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Reflection and Looking Forward: Academic Plan & Annual Reports
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Our Faculty continues to make outstanding progress toward achieving the ambitious goals identified in our Academic Plan 2011-16.
Last fall we published the Year Three: Progress and Achievements report as well as the Annual Report 2014: Performance Indicators, both of which provide a comprehensive overview of our accomplishments and momentum in meeting our goals. In June, we published the externally-focused Year in Review: 2015 Annual Report, a high-level summary of our Faculty’s most significant achievements for alumni, donor and industry audiences. Year Four: Progress and Achievements and Annual Report 2015: Performance Indicators will be published this fall.
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Students: Recruitment and Admissions
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Undergraduate
Our strong programs and international reputation continue to draw the brightest future engineers from across Canada and around the world.
Demand for our programs grew by another nine per cent in 2014, reaching 10,989 applications. The mean entering average of Ontario secondary school students rose to a record 92.4 per cent in 2014–2015, up from 91.7 per cent in 2013–2014.
Our incoming undergraduate class had the highest-ever proportion of women at 30.6 per cent, the highest of any first-year engineering cohort in Canada. We are continuing this momentum through targeted recruitment campaigns.
Our first- to second-year retention rate also rose to 96.3 per cent from 94.6 per cent in 2013–2014. This reflects the effectiveness of programs within the Faculty that support students, such as First-Year Foundations, Success 101, first-year math support and an extensive advising program that provides embedded counsellors, an international transition advisor, a learning strategist and a wellness coordinator.
We achieved our international enrolment goal two years ahead of schedule: one in four of our undergraduates now come from outside of Canada. Through strategic recruitment efforts in select regions worldwide, we continue to attract some of the best students in the world.
To continue our progress in selectivity, we developed a new, broad-based applications process for those seeking admission for fall 2015. The pilot project — the first of its kind in Canada for engineering schools — uses videos and timed, written responses to give our admissions committee more comprehensive knowledge of each applicant. These tools allow prospective students to demonstrate key engineering qualities, such as logical thinking, adaptability and perseverance, which can be difficult to measure by grades and written essays alone.
Pre-University Outreach
Each year, the Faculty reaches out to more than 5,000 elementary and high school students through workshops and enrichment programming. These activities help them gain a better understanding of the role of engineering in society and encourage them to study at U of T.
Some highlights of this year’s programming include the following:
- Go CODE Girl, held in February 2015 in partnership with the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering (ONWiE), invited 50 high school girls in grades 9 through 11 to learn about the exciting world of coding and software development. This marked U of T’s first year hosting the event.
- In November 2014, U of T Engineering hosted 300 delegates of the Spanish-Speaking Educational Network for their 6th Congress of Education. We delivered hands-on STEM activities to 150 youth in grades 1 through 12 through this event.
- In May 2015, more than 80 female high school students who had received offers of admission to U of T Engineering were invited to campus to participate in the Girls Leadership in Engineering Experience (GLEE). Through interactions with current faculty and staff and experiential learning activities, these students were inspired with even more reasons to choose U of T Engineering.
Graduate
The number of graduate students pursuing research-intensive and professional graduate degrees at U of T Engineering continues to grow. In 2014–2015, 2,194 graduate students from across Canada and around the world are studying in our Faculty, up from 2,064 in 2013–2014. We have surpassed our Academic Plan goal of 2,000 students by 2015 two years ahead of schedule.
We have been particularly focused on increasing enrolment in our professional master’s degrees (MEng and MHSc), which grew by 75 per cent over the past five years. International students now account for 27 per cent of professional master’s students compared with eight per cent just five years ago.
To continue recruiting the best and brightest domestic graduate students, in 2014–2015 we launched a new Faculty-wide initiative called Graduate Research Days. This event brought 120 students from across Canada and the U.S. to U of T to meet with faculty and current students and to discover the advantages of studying at U of T Engineering.
We also continued to partner with a consortium of four other top Canadian engineering schools to hold graduate recruitment events in Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto. In 2014, we added Calgary as a new stop, tapping into the talent base of one of Canada’s fastest growing cities.
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Engineering Experiential Learning
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At U of T Engineering, we are dedicated to providing a superior student experience while equipping the next generation of engineers with the key competencies necessary to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
For example, in March 2015, our Faculty became the only Canadian engineering school to join a transformative movement in engineering education announced at the White House. Together with 120 U.S. engineering schools, we pledged to graduate a total of more than 20,000 formally-recognized “Grand Challenge Engineers” over the next decade. These graduates will have strong cross-cultural perspectives and deep experience with entrepreneurship, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Here are some of our other recent accomplishments in engineering education:
Teaching Innovation
Our faculty continues to facilitate innovative courses that provide students with unique opportunities for experiential learning and multidisciplinary collaboration. These include departmental and multidisciplinary capstone collaborations, first-year Praxis, Engineering Strategies and Practice and CGEN’s Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Challenges course.
