All Posts Tagged With: "Engineering"

EXCLUSIVE RANKINGS. Plus: where to go, how to get in, the hottest programs, and the biggest pitfalls

Coast to coast, getting into professional schools has never been more competitive than it is this year

ENGINEERING

From building bridges to running Bay Street
Technical geeks? Hardly. Today’s new breed of financial engineers take the lead as global innovators.

If you build it . . .
Robots, stem cells and green scenes: what engineers are making now

Aim for 80-plus
Average final-year high school grades of first-year undergrads starting engineering school in fall 2009

Engineering’s hot fields
Across 13 disciplines, mechanical, electrical and civil continue to be the top draws, but other fields have grown significantly over the past four years. Environmental and software numbers are up by roughly half, while mining or mineral enrolment has nearly tripled.

Sizing up engineering enrolment across the country
The number of female Undergraduate enrolment at Canadian engineering schools remains low

MEDICINE

Want degree, will travel
‘Think of the passion that comes from people willing to go halfway around the world to study’

No science? No worries
Getting a C in chemistry may not be a barrier to that white coat, as med schools reassess their admissions

How many get in
2009 figures show enrolment continues to increase with women outnumbering men at most institutions

How much they pay for it
Medical school first-year tuition for academic year 2010-2011

Applications high, success rates low: the stats tell the story
The medical college admission test (MCAT) is a standardized test required for admission at many faculties

M.B.A.

Northern exposure
‘The fact that the Canadian economy gets a lot of attention can only be good for Canadian business schools’

These doctors mean business
Fuelled by late-blooming entrepreneurs, business schools see doctoral enrolment double

McGill and Quebec Play chicken
A tuition hike is opposed by the province; so far neither side has blinked

Coffee, donut and an M.B.A
Slated to start in January 2011, a new morning M.B.A. class will run three mornings a week at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary

RANKINGS: How do Canada’s business schools stack up internationally?
Canadian schools didn’t crack the top 20 in either of the Financial Times’ rankings, but York (Schulich) placed first on the alternative Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey

Canada’s M.B.A. programs: a variety of options at 35 institutions
The traditional M.B.A.—two years, full-time—is no longer the only way to go, with many schools offering part-time studies

Canada’s E.M.B.A. Programs: for the working professional
Executive M.B.A. programs normally allow their participants to remain at their jobs, pursuing the degree part-time

RANKINGS: Financial Times Executive M.B.A. ranking 2009
The FT’s E.M.B.A. evaluation looks at a variety of performance measures for each school

Law

Ranking Canada’s law schools
How do faculty measure up? How do grads fare? Maclean’s fourth annual survey reveals all

Last year, maybe. This year, no way.
Getting in has never been easy. But now, it’s nearly impossible.

The letter of the Law
J.D. vs. LL.B degree

RANKINGS: Toronto and McGill law schools top the list
How successful are grads in landing top jobs? How often is faculty members’ work recognized by other academics?

Law School: what will it cost?
2010 tuition figures for first-year students

Technical geeks? Hardly. Today’s new breed of financial engineers take the lead as global innovators.

When Sukrit Ganguly finished his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and applied science, he set out on a traditional career track in oil and gas consulting. “The job was very technical,” says the 27-year-old, “and required me to work on models all day long.” Bored after a year, Ganguly wanted to try something new. So he returned to the University of Toronto to do a master’s of applied science, this time focusing on applied engineering in banking and setting his sights on Bay Street. “I wanted a job that looked at the bigger picture, and in finance you have to follow what’s going on all over the world,” he says.

The chemical engineer is now working on the trading floor for equity derivatives at TD Securities—on Bay Street. Instead of modelling pipelines and heat exchangers like many of his former classmates, he spends his days structuring financial products, reading international market commentary, and researching the activities of TD’s competitors. And he says an engineering degree was the best possible training for the job. “As an engineer, you’re taught how to solve programs. The finance part I could learn on the fly.”

Indeed, as more students flock to the field of engineering (at last count, enrolment in accredited undergraduate engineering programs grew by 11 per cent between 2006 and 2009), universities across the country are advancing the concept of the “global engineer” and broadening the educational experience offering courses—such as finance or entrepreneurial studies—outside of traditional engineering disciplines. “The idea now is that engineers are no longer just technical geeks,” says David Wilkinson, McMaster University’s dean of engineering. “They need to be able to solve global problems and answer complex open-ended questions.”

