Q U E E N ’S E N G I N E E R I N G :
Vision Engineering Leaders to Meet Global Challenges
Values • • • • • •
Adaptability Inclusion
Collaboration with integrity Curiosity
Respect for others Responsibility to society
• Applied
sustainability
Mission We combine curiosity-driven, high impact research with creatively inspired, technically rigorous, and experientially linked engineering programs to contribute substantively to the challenges that face our world today.
Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
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The Challenge Queen’s Engineering has a prestigious past as one of the country’s foremost schools of engineering, which played a major access role providing education to students from across Ontario. More recently, the Faculty has extended its recruitment reach across the country and around the world. It attracts high-quality students, and has a dedicated and remarkably accomplished alumni base that stands squarely behind the Faculty. The Faculty’s ability to provide a collaborative and inspiring campus environment that creates deep bonds has been an enormous asset in cultivating a strong sense of student camaraderie that endures well past graduation. But past performance is no guarantee of future success. Societal, technological, and economic change all require responses from not only the engineering profession, but also engineering educators and graduates, as the need to ensure greater societal inclusion and fairness cannot be ignored. Neither can the changing nature of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics labour market nor the need for increased research intensity to meet pressing global challenges. Queen’s Engineering must respond to and master these changing external environments. What has worked for Queen’s Engineering in the past is insufficient as we look to our future. Significant and deliberate change is needed.
There are three significant challenges facing engineering faculties around the world, and Queen’s Engineering will be a leader in tackling these challenges: •
The challenge to intensify research, ensuring that the faculty can produce high-quality, impactful research, while attracting high-quality graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and top faculty.
•
The challenge to push the frontiers of education, ensuring that the school has a curriculum and a set of work-integrated learning options that are recognized as being among the most innovative in North America.
•
The challenge to foster a diverse and inclusive community, ensuring that promoting and furthering the creation of a diverse talent base amongst students, staff, and faculty underpin all our decisions.
These are significant challenges that will require a great deal of effort to achieve. In meeting them, the historic values and strengths of Queen’s Engineering are important assets that retain relevance and significance. But the Faculty needs to operationalize them in ways that respond to a new environment. As it has done on several occasions since its founding in 1893, Queen’s Engineering needs to build on its past to evolve once again. This strategic plan outlines the path to doing so.
On the following pages are listed 49 Strategic Actions (SA’s) that could be taken to address these three challenges.
THEME ONE
Research Prominence
Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
Research Prominence Queen’s Engineering is committed to fostering an inclusive environment that supports research excellence and collaboration. We will build on our growing strengths and create an environment that brings together faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, industry, government, and the wider community to produce research that is impactful both in academic journals and where we work and live. There are many exciting projects and areas of strength, and we have been hiring top researchers to expand our research profile. Queen’s Engineering has recently established clusters, for example the Ingenuity Labs and the Beaty Water Research Centre, that can produce interdisciplinary world-changing research and we are building on this momentum. The Faculty is large, but the research agenda we set out means that we need to grow further, with more faculty and graduate students to support world-class research. The Faculty will release a detailed companion Strategic Research Plan to complement this Strategic Plan. It will include a new framework to foster the creation of additional research clusters and to provide tailored support to advance existing clusters to the next level of research prominence. It will aim to foster a culture in which the outstanding research that is being conducted at the Faculty is valued, recognized and visible. It also aims to create a research environment that provides the tools, training and support necessary for our students and faculty to reach their full potential and achieve the highest levels of research excellence together.
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OBJECTIVE 1.
Support research excellence SA 1.1
Ensure early-career faculty members receive comprehensive training, mentoring and networking opportunities within and beyond established centers, institutions, or faculty partnerships.
SA 1.2
Focus on faculty renewal and growth to increase our research capacity (ensuring our faculty/student ratio is below our peer engineering programs).
SA 1.3
Develop new funding mechanisms to support cross-disciplinary interactions and collaborations within and outside Queen’s Engineering, including those to support international collaboration and mobility of scholars.
SA 1.4
Identify and support a number of research excellence clusters, organized around established and/or emerging strength areas, ensuring that these clusters are connected to at least one Sustainability Development Goal (SDG) and that they draw on interdisciplinary expertise. SDGs are 17 global development goals as first put forward by the UN in 2015.