Throughout 2014–2015, we conducted a pilot program to test the use of a new Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) classroom format. Feedback from this program will inform the final design of the TEAL classrooms that will be part of the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CEIE).
In May 2015, we hosted the bi-annual EdTech conference. This one-day event helps instructors from across the University share best practices for innovative teaching and learning from some of our Faculty’s leaders in educational technology.
Last fall, we launched the new Engineering Education (EngEd) graduate program in collaboration with OISE. The first of its kind in Canada, the EngEd aims to improve engineering education through research and course work on topics such as teamwork, knowledge communities, career readiness and engineering culture.
In February 2015, the Core Curriculum Review Task Force delivered its final report to Faculty Council. After examining the content and delivery of all first year course offerings and comparing with best practices from other institutions, the Task Force made 10 recommendations to ensure that our programs meet the evolving needs of our students.
The Faculty continued to evolve and improve the student experience through regular Town Hall meetings with students, held in the Fall 2014 and Winter 2015 terms, in partnership with the Engineering Society. These meetings addressed issues such as enhancing career services, academic support and course evaluations.
Practical Education
This year we continued to build on our successful track record in experiential learning. Our Professional Experience Year (PEY) program, which has provided full-time paid internships to undergraduates for more than 35 years, had its largest-ever cohort of 724 students, including 61 who completed their work terms outside of Canada.
We also celebrated the second cohort to graduate from APS 490 Multidisciplinary Design Project course. Facilitated by the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation (UT-IMDI), this course allows established companies to bring their technical challenges to energetic teams of undergraduate students. This year’s projects included a device to reduce neck strain in helicopter pilots and a portable, inexpensive ramp for wheelchair or mobility scooter users.
Launched in fall 2014 from the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead), The Game is a new experiential learning opportunity at U of T Engineering. This year-long co-curricular program emphasizes societal leadership by challenging teams to solve a social problem. The winning team created canact, an online platform that links socially minded individuals with volunteer opportunities around the world.
Our experiential learning opportunities also span the globe. In May of 2015, a team of fourth-year MIE students went to Nicaragua as part of a project supported by the Institute for Sustainable Energy. The team designed windmills that could be built out of locally available materials to help irrigate crops during the dry season.
Closer to home, students across all departments gained valuable experience by participating in our nearly 90 student societies and clubs. These include the Supermileage team, which in April won first place at the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas in Detroit, and the Concrete Canoe Team, which hosted the 2015 Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition in Toronto in May.
Multidisciplinary Course Offerings
Opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration are woven throughout all our programs and all years of study. In 2014–2015, we added several new options at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Undergraduate
- In fall 2014, the first cohort of undergraduate students enrolled in our new minor in Biomedical Engineering. This is the first minor to include supporting co-curricular activities, such as mentoring. It is designed to prepare students for direct entry into the applied biomedical engineering industry.
- We also launched a new undergraduate certificate in Engineering Leadership in the fall 2014. Courses focus on the cognitive and psychological foundations of effective leadership, as well as helping students effectively handle complex challenges.
- In collaboration with the Faculty of Forestry, we created a new undergraduate certificate in Renewable Resources Engineering, which launched in fall 2014. This program expands the interdisciplinary offerings for engineering students, including courses focused on sustainable resources management, bio-economics and sustainable communities.
- The new Nanoengineering Minor, set to launch in fall 2015, reflects a growing focus on engineering materials and devices at the nano scale across many sectors. Second- and third-year materials science courses provide a deep understanding of the structure and characterization of nanomaterials, while fourth-year courses give students hands-on experience in creating and fabricating nanomaterials.
- In response to significant interest among students and faculty associated with the Engineering Science program, the faculty created the Robotics Engineering Option, effective September 2015. This field is interdisciplinary by nature, and is rapidly evolving in both industry and academia. The new option will be supported by the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics.
- Writing, speaking and critical thinking are crucial to any engineering career. Beginning in September 2015, the new certificate in Engineering Communication will allow students to demonstrate their key competencies in this area. It builds on the suite of opportunities offered by the Engineering Communication Program, designed to give students the ability to express complex engineering concepts to a non-technical audience.
Graduate
- This year the Faculty added two new areas of emphasis to the MEng program:
- The Sustainable Energy emphasis draws on expertise in the Institute for Sustainable Energy
- The Advanced Manufacturing emphasis leverages the resources of the new Toronto Institute of Advanced Manufacturing.
- We also developed a new professional master’s program, the Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering, with a projected launch date of September 2016. Program requirements include two new core entrepreneurship courses and a four-month internship, all in the context of biomedical device development and commercialization.
Entrepreneurship
Innovation and entrepreneurship are two key ways in which our students hone their competencies in project management, communication and multidisciplinary collaboration. Our Faculty’s support for entrepreneurial endeavours has helped create a number of companies led by both graduates and undergraduates including Onyx Motion, Syncadian, Magniware, PowerWring and Nvest.
This passion for creating new enterprises is also prevalent among our talented alumni. Companies created by U of T graduates include Nanoleaf, OTI Lumionics, Cast ConneX, Nymi and Attollo. In September 2015, Attolo, a social entrepreneurship initiative aimed at helping children learn to read, will compete in the finals of this year’s Hult Prize competition in New York City.
The Faculty’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery, which is part of the University’s new Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, continues to play a significant role in building entrepreneurial capacity at U of T Engineering. Last September, The Hatchery received a boost from Ontario’s Campus-Linked Accelerator Program, which added significantly to its funding. This year’s cohort — the fourth to enter the program — includes 40 teams, about 120 students in total. All will receive space, seed funding and access to industry mentors, helping them make the leap from idea to prototype to new startup venture.
This year, the Faculty also launched a new entrepreneurial incubation program called UTIAS Start. Supported by a $1 million gift from UTIAS alumnus and entrepreneur Francis Shen (UTIAS MASc 8T3), this program will help commercialize cutting-edge research both within and outside aerospace.
U of T Engineering also supports entrepreneurship through the Heffernan Commercialization Fellowships, which provide funding for up to two years for MASc and PhD students (or recent graduates) to translate their research into working prototypes and create companies to bring their ideas to market.
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Our researchers continue to push the boundaries of their fields, from bioengineering and clean energy to sustainability and advanced communications.
For example, measurements taken by Greg Evans (ChemE) and his team demonstrated that air pollution could be spreading up to three times farther than previously thought, contributing to varying levels of air quality across cities.
Our engineering expertise is also being applied to understand the workings of the human body. In December, Brendan Frey (ECE) and his colleagues published a paper in Science that used a “deep learning” algorithm to scan through DNA and identify genetic mutations that cause cancer, autism and other diseases.
Molly Shoichet (ChemE, IBBME) led a research team that used new biomaterials to boost the ability of stem cells to restore eyesight and heal brains.
Engineering PhD student Ali Rizvi (MIE PhD 1T4) was named one of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (MSE) “Top 30 under 30 Future Leaders in Manufacturing”. Among other things, he has designed a cost-effective commercial sponge that absorbs 24 times its weight per gram in oil and doesn’t absorb water, making it ideal for oil spill clean-ups.
Other top research this year included:
Funding and Facilities
In summer 2014, three-time Indy 500 winner Hélio Castroneves joined Doug Perovic (MSE) and Charles Mims (ChemE) to launch of the new Ontario Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials. This world-leading facility contains highly specialized equipment that could advance many fields, including electronics, renewable fuels, construction, disease treatment and even advanced automotive design.
In November 2014, Professor Timothy Chan (MIE) became the new director for the Centre for Healthcare Engineering (formerly the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering). In April, Chan was also named the new Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health.
In total, the Faculty gained four new Canada Research Chairs in 2014–2015. The other three are: Aimy Bazylak (MIE), who became the CRC in Thermofluidics for Clean Energy; Elizabeth Edwards (ChemE), who holds the CRC in Anaerobic Biotechnology; and Goldie Nejat (MIE), who was awarded the new CRC in Robots for Society.
The Faculty was also successful in obtaining multi-year grants designed to build multidisciplinary networks to help solve critical problems in engineering. A new $5 million Industrial Biocatalysis Network will be overseen by Elizabeth Edwards (ChemE). A $1.65 million NSERC CREATE grant will enable Hugh Liu (UTIAS) to train 150 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, also known as drones) for use in environmental monitoring, agriculture and more.
Other major grants awarded this year include more than $1 million from CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund, $3.5 million from NSERC’s Strategic Partnership Grants for Projects, $3.4 million from CFI’s Innovation Fund and significant investments from the Ontario Early Researcher Awards, the Ontario Research Fund: Research Excellence and Ontario Research Fund: Research Infrastructure, which includes matching funds from CFI.
