Season's Greetings from the Dean

The Holiday Season provides us a perfect time to reflect on our accomplishments of this past year and share the latest developments at Skule™.

In May, we participated in the Faculty's External Review. The reviewers praised us for our accomplishments and performance over the past five years, noting our tremendous progress since our last review. They remarked upon our strong, innovative undergraduate and graduate programs, the quality of our students, our top international scholars, our leading-edge research initiatives, and the notable progress we have made in gender and international diversity.

We continue to develop new and innovative programs, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of educating future engineering leaders. This year, we introduced a new Major in Engineering Science, Engineering Mathematics, Statistics and Finance. This is the first undergraduate program of its kind in Canada, providing students with a strong background in mathematics and statistics, and integrates these disciplines within quantitative finance through the use of engineering tools. In addition, Faculty Council recently approved three new programs: an Engineering Business Certificate, a Global Engineering Certificate and an Engineering Business Minor. These add to our already popular Bioengineering Minor, Sustainable Energy Minor and Environmental Engineering Minor.

This year, we also established new Extra-departmental units that augment our engineering education and research priorities. The Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) – another first for Engineering in Canada. ILead offers leadership education and development through teaching, research and outreach. Centre for Sustainable Energy – this Centre serves as a catalyst, facilitating interactions and collaborations to advance the development of sustainable and efficient energy in Canada; Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics – this institute coordinates the large number of academic and research activities on development of fundamental enabling technologies, such as robots, micro-motors or operating systems; BioZone – a new multidisciplinary research centre designed to advance environmental microbiology in aid of our societal needs in energy, environment and health.

Within our Masters of Engineering (MEng) program, we further developed the Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Innovation and Technology in Engineering (ELITE) Certificate to include 15 courses, and initiated the Engineering and Public Policy certificate. Also established was an Engineering and Globalization certificate, giving our grad students an opportunity to strengthen their skills in global engineering. The establishment of such programs demonstrates to our steadfast commitment to excellence in education.

The Engineering Faculty held onto its 19th place position for the second year in a row in the 2010 Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). It remains the premier institution in Canada for the fourth consecutive year. This past autumn, the 2010 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings ranked our Faculty as 1st in Canada and 13th in the world.

Our success would not be possible without you, our alumni. In addition to welcoming many of you to our campus events, we reached out to alumni in cities across Canada and around the world – Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The progress that you make in your careers speaks volumes to your engineering education with us. Your contributions to Skule™ support our development, our collective reputation and our remarkable impact on society. You inspire our continued pursuit of excellence.

I thank you for being an advocate and I applaud your dedication to our Faculty. I wish you and your family a joyful holiday season and a rewarding 2011.

Cristina Amon
Dean

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