At Ganguly’s alma mater, the University of Toronto, students in the faculty of applied science and engineering can now enroll in a financial engineering major, the first undergraduate program of its kind in Canada. The inaugural participants in the course this fall will learn financial modelling and theory, while also getting a strong engineering science foundation that they can apply to work in financial institutions and investment banking. The university will also launch a new minor in engineering business in 2011.

These courses were born out of the realization that “our students are being hired by Bay Street and Wall Street,” says the faculty’s dean, Cristina Amon. “It’s their ability to address problems and the analytical skills engineers gather during their education that is very attractive for the i-banking and financial services industry,” she says, adding that “this recent phenomenon” has already registered in the U.S., where finance and business course options have been offered to engineering students at prestigious schools like Princeton and Columbia for several years.

At Queen’s University, the faculty of engineering and applied science is developing a program with the Queen’s School of Business called innovation and global leadership, which will bring engineering and commerce students together. “We decided to design this now because of a need for engineers and commerce students to contribute to the knowledge economy,” explains Kimberly Woodhouse, dean of the faculty of engineering and applied science. “In order for them to do that, they’re going to need to be innovators.”

While Woodhouse says she’s seen “a huge demand in finance for engineers,” the program— anticipated to start in fall 2011—is focused on teaching business and engineering students to collaborate. “As an engineer, you now need to understand the business world, and commerce students need to understand the impact of technology on business.”

“Your instinct kicks in, you take a deep breath and and you think, ‘Wow. Somebody should really build a bridge over this.’”

“Your instinct kicks in, you take a deep breath and and you think, ‘Wow. Somebody should really build a bridge over this.’”

Police catch group “red-handed” on bridge; Volkswagen Beetle plunges into icy inlet

Five University of British Columbia university engineering students were arrested Monday trying to lower a Volkswagen Beetle off the bridge that spans Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet.Vancouver police say they caught the group “red-handed” on the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge.

The appearance of the Volkswagen shell in some unheard-of places has become the annual kick-off to Engineering Week at UBC.

Previously the Beetles have been placed on the top of tall buildings and suspended from bridges, but the engineers’ most notorious feat came when students hung a bug off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, generating international media attention.

But this year, it seems, the would-be pranksters should have waited to get a few more classes under their belts.

“It appears they ran into – pardon the pun – a bit of a snag,” said Vancouver police spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton, as he explained what officers saw when they came upon the group on the bridge early Monday morning.

Houghton said the equipment the students had been using either wasn’t strong enough or they had trouble with the cables or ropes they were using.

“The shell of the vehicle plunged into the Burrard Inlet.”

The arrests Monday mark the first time anyone has been caught in connection with the prank.

Bruce Dunwoody, associate dean of engineering programs at UBC, admits he doesn’t like answering the phone on the first Monday of February.

“I’m relieved this time every year when, so far, nobody’s been hurt,” Dunwoody said.

“I don’t like to call it a prank, because prank sort of implies wholesome fun and not having negative consequences, which certainly doesn’t apply here.”

The five students may face discipline from the university, but Dunwoody said that will be up to the university’s president advisory committee on student discipline.

Houghton said police are recommending charges of mischief over $5,000.

Engineering clubs let students learn from their own quirky obsessions. Case in point: Waterloo’s student-built solar car

It travels faster than the speed limit on any Canadian highway, can drive coast-to-coast without stopping for gas, often gets mistaken for a UFO, and does all of this on less power than it takes to operate a toaster. It is the University of Waterloo’s solar-powered car, the Midnight Sun IX, a vehicle that can move at speeds of up to 115 km/h, from dawn until a few hours after dusk. Right now, this latest version is crated up and being transported to Australia, where later this fall it will compete in the World Solar Challenge, a biannual 3,000-km race across the outback, and the premier competition of its kind. And while the solar car is an engineering wonder, what may be even more impressive is that the project is entirely powered by student volunteers.

From the person hoisting the vehicle to the mechanic under the hood, from the business management team squeezing CEO hands for donations to the project manager, each and every one is a Waterloo student. And they aren’t even doing it for an academic credit: this isn’t a course, it’s a club. The only faculty member involved is the faculty adviser, and he just "makes sure that we aren’t breaking any policies, or doing something unsafe," says Jessica Whitney, a 2007 civil engineering graduate and the business manager for Midnight Sun IX.

What’s most exceptional is that student-run clubs like the Waterloo solar-car project are common at engineering schools across Canada. They are also wide-ranging. At the University of British Columbia, for instance, engineering students designed a car that makes Smart Cars look like gas-guzzling Hummers by comparison. Their Supermileage car can travel from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gas, and was named one of the 50 top inventions of 2006 by Time magazine. On the other hand, over at the University of Alberta, the Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project built a robot named "Ursa Minor" which, inspired by too many movies, is bent on world domination. Ursa ran for University of Alberta Student Union president this spring, but failed to win. "I am not sure this is the end of Ursa Minor — after all, it took three movies to destroy the Death Star," says Michael Janz, winner of the election. Janz expects Ursa will only improve; the U of A already has a robot that is unbeatable at checkers.

At the University of Waterloo, all the members of the solar-car project have other commitments: part-time jobs, involvement in other student groups and the like. But, as with other engineering-club teams, the car club is special: members often get together in their office just to socialize and do schoolwork together. "It is more than just a team, it is like an extended family," says Chris Jee, a fourth-year electrical engineering student who is the team’s primary electrical manager. At the heart of the camaraderie, though, is the project: members spent thousands of hours together building the club’s ninth version of a solar car. Design work started in October 2005, with more than 400 students involved over two years and a core group of 15, before the car was unveiled on Aug. 12, 2007.

The Midnight Sun IX is 1.8 m wide, five metres long, and just less than one metre high(by comparison, a Toyota Prius hybrid is 1.72 m wide, 4.5 m long, and 1.5 m high). Most of the funding for developing it came from corporate donations and in-kind gifts. The project enjoys sponsorship from over 50 businesses, university departments, foundations and individuals. Gold level sponsors Advantage Engineering Inc., American Dicing Inc., Fleet Canada Inc., and Research In Motion each contributed over $25,000. The money was welcome: building the vehicle and ancillary costs — such as transporting it to Australia — cost nearly $200,000.

Wayne Loucks, Waterloo’s associate dean for undergraduate studies in engineering, believes strongly that being part of one of the many teams offered in engineering benefits the students by bringing "more realism to the education experience." The solar car team, "along with all the student projects, are important to the environment we provide to students," he says. It’s not just the technical aspects that benefit students, but the chance to fundraise and manage the team that add to the student’s education. "In the real world, there is so much more than what can be taught in the classroom alone," Loucks says. "The deadlines involved are more real: if you do not raise the funds you need in time, your project does not move forward. With classes, if you miss a deadline, the class continues, you lose the marks but things continue to move forward. In the real world, that does not happen."

Along with gaining real-life experience, there are other perks to being involved in projects such as the solar-car club. Although the team’s work is not part of the curriculum, students do sometimes find ways to integrate aspects from the project with courses(all Waterloo engineering students are required to complete a senior design project, and some, for instance, have been known to design widgets for the team, submit them for marks, and then install them in a vehicle). And then there is Oktoberfest, a major event in Kitchener/Waterloo, where the solar-car team is one of the participants in the parade(the vehicle is street legal, and licensed and registered in Ontario, but on the road is escorted by support vehicles for visibility and safety). In fact, the car is among the main attractions, and Whitney says "one of the great things about being on the team is how excited people get when they see the car." Children especially like it, and both schools and day camp groups come to the university to see and learn about the vehicle.

Team members do not limit their education campaigns to Waterloo. In 2004, they set a world record for longest journey by a solar car by driving an earlier version of Midnight Sun 15,079 km over 41 days. That trip covered the United States and southern Canada, and was meant to educate people about the potential of alternative fuels and solar energy. Most importantly, participants had the time of their lives, visiting places such as Vancouver, San Francisco, Houston, Florida, Washington, New York City and Halifax before finally ending their journey on Parliament Hill. Their Guinness record hangs proudly in the team office. But the car was so unusual that it was often mistaken for something else. "When we drove across North America, people twice called into local radio stations to report a UFO on the highway," says Whitney.

