Media Releases

Designing the engineer of 2050: Canadian engineering educators meet in Toronto

May 16, 2017

Toron­to, ON – The tough­est prob­lems fac­ing human­i­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry — from water scarci­ty to urban inten­si­fi­ca­tion to per­son­al­ized med­i­cine — will be tack­led by tomorrow’s engi­neers. Many of the issues they will work to solve haven’t yet arisen — so how can engi­neer­ing edu­ca­tors pre­pare today’s stu­dents for tomorrow’s chal­lenges?

To address this ques­tion, the Cana­di­an Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (CEEA) will host its annu­al con­fer­ence from June 4–7 on the theme of ‘Inno­va­tion & Diver­si­ty in Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion.’ Teach­ers, researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers from across the coun­try will unite at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to to dis­cuss enrich­ing the class­room of tomor­row, and nov­els ways to pre­pare the next gen­er­a­tion of engi­neer­ing lead­ers.

“It’s won­der­ful  to have so many of Canada’s  top minds in engi­neer­ing edu­ca­tion in one place,” says Greg Evans, a U of T Engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor and direc­tor of the Faculty’s Col­lab­o­ra­tive Grad­u­ate Pro­gram in Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion. “The stu­dents we teach today will pro­duce the inno­va­tions that shape Cana­da and the world tomor­row — we want to give them the best tool­box we can.”

Keynote pre­sen­ters include:

  • Deb­bie Chachra — Pro­fes­sor of Engi­neer­ing, Olin Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive engi­neer­ing edu­ca­tion
  • Valerie David­son — Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta, Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph and for­mer NSERC Chair for Women in Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing
  • Mary Wells — Pro­fes­sor, Mechan­i­cal and Mecha­tron­ics Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo and Chair of the Ontario Net­work for Women in Engi­neer­ing.

Par­tic­i­pants will be immersed in open-end­ed idea gen­er­a­tion activ­i­ties, case study pre­sen­ta­tions and data-dri­ven dis­cus­sions of best prac­tices. See the full sched­ule.

Mem­bers of the media are wel­come to attend. Please RSVP to:

Mar­it Mitchell
Engi­neer­ing Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
416–978-4498 | marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca