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TRANSFORMING A KEY STUDENT CONFERENCE
THE CAPSTONE PROJECT IS JUST
what the name suggests, a project our engineering students complete that is the culmination of their academic and learned experiences. This pinnacle project is presented and celebrated at The Dalhousie Engineering Capstone Conference. The Capstone Conference is a year-end celebration of the hard work graduating engineering students have put into their capstone projects during their final undergraduate year. The global pandemic resulted in students being off-campus, and in-person celebrations and gatherings being put on pause. The restrictions challenged the way the projects would be completed and how the conference would be held. The students, the professors, and the Engineers in Residence all came together to ensure the pivotal Capstone Project and Conference could move forward successfully.
THE CAPSTONE PROGRAM
The Capstone program is an 8-month academic program, taking place over 2-semesters, in which students work in teams on real-world problems from local industry. The Capstone program is a rich opportunity for experiential learning, where students face openended problems that do not have a clear solution. Working in their teams, students apply all their previously gained engineering skills, along with the design process, to identify problems, and outline project scope and requirements. Students then create solutions, and eventually design and build a working prototype or solution for their clients.
The Capstone program plays an important role in giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their engineering skills, learn about working with engineers, technicians, operators, etc. in real companies/organizations. The benefits of the capstone program extend beyond students and into the community. These projects allow companies to explore the application of new technologies in low-risk environments, work with creative students who have the potential to become employees and draw on Faculty expertise and Dalhousie resources.
Many of the industry partners get involved because they were once capstone students themselves, and they want to give back to younger engineers by offering them a real-world experience, and by mentoring the students as they work through their projects. Many of the companies and industry partners that participate in the Capstone Program as “clients” for the students are themselves Dalhousie alumni.
THE CONFERENCE GOES DIGITAL
The tradition of celebrating the end of the Capstone Project started out as a “Design Expo” in the Sexton Gym in 2014. Students could voluntarily participate in a poster expo that lasted a few hours of an afternoon in March. In this format, the Design Expo was held for 3 consecutive years before it evolved into the Capstone Conference as we now know it.
The first Capstone Conference was held in 2017. It continued the tradition of the poster exposition and competition and added the feature of breakout rooms for formal presentations for all capstone students. This evolution turned the conference into an all-day event hosted at the Westin Nova Scotia, where rooms were filled with over 450 participating students, approximately 100 faculty members, and hundreds of other guests including industry clients, event sponsors, engineers in the community and alumni, high school students, and the presenting students’ friends and family. Also in attendance are the poster competition judges: around 50
professional engineers from the Nova Scotia engineering community.
After three successful annual conferences, the fourth annual event had to be cancelled – it fell less than a month after the global COVID-19 pandemic brought about stay-at-home orders. A year later, in 2021, an event of this size was still not feasible with public health guidelines and the team of organizers proposed the fifth annual Capstone Conference be held completely online.
The Capstone Conference was held virtually on April 8, 2021, on a virtual conference platform called Hopin. The conversion of the traditional conference to a completely digital one was no small feat. The team of Engineers in Residence who host this conference every year had to pivot, get creative, and brainstorm and collaborate with the capstone instructors to come up with a solution. The team also hired an Industrial engineering co-op student, Owen Anderson to help with the planning, logistics and digital set up of the Hopin platform. When asked about one of the successes of this year’s conference, Engineer in Residence, Sandra MacAulay Thompson laughed and said, “the fact that we pulled it off!” Sandra credits Owen’s hard work, resourcefulness and attention to detail as he learned how to fully organize and manage a large event in Hopin. Additionally, the capstone instructors and students demonstrated a great deal of flexibility and willingness to learn how team presentations and poster demonstrations could be done in this new platform.
The virtual conference was able to host the same components as the inperson event, with the poster exposition, and breakout rooms for presentations. The turn-out and feedback was overwhelmingly positive over 740 people attended the virtual conference. In the digital room were over 400 students, 80 industry partners and over 90 faculty and staff members to name a few. Viewers and participants attended from across 31 countries.
While the virtual event of 2021 is a story of success and adaptability for the planning team of Engineers in Residence, they look forward to returning to the Westin on April 5, 2022, to host The Dalhousie Engineering Capstone Conference in person next year. Regardless of if the conference is in-person, or virtual, it’s important that students have the chance to present their projects and celebrate the bookend of their degree.
Valuing Education Beyond the Classroom
FOR RECENT GRADUATE IKE HARRIS-EZE
(BEng’20) both engineering and learning are all about continuous improvement, he believes, “If you’re standing still the world is moving past you”.
Ike jumped right into the deep end when it came to getting involved at Dalhousie, before the end of his first year he made the decision to run for VP Finance for Dalhousie Engineering Society (DES), which was just the beginning of his extracurricular involvement. Within the next few years, he went on to join the planning committee of the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) conference, the Dalhousie Engineering Society (DES) as VP Finance, the Industrial Engineering Society, the Atlantic Engineering Competition (AEC) as VP Finance, the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students (CFES) Executive Council as VP Finance and even to become the Manager of the T-Room, the Sexton Campus bar.