While total funding for 2014–2015 will not be known until later this year, we received a total of $27.4 million in Tri-Council funding for 2013–2014. This greatly surpasses our goal of $25 million in Tri-Council funding by 2015, as laid out in the Academic Plan. We are well on our way to achieving our new Tri-Council funding goal of $32 million per year by 2016.
International Impact
Our leading-edge research not only advances prosperity in Canada, but also improves the quality of life for people around the world.
In September 2014, the University of Toronto Transportation Research Insitute (UTTRI) signed a memorandum of understanding with CAF — the development bank of Latin America — to collaborate on sustainable urban development. Agreements like this further expand our international reach and our ability to make a difference both at home and in the developing world.
In 2014–2015, faculty members from the Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN) received two significant grants from Grand Challenges Canada, for projects that will address child malnutrition and improve the quality of drinking water in Bangladesh.
Other projects designed to improve health in developing countries include a $1 detection system for measles and rubella developed by researchers at IBBME, as well as Chip Care, a “point-of-care” HIV diagnostic system developed by Professor Stewart Aitchison (ECE) and James Dou (ECE PhD Candidate). This year, Chip Care received $5 million in angel investment funding, the largest such investment for a Canadian startup.
In January, four U of T Engineering professors travelled to India with U of T president Meric Gertler to discuss Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to build smart cities.
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The excellence of our faculty, staff and students continues to be recognized with major awards at the international, national, provincial and university level. With a higher proportion of honours than any other school in Canada, U of T Engineering is truly outstanding in its class.
In 2014-2015, Molly Shoichet (ChemE, IBBME) became the 2015 L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” Laureate for North America, only the third Canadian to achieve this international honour in its 17-year history. Michael Sefton (ChemE, IBBME) was the only Canadian this year to become a Foreign Associate of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies. Paul Santerre (IBBME) won an Ernest C. Manning Innovation Award, a first for the Faculty.
Many of our faculty were honoured by national and international professional associations, including the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (Radhakrishnan Mahadevan, ChemE), the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (Deepa Kundur, ECE; Baochun Li, ECE; Yu Sun, MIE), the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (Kamran Behdinan, MIE; Sanjeev Chandra, MIE), the Royal Society of Canada (Ted Sargent, ECE; Peter Zandstra, IBBME; Milica Radisic, IBBME, ChemE), the Engineering Institute of Canada (Alberto Leon-Garcia, ECE; Baher Abdulhai, CivE; David Sinton, MIE), Engineers Canada (Jonathan Rose, ECE) and the Canadian Academy of Engineering (Kamran Behdinan, MIE; Greg Evans, ChemE; Vladimiros Papangelakis, ChemE; Michael Sefton, IBBME; Jim Wallace, MIE).
In June 2014, Frank Vecchio (CivE) won the Research and Development Medal from Ontario Professional Engineers and in May 2015 Steve Mann received the Digital Pioneer Award at Digifest 2015. Wei Yu (ECE) was also awarded one of NSERC’s prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships, and he was named one of the world’s most highly cited researchers by Thomson Reuters.
Several early-career researchers at U of T Engineering also won significant awards. Natalie Enright Jerger received both an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Sloan Research Fellowship and a Young Engineer Award from Ontario Professional Engineers. Micah Stickel was named one of the Top 20 under 40 by the American Society for Engineering Education.
From the University, many of our faculty were recognized for their excellence in research and teaching, as well as their contributions to the U of T community. Parham Aarabi, (ECE), Richard Cobbold (IBBME, ECE) and Hugh Liu (UTIAS) were all named U of T Inventors of the Year. Both Molly Shoichet (IBBME) and Ted Sargent (ECE) were given the rank of University Professor, an honour reserved for less than two per cent of faculty members. Greg Evans (ChemE) received the 2015 President’s Teaching Award, U of T’s highest honour for teaching. Doug Reeve (ChemE) received the 2015 Vivek Goel Faculty Citizenship Award from the University of Toronto Alumni Association. Mario Badr (ElecE 1T1, MASc 1T4) received the TA Teaching Excellence Award.
Our Faculty also added two new Distinguished Professors, Frank Kschichang (ECE) and Chul Park (MIE) and honoured many more during our Celebrating Engineering Excellence event in April.
