Media Releases

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

May 16, 2017

National conference will spark discussion on reinventing education to prepare tomorrow’s diverse engineering leaders to address challenges we can’t yet imagine

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