SA 1.5
Enhance administrative support systems to facilitate the development and management of large-scale external grants and contracts.
SA 1.6
Create a new staff position to identify, facilitate, and support the development research areas that bridge the Faculty and industrial partners, with a particular focus on developing partnerships focused on SDGs.
Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
OBJECTIVE 2.
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OBJECTIVE 3.
Build research capacity through graduate education and support
Make research excellence visible in Canada and beyond
SA 2.1
Ensure graduate students have appropriate support and training in academic writing and proposal writing.
SA 3.1
SA 2.2
Introduce new social programs and groups and foster existing ones to build a sense of community among all graduate students.
Leverage marketing campaigns to better communicate and showcase Queen’s Engineering research and its impact on the world to broader communities.
SA 3.2
SA 2.3
Compete for graduate students by committing to being in the top five nationally for financial support of both international and domestic doctoral students.
SA 2.4
Strive to have faculty members mentor new undergraduate students with a range of research experiences (e.g. provide more summer research opportunities, research internships).
Focus on providing internal and external communication about engineering research to undergraduate students that facilitates understanding about what the different graduate options are, how graduate research can lead to solving major challenges, and what career advantages a graduate degree can offer.
SA 3.3
SA 2.5
Provide support for faculty to advertise their research projects and those of the Faculty’s centres and institutes to attract graduate students with expertise in such research.
Develop a new marketing campaign targeting excellent graduate students across Canada, communicating broadly about any new doctoral and post-doctoral scholarships at Queen’s Engineering.
SA 3.4
Commit to being in the top 10 Canadian Engineering schools for the scientific impact of research publications.
SA 3.5
Increase the overall percentage of faculty members’ publications that have an external or international co-author.
T H E M E T WO
The Forefront of Engineering Education
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The Forefront of Engineering Education Queen’s Engineering has long been recognized for its strengths in providing a robust and engaging undergraduate experience. The Faculty continues to attract top undergraduate students, and alumni find meaningful employment and leadership roles across the globe. It has a major recruitment advantage with the free discipline choice, which often distinguishes Queen’s from its competitors.
Global reviews of engineering education identify silos between disciplines as a major challenge that constrains the development of engineering education. Queen’s Engineering has recognized experts in educational trends in their Engineering Teaching and Learning Team (ETLT) and faculty who have internally identified many directions to ensure that their curriculum is up-to-date and attentive to global engineering education trends. The ETLT and the faculty need to be enabled and supported to make revisions. Faculty, students, alumni, employers, and staff all identified the need to ensure that students have access to hands-on learning that connects to the challenges and issues that face organizations and that have been identified in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Further commitment is needed to ensure that both undergraduate and graduate curriculum is focused on training problem-solvers who can work with people from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. Engineers have always been problem solvers, but the scope and the challenge of the problems that we are facing have grown in complexity and scale—we need to ensure that our curriculum prepares students to tackle major issues from urban development and land usage to providing healthcare to remote populations to mitigating climate change. Queen’s Engineering is committed to a learning environment where “Curiosity Creates.” While there will always be requirements for discipline-specific technical skills, there is need for space for students to experiment and learn broadly and see how their skills can be applied to different contexts.
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To push the frontiers of education, ensuring that the school has a curriculum and a set of work-integrated learning options that are recognized as being among the most innovative in North America.
OBJECTIVE 4.
Commit to curiosity-driven and challenge-based education SA 4.1
Provide courses scenarios that introduce student to the grand challenges that engineers can help solve and ensure they are given the space to experiment through trial and error when working on these issues.
SA 4.2
Develop more connections between undergraduate study and research through research assistantships, research based internships, work-integrated learning opportunities or other means.
SA 4.3
Commit to ensuring that applied courses also introduce students to real-world challenges and issues.
SA 4.4
Identify key social challenges in the local community, Ontario, Canada, and/or around the world that students and the community can work collaboratively though class work and field work.
SA 4.5
Provide graduate students with opportunities to meet professionals outside of academia to learn how their skills and knowledge can be applied across sectors (e.g. support of invention 2 Innovation - i2I - program).
SA 4.6
Commit to understanding and incorporating ways of knowing from nearby Indigenous nations, such as holistic framing of what makes a project necessary and what decolonizing curriculum means in an engineering context.