The team races every year against other engineering clubs from across North America, and every other year in the Australian world challenge. This year, other Canadian engineering schools taking part Down Under include the University of Calgary, Queens, École Polytechnique de Montréal, the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario. Waterloo’s car will arrive in Australia in four weeks. It is currently in two components, the top with the solar panels, and the bottom, which includes the driver’s cage. Members are excited about the trip. When asked about the infamous stereotype of engineering students as heavy drinkers, they said they do not consume any alcohol prior to or during the race. However, at the end they do enjoy an evening in Adelaide prior to packing up the car and returning to classes in Canada.

The Canadian teams often have some fun with each other, which includes attaching their faculty stickers to each others’ support vehicles and engaging in friendly verbal jousting. The University of Toronto’s infamous Brute Force Committee — a secretive group of U of T engineers who love to prank other schools — is especially known for this. Their trademark act: placing BFC stickers in difficult-to-reach places. Last year, they covered the McMaster engineering lounge with stickers(and placed a Trojan Horse in front of the building). This past summer, they scaled the entrance to the student centre at Mac and put a sticker on the clock above one of the main doorways. The BFC has also managed to get its sticker on past solar-car racers.

Solar cars and one-upmanship in pranks aside, there are many other engineering club competitions. Some of the most popular involve such things as building mini Baja racers, SAE formula racing cars, model aircraft, model cargo aircraft, autonomous search-and-rescue model aircraft, and two engineering challenges built around goofy Canadiana: the concrete toboggan and concrete canoe competitions. The challenge? Make a toboggan or canoe completely from concrete — and race it. It may seem impossible, but that’s the beauty of the challenge. Engineering teams work year-round formulating new mixtures of concrete to be lighter and more flexible.

The Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race — last year’s event was held at the University of Manitoba — brings together engineering schools from across Canada. The sleds themselves must be constructed of a metal frame, with the running surface made entirely of concrete. They must have a working braking system, a roll bar to protect the five passengers, and weigh less than 300 lb. Last year’s winner: the Université de Sherbrooke’s "Pimp My Toboggan."

Last May, the Canadian Concrete Canoe championships brought teams from nine universities and one college to Queen’s in Kingston, Ont., where they raced their patio-slab, sidewalk-grade canoes. A concrete canoe sounds like an invention that just won’t float. Still, as one engineering student put it, the same could be said of ships made of steel, "but you do not see tankers crashing to the bottom of the sea — it’s all about water displacement." This year’s Concrete Canoe champion was also the Université de Sherbrooke.

Out West, the University of Saskatchewan may be in a province known more for its wheat fields than innovative technology, but that has not stopped it from having one of the best space design teams in North America. During its 50th anniversary celebrations, NASA published a book in which it named USask’s Space Design Team one of the organizations that will have an impact on the future of space exploration.

In both 2005 and 2006, the University of Saskatchewan won the NASA-sponsored Elevator: 2010 space elevator competition. The space elevator is a solar-powered lifting vehicle that operates on a wire to lift materials skyward. It is believed that, someday, a similar system could be implemented to lift large cargoes into space at a location near the equator. USask’s team placed first in the climber competition, but just barely missed picking up the $150,000 prize money because their descent time was too slow. For the upcoming competition, the mark set by NASA is to have a climber that can move up a 120-m-long vertical ribbon at a minimum speed of two metres per second. The team will attempt to achieve this in the Utah desert in October.

Some engineering teams design their creations just for fun, without any competitions. The McMaster University Engineering Society operates a carpool team. Most people think of a carpool as a group of commuters who share a vehicle to get to work. McMaster engineering students took the word literally — to mean, put a pool in a car. The engineers have an ’80s Chevy that has had the roof and interior removed and replaced with hot tub lining. Using the heat generated by the engine and electricity derived from piston movement, they turned the car into a moving hot tub on wheels. The driver and the passengers travel in the luxury of a warm body of water and are a fixture at local football games, where they pull the car into the end zone area to enjoy the action. The team has also been known to park in reserved carpool parking spots. When questioned, they point to the tub.

All such teams have one thing in common. Through hours of hard work, whether on the road or in the shop, members often spend many sleep-deprived hours together and form an incredible bond. All the teams encourage any student to join their ranks, including non-engineering students. "I can tell you from experience," says Bruce of Waterloo, "that these will be the best moments of your university career."

Full article with charts