Getting to know people was a large interest for Ike when getting started in societies. “In Engineering when you first start there are 500 people, you meet fractions of them, but you can’t meet everyone,” says Harris-Eze. Through the societies and activities like meet-andgreets— planned by Ike— he was able to meet a variety of people from all the different fields of Engineering, which
— IKE HARRIS-EZE
he said he wouldn’t usually get to meet, otherwise.
In addition to meeting people, finding ways to help people is a value Ike holds in high regard; a trait he says was instilled in him by his parents. Helping people, giving back, and providing your skills to society were common topics within the family unit. His accounting background from a previous degree from St. Francis Xavier University allowed him to apply those skills to VP Finance roles across the societies and planning committees he joined.
Getting involved made the 5-year degree go by quickly for Ike, who also shared “If all you do is school, then you’re only focusing on one aspect of yourself. You want to be a wholistic version of yourself. You shouldn’t just take care of your mind, you should take care of your body and your soul.” Participating in extra-curricular activities helped Ike realign himself and he found that it allowed him to get the full experience of being an Engineering Student and build connections within the engineering community.
The benefits of Ike’s community involvement post-graduation have only continued to expand. “If you can plan a conference, you can plan anything,” Ike added jovially— planning the 50th anniversary conference for CFES for over 400 engineering students from across Canada was one of the highlights of Ike’s time at Dalhousie. His experiences taught him project management skills and effective communication with stakeholders, which he now uses daily in the working world.
It was “a little wild” for Ike to graduate and enter the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. He started applying for jobs in January and secured a job before the virus was declared a global pandemic. Ike felt the concern many others were feeling, “Two weeks later [after getting the job] the world shuts down, and I was like, do I still have a job?” added Ike. It was a nerve-wracking time for him especially with a pending move to Montreal. Thankfully, the job remained a reality for Ike and he is now a Developer in the area of digital supply chain transformations at Deloitte.
In the three months between school ending and work beginning, Ike used that time to rest and recharge before diving into the workforce. As continuous improvement is a large part of Ike’s values, he also used that time to do online courses, and skillbuilding, from tech courses to re-learning French. Since starting at Deloitte almost a year ago, he still dedicates 30 minutes a day to studying French. Ike hopes to be bi-lingual within 5 years. Over the last six months, Ike has played a role in the COVID roll-out for his employer, Deloitte, exploring his interest of the role of engineering in healthcare.
“As humans, we need to continue to evolve, continue to learn, continue to develop.” Ike states. The value of Ike’s learned experiences at Dalhousie, both in and out of the classroom, is carried with him, he adds, “I bring those perspectives to whatever I’m working on and that brings a diversity of thought that is so important. That’s the workforce of the future, we don’t want to be homogenous in regards to your skillset or mindset, we need to continue to bring different facets forward.”
The Dalhousie University American Concrete Institute Student Chapter received international recognition in the 2020 Outstanding University category. This is the second consecutive year that this student group has been recognized 2019 they were highlighted in the Excellent University category.
During Alumni Days in late May, Dalhousie hosted a special class reunion to mark a significant milestone. Classmates from the class of 1961 who graduated from Engineering, Arts and Social Sciences, Dentistry, Management and Science gathered over Zoom to share their memories of Dalhousie and Halifax in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Dean’s Coffee Club and event series usually hosted oncampus hosted three successful virtual events over 2020 and 2021. With speakers such as Amina Stoddart on wastewater research, Paul Amyotte on Process Safety, and Margaret Palmeter to speak on the growth of Dal’s innovation centre the Emera ideaHUB. George Armoyan (BEng'83) took the virtual stage as a keynote speaker at the third IDEA Speaker Series in the fall of 2020. Armoyan shared the most pivotal moments in his career, his attitude towards risky decisions, his passion for investment in innovation and technology, and his dedication to giving back and supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Engineering Impact: Contributions of Engineers in Healthcare. On May 27 the Faculty of Engineering hosted the first event in it’s new series Engineering Impact. The live event brought three professional engineers working in the healthcare space together to share their stories on their careers and the industry.
Denise Pothier (BEng'93) has been recognized as a 2020 Aurum Award Winner. Denise’s background is in chemical engineering, but she has distinguished herself through her advocacy for inclusion and diversity. For 20 years, she has been advancing inclusivity in the engineering field, motivated as much by her own experiences in a male-dominated profession as it is by her Acadian and Mi’kmaq heritage.
Electrical & Computer Engineering student, Sierra Sparks, is Oxford-bound as Dalhousie's 92nd Rhodes Scholar. Sierra is set to further her studies in biomedical engineering while continuing to be a role model, community builder and inspiration to her peers.
Industrial Engineering Students place 1st in International Case competition. Rootinkumar Satani, Sagar Kumar Patel and Revanth Vinay Kodli have won first place in the Logistics and Supply Chain Division student case competition of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers.
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