Top Honours
A Sense of Community
Need to ask a busy person in order to get something done? Ask Matthew Tutty ’16 MATTHEW TUTTY ’16 IS NOT JUST THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO GETS INVOLVED.
He’s the type of person who gets heavily involved. Matthew recently finished his undergraduate degree at Western University, with double degrees in chemical engineering and business administration from the Ivey School of Business. But that was just the beginning. In addition to the intensive course load, he was elected by the engineering student body as president of Western’s Undergraduate Engineering Society, managing funds of more than $850,000. Further, he was selected as co-chair for the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students’ Conference on Diversity in Engineering, a national event with 170 delegates. And he was appointed as the federation’s corporate relations commissioner, founding a new mentorship program shared between the federation and Engineers Canada. For his contributions to the engineering community, Matthew was awarded the Engineers Canada Gold Medal Student Award 2021. He says his passion for getting involved started while at HSC, a value he thinks will stay with him for life. “Students were invited to take ownership and build the community,” he recalls. “I think that heightened sense of community has really stuck with me.” Matthew says he also felt HSC focused on “developing the whole child and encouraging students to pursue multiple interests and passions, which meant getting involved inside and outside the classroom.” That awareness helped him notice, upon his arrival at Western, that “the student experience is not the same for all students.” He became dedicated to helping make change, which in part, meant addressing diversity issues in engineering. “The profession does not mirror the population of Canada,” he says. “There’s an under-representation of women, Indigenous people and other marginalized groups. To address the issues the engineering profession wants to solve today, we need to have a profession that mirrors our society.”
Matthew Tutty ’16
“We need to have a profession that mirrors our society.” He says he knows that work will continue at Western, and he hopes to get involved in the industry’s professional association in the future. Matthew started a full-time job at Hatch Ltd. in Mississauga in spring 2021, working in the engineering firm’s climate change and sustainability practice, and has already started getting involved in community there. He’s joined a task force at Hatch that is working to develop an engineering methodology to “design sustainable prosperity” at mine sites once resource extraction has ended. He’s also still involved in the alumni communities at HSC and Western, and has a near-term goal of obtaining his professional engineer designation. “I see myself staying in consulting but moving toward a more managerial role, and continuing work on climate change,” he says. “I want to be heavily involved in the communities I work in.”
The Alumni Hall of Excellence
SPRING 2022
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