SA 4.7
Map how core courses in mathematics, sciences, and programming connect to design and applied courses across all four years of the undergraduate degree.
SA 4.8
Connect both undergraduate and graduate students to entrepreneurial opportunities by fostering connections with start-ups and/or having students explore commercialization of their research and/or course work.
SA 4.9
Ensure that instructors re-tool courses in ways that are more inclusive.
Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
OBJECTIVE 5.
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OBJECTIVE 6.
Enhance interdisciplinary learning
Expand professional experience options
SA 5.1
Investigate feasibility of an integrated engineering program for students who are interested in a more general and multi-disciplinary curriculum experience.
SA 6.1
SA 5.2
Investigate and decide on a new interdisciplinary undergraduate program in Biomedical Engineering.
Nurture career ready graduates through career training that equips students to succeed in an ever-changing and complex world of work, including providing them with information on career preparation from the first year.
SA 6.2
Identify and design integrative course “threads” that provide students with a curated list of courses across disciplines that tackle a common theme, such as addressing a Sustainable Development Goal.
Look for ways to support and expand extra-curricular opportunities, such as student design teams, conferences, or clubs, while seeking ways to recognize their work through digital badges or micro-credentials.
SA 6.3
In addition to the Queen’s Undergraduate Internship Program, develop a range of signature summer experience options with diverse opportunities for students to develop professional skills and gain meaningful work experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors.
SA 6.4
Develop a plan for engaging Queen’s exceptional community of alumni as a key constituency for work-integrated learning experiences.
SA 6.5
Accelerate the Corporate Relations program to provide students and employers with enhanced support for work experiences, internships and careers.
SA 5.3
SA 5.4
Ensure that faculty and staff are provided with time and professional incentives to develop scenarios and challenges which students can work with in applied courses and in their capstone courses.
SA 5.5
Commit to reviewing upper-year electives, with the objective of reducing barriers such as pre-requisites (where possible), establishing bridging courses that facilitate an overall increase in cross-listed courses that students in different disciplines can take, and offering courses jointly by faculty in different departments.
SA 5.6
Expand opportunities to have students take courses outside of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science as a core part of their Engineering education with a specific aim to jointly develop courses with FAS in areas that speak to global challenges or themes facing students from multiple disciplines.
THEME THREE
Engineering for Everyone
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Engineering for Everyone Engineering teams solve complex problems, and complex problems require diverse and inclusive perspectives. Queen’s Engineering needs to shoulder not just the task of making the profession more diverse, but also the task of training engineers to make inclusive teams a reality. There are many positive shifts happening already. Queen’s undergraduates enjoy exceptional support services and Queen’s undergraduate student body is typically at least 30% women. Recruitment efforts to diversify the existing and future student body are being undertaken through initiatives such as the Aboriginal Access to Engineering (AAE) program, First Generation Pathways initiative, institutional and student outreach activities, and others. Nevertheless, more needs to be done, as a significant minority of students continue to feel like they are on the outside looking in. Queen’s needs to rethink what it means to be an engineer. The goal is to create an inclusive environment where students from a wide range of backgrounds can thrive and feel like they belong to Queen’s Engineering community, building together foundations to what the future of engineering looks like. Queen’s Engineering has recruited excellent students from Canada and around the world. However, to move to the next level, the Faculty needs to become more competitive and attractive for curious students, both undergraduate and graduate, from diverse backgrounds who are ready to work hard to achieve excellence. Ultimately, students from diverse backgrounds should see themselves represented among faculty members and staff.
Ensuring that all our decisions are underpinned by fostering a diverse talent base amongst students, staff, and faculty.
OBJECTIVE 7.
Recruitment & diversity Attract and enable access for intellectually curious and motivated domestic and international students from all backgrounds.
SA 7.1
Increase access to engineering studies at Queen’s for historically under-represented communities by developing new bursaries and scholarships.
SA 7.2
Mobilize the voices of students from equity-seeking communities in outreach, communication and marketing campaigns and ensure Queen’s Engineering students’ inclusion in Queen’s Equity Ambassadors program.
SA 7.3
Modify existing admissions procedures to be able to identify and admit students not only on their secondary school grades but also on their commitment to hard work, their strength of character and their desire to make a social impact as an engineer.
