculties.

42. Universities should recognize that the objectives and responsibilities of professional faculties such as engineering are somewhat different from those of other disciplines.

43. Universities should ensure that their recruitment and advancement criteria for professors are sufficiently broad to include the special needs of engineering faculties. These criteria should include appropriate recognition of teaching performance, research, development and design contributions, professional experience and accomplishments, service to the community, and contributions to the planning, management and administration of the educational process.

44. The National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Science (NCDEAS) should develop an appropriate set of criteria for initial recruitment of engineering faculty, for the achievement of academic tenure and for promotion to full professorship.

45. In the application of advancement criteria for engineering professors, universities should give significant weight to input from persons who have a good understanding of the nature and needs of the graduates and the profession: practising professional engineers, recent and mid-career engineering graduates and senior professorial colleagues with appropriate engineering experience.

46. Engineering faculty administrators should ensure that newly appointed professors have adequate opportunity and incentive to plan a relevant research program and to establish good contacts in industry.

47. Much of the research funding for engineering professors should be based on the potential contribution to issues of national importance to Canada.

48. Agencies such as NSERC, NRC and government departments should establish, expand and emphasize programs supporting cooperative research and development by industry and universities.

49. In evaluating proposals for cooperative research and development involving industry and universities, granting agencies should place emphasis on the willingness of industry to contribute time and funds commensurate with their available resources.

50. Research funding agencies should recognize that the output of greatest value from most academic research is highly educated and trained people.

51. Engineering faculties should ensure that the rewards for good teaching are made as attractive as those of good research.

52. Recognizing the importance of knowledge, skill and broad experience in teaching an introductory course for engineering students, engineering faculties should make such an assignment a mark of career accomplishment for a professor.

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

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

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

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

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

58. Universities should ensure that the staff-student ratio in engineering faculties is sufficiently large to provide the individual attention which is necessary for adequate professional education.

59. Since much of the activity of engineers is wealth producing, Canadian governments should formulate public education policy to give priority to ensuring an adequate supply of qualified entrants to the engineering profession by providing appropriate targeted resources in support of both engineering education and research.

60. Provincial governments should permit universities to have freedom in setting fee structures for programs such as engineering on the understanding that these funds would be routed to the appropriate faculties. Student loan programs should be provided for those who are qualified but lack the immediate resources.

61. NSERC should accept a broad view of engineering research to include design, development and engineering management. It should continue to support students registered in any of the professional masters programs.