All Posts Tagged With: "Engineering"

Salaries, employment rates don’t match perception

Science students at York U. (Jessica Darmanin)

Many students pursuing bachelor of arts degrees enter university expecting to need further training or education, so it doesn’t hurt as much if we can only score a minimum wage job after graduation. We’re all aware of the barista with the B.A.

But the realization that a bachelor’s degree doesn’t guarantee a job hits harder for those who believed they chose fields with more jobs and higher pay: bachelor of science students.

Sara Sparavalo, in year four at Dalhousie University in Halifax, is about to graduate with a degree in chemistry and biochemistry. Before university, she was unsure about her chosen career path, yet she expected a bachelor of science degree would give her more opportunities.

Continue reading Are science grads really better off?

Surprisingly, neither chose engineering

When Asad Muhammad and Mathew Ho mapped out a route for the lego man they hoped to send into space last January, they little imagined they’d be changing the course of their own lives as well.

The voyage they planned for the toy figure was originally conceived as a fun project for two high school friends who shared a love of science. By attaching cameras to a weather balloon and styrofoam container, the 18-year-olds from Toronto hoped only to capture pictures of the earth’s curvature.

But the lego figure they included in their makeshift craft on a whim catapulted the test flight to greater heights than Ho and Muhammad ever imagined. Footage of the plastic figure soaring 24 kilometres above the earth garnered instant praise once it had been posted to Youtube, and the teens found themselves dead centre on the public radar.

Continue reading Teens who sent Legoman into space had their pick of schools

Third place in “reinvent the toilet” contest

A team of University of Toronto engineers are flush with cash as they continue working to build a better toilet.

The team — lead by Prof. Yu-Ling Cheng — has received a $2.2-million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue designing a waterless, hygienic toilet for the developing world.

The 15-month grant comes after the team — which also includes researchers from Western University in London, Ont., and the University of Queensland — placed third in the Foundation’s “Reinventing the Toilet Challenge.”

Continue reading Ontario engineers flush with cash from Gates Foundation

A photographic tour of the campuses in Winnipeg

This fall, Maclean’s photographed 24 of the 49 institutions featured in the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings. Below, Marianne Helm shows you around the University of Manitoba. Click on each photo to make it larger. Then check out the other 23 galleries by clicking here.

An actress attacked, a student shot dead & a capella

Stacey Dash in Republican red REALStaceyDash/Twitter

1. Actress Stacey Dash, known best for her role in the 1990s TV show Clueless, has been attacked on Twitter for endorsing Republican Mitt Romney. As an African American woman, apparently she is supposed to support Barack Obama like the rest of Hollywood. Referencing Martin Luther King Jr., she told CNN that she chose Romney “not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.” She also cites economic reasons. Is she talking about how all this publicity will affect her personal economics? Either way, people should lay off.

2. A University of South Alabama student who was fatally shot by a campus police officer after being seen nude on campus had taken the drug LSD. Police also allege Gil Collar, 18, had assaulted two people and attempted to bite a woman.

3. The Nobel Prizes are announced this week. One winner was told by a teacher in 1949 that his dreams of science were “ridiculous.” John Gurdon’s instructor wrote the following on his report card: “If he can’t learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be sheer waste of time, both on his part, and of those who have to teach him.”

Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 10th edition)

Mechanical? Civil? Software? We show you what’s growing.

From the Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue. Source: Engineers Canada

First-class flights and fat paycheques? Yep, we’re jealous.

Sabrina Miguel (Roman Cho/Getty Images)

Your Job Makes Me Jealous is a weekly podcast with a young Canadian whose career is so cool that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We talk about the ups, the downs and the pay.

This week, Sabrina Miguel, a 22-year-old from Whitby, Ont., talks about her job as an engineer-in-training at Rio Tinto’s mine in Boron, Calif.

The University of Toronto graduate was featured in a story in the Maclean’s Professional Schools issue about how the shortage of mining engineers is leading to fat paycheques and sweet perks, often before students even finish school.

Click to hear Sabrina Miguel talk about how well mining engineering has treated her so far.

The transcript is after the jump.

Continue reading Sabrina Miguel, 22, is a mining engineer

Subject rankings for science, medicine, engineering…

Here are the top five highest ranked universities in the QS World University Rankings by Subject and the rankings of Canadian schools in science, engineering, and health disciplines. For arts, humanities and business, click here. For the full rankings, visit TopUniversities.com.

Pharmacy

1. Harvard University (United States)
2. University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
3. National University of Singapore (NUS) (Singapore)
4. University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
5. Karolinska Institute (Sweden)

11. University of Toronto
25. University of Alberta
26. University of British Columbia
29. McGill University
51-100. Western University, Université de Montréal
101-150. University of Waterloo
151-200. Dalhousie University, Laval University, University of Saskatchewan

Medicine

Continue reading How Canadian schools stack up in the QS rankings (part one)

Why you should learn math and move to Alberta

Photo by lindsay.dee.bunny on Flickr

Want to know which industries are hiring Canadians? Better yet: want to know which industries are hiring and paying handsomely?

Look no further than the new Canadian Business report on Canada’s Best Jobs. It shows the 50 best occupations based on highest salaries, salary growth and recent upticks in employment.

The fastest-growing occupation—no surprise here—is petroleum engineering. The guys and gals who calculate how best to harvest bitumen from Alberta oil sands saw their numbers increase by 85 per cent between 2006 and 2011. They also took home fat pay-cheques: a median of $90,002.

Next on the list reflects the growth in health care spending (and attempts to rein it in). Nursing supervisors saw their numbers increase by 46 per cent while their pay grew 24 per cent to $74,880.

Continue reading The best-paying, most-hiring industries revealed

Prof. Adrian Chan makes time to meet all of his students

Adrian Chan/Carleton University

When systems engineering professor Adrian Chan began teaching, he’d meet many of his students after final exams for the first time. They’d show up in his office after failing the course.

“I’d always wonder,” says Chan from his office at Carleton University in Ottawa, “why didn’t they come in earlier so that I could help them?”

A colleague suggested he make an effort to get to know his students better. “I don’t know if it’s possible,” he told her, “some of my classes have more than 100 students.” The coworker explained that her classes had up to 150 students in them and she still managed to meet with most in the first few weeks. “It was almost like someone threw the gauntlet down for me,” says Chan.

Since then, he’s blocked off 10 minutes with each student—hundreds of them—at the beginning of each semester. He asks students about their expectations and about why they chose engineering.

Continue reading Relationships matter (even in big classes)