SA 7.4
Develop academic pathways programs, prioritizing the creation of ones at high schools and colleges in non-traditional recruitment areas, remote locations as well as for international students who live both overseas and in Canada.
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OBJECTIVE 8.
Support & inclusion Provide all students with holistic support and intentional inclusion.
SA 8.1
Create a student support system for both academic and well-being that supports undergraduate and graduate students and particularly ensures that students from diverse backgrounds are set up for success.
SA 8.6
Actively promote the existing Equity, Diversity & Inclusion initiatives within the Queen’s Engineering community and provide financial support to these initiatives where required.
SA 8.2
Build off the success of the Aboriginal Access to Engineering program by using it as a template to develop programming to support other equity-seeking groups, such as Black engineering students.
SA 8.7
Initiate and support new social support initiatives for graduate students to build a strong sense of community among them.
SA 8.8
Develop a support and inclusion plan targeted to meet the needs of our international students.
SA 8.9
Building on Queen’s Engineering traditions as well as the expertise being developed in Corporate Relations, look for opportunities to introduce digital bars or badges rewarding leadership, extra-curricular, and entrepreneurial achievements.
SA 8.3
Make community inclusion more intentional by embracing and understanding different experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, and identities, and empower students of all backgrounds to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills within and outside the classroom.
SA 8.4
Promote social opportunities to ensure students from under-represented groups feel a strong sense of belonging to Queen’s Engineering community.
SA 8.5
Develop a plan to fulfill the recommendations of the Principal’s Implementation Committee on Racism, Diversity, and Inclusivity (PICRDI) and Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) reports.
Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
OBJECTIVE 9.
Leverage diversity and inclusion among faculty, staff, and senior administrators SA 9.1
Implement regular education and training sessions for all faculty, staff, and senior administration in equity, diversity, inclusion and indigenization.
SA 9.2
Incorporate equity, diversity and inclusion criteria into every phase of the hiring process, including job posting, the composition of hiring committees, interview questions and other measures of candidate excellence.
SA 9.3
Embed competency in equity, diversity, and inclusion as a requirement for all faculty, staff, and senior administrator positions.
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Queen’s Engineering: Driving Curiosity Forward
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Strategy Enablers To enable these strategic objectives and actions, certain measures need to be taken to provide support for students, faculty, and staff in their daily work. We will enhance Queen’s Engineering structures and processes that will foster opportunities for participatory leadership, transparent decision-making, and shared accountability. The following enablers are presented as actions that ensure that our environment is inclusive and supportive and that our community is well informed, empowered and committed to making the strategic plan a success:
I.
Commit to making mental health the foundation of all that we do. Work to have resources in place to pro-actively support our community well-being, and to create an environment that is safe and conducive to learning and growth.
II.
Develop an internal communication plan, developed by faculty members and staff, committed to breaking the silos between the departments by creating spaces and commitments to sharing ideas across departments and unit. Foster a culture of service excellence and process improvement through recognition of contributions and deliberate diffusion of best practices across the Faculty.
III.
Offer regular educational sessions in equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigenization (EDII), and embed competency in EDII as a requirement for all students, faculty, staff, and senior administrator positions.
IV.
In consultation with equity-seeking groups, develop appropriate ways to collect, analyze and report on data and metrics of EDII initiatives to effectively monitor progress of initiatives. Ensure that any improvements in these metrics are celebrated and the work of staff and faculty to make these shifts are recognized.
Summary This document is just the start for our new five-year plan. There are some ambitious goals, but this is a time where ambition and audacity are needed to tackle the challenges that face us. This plan is also a conversation piece and a document that will develop and grow through the work and conversations between our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and other partners. In other words, this plan is just a beginning. In creating this plan, the Faculty of Engineering commits to developing annual reporting to update our status, to assess that the goals and metrics remain relevant to our operational realities, and to ensure that our plan aligns with the wider goals of Queen’s University. The Strategic Plan should not simply be a task list—it needs to be a document used to guide and evaluate decisions. In issuing this plan, the Faculty of Engineering is committing to fostering diversity, pushing the frontiers of teaching, and honing our research excellence. The Faculty of Engineering is world class, and we intend to remain there and go even further to make Queen’s Engineering a place where global challenges are addressed and solved.