The Faculty also won several awards for the design of our communications materials, including two Gold Awards from the Association of Marketing & Communications Professionals for Inspiring Leadership, ILead’s 2013-2014 Annual Review and Impact III, the official magazine of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and an Award of Merit from the International Association of Business Communicators for the Discover Engineering viewbook.
Media Recognition
Our Faculty’s excellence in research and education continues to receive media exposure around the world, with our professors often sought after for their expertise on a variety of issues. Here are some highlights from the past year of coverage:
- Connaught Global Challenge Symposium tackles organic solar energy (Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC Radio – Metro Morning)
- Engineering startup OTI Lumionics expands organic LED manufacturing (South China Morning Post, Financial Post, Forbes, Gizmag, Business Management Daily)
- U of T engineering researchers develop spray-on solar cells (UK Daily Mail, Forbes, Fast Company, GigaOm, Popular Science, Gizmag, Treehugger, Metro News)
- Decoding the human genome using machine learning (Globe and Mail front page, Scientific American, WIRED Magazine, National Post, CBC News Online, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun)
- Record-high female enrolment at U of T Engineering, attracting more women to the field (FLARE Magazine, Tech Vibes, Engineering.com, Metro Toronto front page, Toronto Star, Huffington Post, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s)
- Bio-engineer wins UNESCO/ L’Oreal Women in Science Award (German Bild Der Frau, Polish Gazeta Wyborcz, Spanish Muy Interesante, Globe and Mail, CBC – The National, Toronto Star)
- Engineering students design fuel-efficient car that wins international Eco-Marathon (FOX News, Fast Company, About.com, CBC Toronto News)
- Eco-friendly alternatives aren’t always the greenest option (Globe and Mail, CBC Radio – The Current, Weather Network, Smithsonian Magazine, Discovery News, The Hindu, The Australian)
- Traffic emissions travel farther than thought, few cars produce majority of pollution (Boston.com, NBC News, CBC – The National, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Global News, Huffington Post Canada, Metro Toronto)
- U of T Engineering hosts national concrete canoe competition (Global National News, CBC Radio – Fresh Air, CTV News Online, CP24 Toronto, Fairchild)
- Measuring resource usage across the world’s growing megacities (WIRED Magazine , BBC World Service, The Atlantic – CityLab, Quartz, NBC News, Vice – Motherboard, Tendencias21, NU.nl)
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Boundless Progress: Advancement and Alumni
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Major Gifts
Alumni, students, faculty and friends from around the world continue to rally behind U of T Engineering’s ambitious $200-million Boundless campaign goal, reaching the three-quarters mark and helping to achieve our most successful fundraising year on record.
New contributions at the $1 million level and higher for 2014–2015 include a $3.5 million pledge toward the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship from alumnus Henry Wu (EngSci 7T5, ChemE MASc 7T9) and a $1 million gift to the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) from alumnus Francis Shen (UTIAS MASc 8T3) that will be used to create UTIAS Start, a new entrepreneurship incubator. In November 2014, the Rogers family gave an unprecedented $130 million to establish the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, of which $20.5 million went to our Faculty. The Centre will be home to a new Translational Biology and Engineering Program which will include significant contributions from the Institute of Biomedical and Biomaterials Engineering (IBBME).
Thanks to such remarkable support, we broke ground on the Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CEIE) on June 24, 2015.
Additional Highlights
This past year, the Faculty increased the page count of Skulematters to include more compelling content. We also brought a fresh new look and feel to the publication, which was well received by alumni, as indicated in a comprehensive readership survey carried out in January 2015.
We also expanded our BizSkule speaker series to Calgary for the first time, in addition to events in Silicon Valley and Toronto, and supported Engineering Science in the development and launch of their new social media platform for alumni and senior students, Graduway (EngSci Connect). Additionally, we initiated a Parents’ Program, with the first event in Dubai in December 2014 and events planned for Toronto and Hong Kong in 2015–2016.
U of T Engineering expanded engagement with current students through the Graditude campaign, which finished strong with a 42 per cent participation rate of full-time 4th year students — the highest on record. We also consolidated student club funding across the Faculty, streamlining the application process and allowing for greater transparency in fund allocation.
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To find out more about governance items, please visit the Faculty Council webpage or review recaps from this year’s meetings:
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At U of T Engineering, we are creatively addressing the challenges of our existing space, while actively working towards creating newer spaces, such as the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE).
You will find a complete list of 2014–15 infrastructure projects that are under construction and completed on our Infrastructure Renewal page.
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Our Faculty is honoured to welcome new colleagues, recognize promotions and celebrate this year’s retirees on our 2014–15 Faculty & Staff Appointments page.
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